On the ball...

I am not much of a football fan.

Don't look out for that on the headline news this evening - even BBC Look North would find news more earth shattering than that (especially seeing as Mr "2 shags" Prescott & his wife have chosen to cast their votes from their home village this evening). Anyone who's read this blog in any detail will have seen several admissions to my lack of interest in the game; in fact I would go so far as to say that I've never been enormously interested in either playing or watching it.

In my youth, I felt the need on a couple of occasions to really put this to the test and went along to Blundell Park to watch our "local heroes" play, but alas it was never meant to be. The combination of not particularly enjoying the match and being practically shredded through the fence at the front of the Pontoon Stand left me sufficiently bereft of interest to ever return.

On the two occasions I did visit, I picked up a souvenir programme each time, brought them home, put them in a drawer somewhere and completely forgot about them - until I found them both in near-mint condition at the bottom of a box last weekend that is.

One of them was for a match we played against Hull City on 7th April 1980 and guess who was on their team that season? A certain Steve McLaren who you may have heard mentioned on the news today having been named as the new England manager. Quicker than you could say "get it on e-Bay", I retrieved my programme just to check whether I could claim the extremely unlikely event "the guy who isn't interested in football has only seen two league football matches, during one of which the current England manager played".

Although he's on their team photo, he wasn't listed on the back cover so I'm guessing he was on the bench that day. Which makes my programme somewhat less rare. And less worthwhile flogging on e-Bay for untold millions.

Stupid bloody game anyway...