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Men acquire a particular
quality by constantly acting a particular way...you become just by
performing just actions, temperate by performing temperate actions,
brave by performing brave actions.
~ Aristotle (384 BC - 322 BC)
Penance On A Friday
-
A Cunning Strategy
See, all those words and not even a mention of the game. My plan is
simple, wear myself out before even mentioning the game and
hopefully I won't say anything I will have cause to regret or at
least anything that might cause the club to mobilise their legal
artillery against TheBohs.com. Having benefited from extensive
debriefings and having perused the Gypsies-Web Message Board at
length, the truth is that I have my work cut out coming up with
anything original or interesting to observe about the Drogheda game
that the Bohemian faithful haven't already latched onto like a pig
on a truffle.
-
Where the Rubber
Meets the Road
Friday night saw a a decent crowd, probably for the last time this
season, subjected to something that resembled football, only not as
we know it. This Bohs team don't look even remotely ready for the
season and not ready for the season two years running. The big
question is, how many competitive games is it going to take to get
this crew even remotely match fit? Here is another question, how
many games is it going to take for Gaffer to realise that Vinny
Arkins is no longer able to play at this level? Will he cut his
losses quick and leave him behind next week, perhaps put him out on
loan to, perhaps, Tolka Rovers in the hope he can get a few games
there and maybe, just maybe get some level of fitness that might,
just might, make him useful enough to have on the bench before the
seasons end? The only upside that I can see to Arkins is that at
last we have found someone even worse than Tony Grant and everything
being relative, maybe, Grant won't look so bad this season, as a
result. As far as inauspicious debuts go Arkins' is up there with
the worst. If Gaffer wants someone who's great in the dressing room
he should go out and hire a butler, if he wants a striker he's gonna
have to keep looking, unless of course he deigns to allow Stephen
Ward an opportunity to play in the position in which he gets to
play, with considerable success, for the Irish International U21
side. Sounds too simple doesn't it?
-
Don Damian Lynch
A lot is expected of our midfield this season and the fulcrum of
this area is Gaffer and Kevin Hunt. One a former international of
considerable talent and the other, one of the most influential
players in the history of the domestic game, at least in recent
years. A middle two most clubs in the land would be proud to have.
So, what went wrong on Friday night? Paul Keegan and Damian Lynch
could have taken enough time off, from bossing Gaffer and Kevin, to
take a crash course in calligraphy. They were only short of lighting
up a couple of nice Cuban cigars, so complete was their dominance.
Kevin was telling the papers, only last week, that he felt fitter
than he has for years. I suppose such over-confidence is forgivable
if your preseason consisted of playing keep ball against the best
the Phi Beta Kappa Sorority House could throw at you. It is sad to
say, but I think, like everyone else, sick as this sounds, I am
taking refuge in the hope that the team are hampered by another
rubbish pre-season and will begin to resemble professional
footballers in a few weeks. Hopefully the Drogheda game will serve
as a timely wake-up call and from here on in the lads realise that
points are going to have to be fought and scrapped over. I don't
think anyone wants to see anyone taking reckless risks out on the
park but there has to be a happy medium between taking unwarranted
risk and pulling out of virtually every challenge, which pretty much
sums up the Gaffers approach to the game on Friday.
-
Retirement Plans
All the gossip last season was that Stephen O'Brien was to retire.
As it happened he did the next best thing, signed a contract at Bohs
and now appears to be first choice keeper. One can only hope that a
goalkeeper who is as wide as he is tall won't become a complete
laughing stock, along with Arkins he appears to be one of the most
out of condition players to pull on a Bohs jersey in many a year,
Paul Byrne aside.
-
The Mystery of the
Vanishing Home Friendly & Dune
The team aren't the only one's short of a preseason, we the fans,
especially since the arrival of Gaffer, seem to be about as welcome
at pre-season games as a Kassler Rippchen at a Bar Mitzvah. Not one
home game pre-season, again, not a sausage. Up until Friday night I
was buying the line that the pitch was being worked on. Well unless
throwing down several tons of sand and walking away equates to being
worked on, my assumption is that our grounds-man took himself off
for a prolonged winter break. Enough already about the crappy
surface, once upon a time pre-season friendlies were something that
would attract a few curious paying punters and a good smattering of
members, who used such occasions as a way to add some precious value
to their membership subscription. Side benefits for the club being
lower costs and a chance to turn a few bob early doors. Nowadays the
team are magicked away to the midlands or play during the working
day on college campuses (seemingly for games against frat houses)
anywhere to make it awkward to get to, to see the team. Heck, they
even went to the expense of going across channel to play, wait for
it, Wycombe Wanderers RESERVES !!!!!!! Perhaps Gaffer doesn't want
us to see the team and after Friday who can blame him, after Friday
he won't have to worry so much anyway, because you can knock nearly
a thousand off the gate for the next home fixture. However there is
a case for asking the management of the club what the fuck they are
doing. At the rate we are going there will again be a bigger hole in
our accounts this season than there is in the ozone layer and they
sit and twiddle their thumbs while Gaffer single-handedly creates a
boom in the coach hire business and to what effect? The pitch is
still a mess and the team performed on Friday as if they were only
roused from their beds five minutes before kick off.
-
Home Entertainment
Well, my night was not a complete waste on Friday as the nausea that
gripped my gut throughout the game led to my leaving the club early
enough to get home and get a bit of value from Sky+, for once. After
the horrors of earlier in the evening I decided to look at something
much easier on the eye, namely Scarlet Johansson in "Girl with a
Pearl Earring". Unlike our passing, one law of the Universe seems to
be the utter impossibility of this girl producing one solitary bad
angle. Good movie by the way and unless this season at least begins
to hold the promise of something like football I think I might not
be the only one seduced by a home entertainment system. Recent TV
has been pretty good, "In the Thick of It" & "Life on Mars" might
recently have finished, but a new series of "Hustle" is underway
with screen icon Robert "Man From Uncle" Vaughan in fine form.
Continued on
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