Monday 13 August 2007
Valley irritants
It was great to be back at The Valley on Saturday. A lovely day, enjoying a few pints with family and friends plus a good catch up with New York Addick and watching the beginnings of a new era but it seems there is aways an irritant with Charlton.
The bloke with the mic on the pitch, Peter Nuttall is it, doesn't actually bother me much, mainly because I normally time my arrival at my seat as the players come on, or perhaps it's that I've been in America too long, and am used to his kind of infantile cheerleading.
But three things pissed me off on Saturday and neither on them were wearing a red shirt. Whether it's cost cutting, bad planning or just the same old Charlton I don't know but selling out of programmes an hour before kick off was a real clanger, particularly with a brand new team to read about and a much-vaulted handbook inside. After all the club pretty much knew down to the 100's how many people were going to be in the ground. I wonder if they plan to run another print run, or is that another unjustified expense?
Then unless you are happy to miss the last 10 minutes of the first-half the likelihood of getting a pint and a pie at half-time is zero and despite it being August and the potential for sun, the same as it's always been apparently and I'm not even as clever as Al Gore, behind the Covered End they ran out of bottles of water. Of course you had to get to the front of the queue to find that out.
On the beer thing, isn't it about time we started serving plastic bottles of beer, instead of pouring them one at a time? Or perhaps they could pre-pour a few, give those that work down there something to do for 45 minutes.
And lastly that scoreboard with it's rather fetching Ariel font. Sorry but I reckon most of us are able to keep track of the score, although the notification of the goalscorer could have been a bit quicker. But blimey no clock, no teams, no half-times, is it worth it? Bring back the alphabetical boards along the side of the pitch. Oh hang on, we need to be able to buy a programme for that to work!
Please Charlton, are we really this poor? ¶ 13:59
The bloke with the mic on the pitch, Peter Nuttall is it, doesn't actually bother me much, mainly because I normally time my arrival at my seat as the players come on, or perhaps it's that I've been in America too long, and am used to his kind of infantile cheerleading.
But three things pissed me off on Saturday and neither on them were wearing a red shirt. Whether it's cost cutting, bad planning or just the same old Charlton I don't know but selling out of programmes an hour before kick off was a real clanger, particularly with a brand new team to read about and a much-vaulted handbook inside. After all the club pretty much knew down to the 100's how many people were going to be in the ground. I wonder if they plan to run another print run, or is that another unjustified expense?
Then unless you are happy to miss the last 10 minutes of the first-half the likelihood of getting a pint and a pie at half-time is zero and despite it being August and the potential for sun, the same as it's always been apparently and I'm not even as clever as Al Gore, behind the Covered End they ran out of bottles of water. Of course you had to get to the front of the queue to find that out.
On the beer thing, isn't it about time we started serving plastic bottles of beer, instead of pouring them one at a time? Or perhaps they could pre-pour a few, give those that work down there something to do for 45 minutes.
And lastly that scoreboard with it's rather fetching Ariel font. Sorry but I reckon most of us are able to keep track of the score, although the notification of the goalscorer could have been a bit quicker. But blimey no clock, no teams, no half-times, is it worth it? Bring back the alphabetical boards along the side of the pitch. Oh hang on, we need to be able to buy a programme for that to work!
Please Charlton, are we really this poor? ¶ 13:59
