 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
Liverpool
Football Culb - 
European
Champions Cups
Manchester United Football Club - 
European Champions Cups
Football rouses my emotions as few other things can. It makes me laugh (see Gary Neville vs. Bayer Leverkusen, just before the world cup.) Cry (stand on the kop and sing you'll never walk alone) Happy (see 2001 F.A. Cup final, also see the lucky flag) Sad (Selling Robbie Fowler) Angry (Why do we have Emile Heskey???? AAAAARRRGGHHH) Most of all it makes me feel alive. Football is great! I watch and play it whenever I can. My ideal Saturday would be a good game of 5-a-side, Liverpool winning and the other 19 premiership teams losing. I have heard rumours that there are other "divisions" below the premiership but I will not investigate that further until the glorious day, hopefully not far from now when Everton disappear into the abyss they have teetered on the edge of for the last decade.
The Lucky Flag
I found a flag, a lucky flag, Rumour has it that it single handedly
won the F.A. Cup in 2001 (some credit for the assist to Michael Owen)
For an encore the flag beat Alaves 5-4 and then Charlton 4-0 to secure
Champions League football for the first time.
The following season was barely a minute old and it won a penalty in
the Charity shield. The first game the flag missed was home to Bolton
and it was bye bye Sander. Then I forgot to take it to the Villa game,
Stevie G goes off and we lose 3-1. Realising the awesome power the flag
has I ensured it saw every game, until Monday 10th December. I began
to redesign the interior of Bobland and moved the lucky flag upstairs
to protect it from the dust. As a direct result of this action LFC won
only one of the next 9 league games. I remembered on 21st January and
I reinstated the flag just in time for kick off away to the Manc shite.
We never looked back.
Try it. Leave the picture of the flag in front of the TV for half a
match and see how we do. I guarantee you will see the effect. (Not a
guarantee)
Update 24/4/03: The flag hasnt worked so well this
season. I thing I upset it by replacing it's pole for a bigger one.
Or perhaps I just had a lucky stick and didnt realise it?
NEWS JUST IN, LUCKY FLAG WINS 2005 CHAMPIONS LEAGUE AFTER 2nd HALF ARRIVAL
It has done it again. The lucky flag had its doubters, even amongst the die hard fans who watch football @ Bobland regularly, but my belief in it has never wavered. I know deep in my heart that in the hour of our greatest need the flag would pull its finger out and do whatever it is that it does.
On 25th May 2005, during
that tumultuous match I had the fortune to be in Gran Canaria and as
beautiful and fun as it was it would still have been my 3rd choice of
location, that day. Anyway It was half time, we are 3-0 down to A C
Milan and rather than harboring hopes for an unlikely comeback I was
merely hoping we weren’t going to lose by 6 or 7. Lucky for every
Liverpool fan in the world, despite the emotion of watching your team
taking a beating, one person had enough presence of mind to realize
what was wrong and make a game saving decision. It wasn’t Rafa
putting on Hamann, It wasn’t Stevie G even though is very big
and hard, and as much as I would like to take the credit, it wasn’t
me either. It was my Aunty Doreen. She lives opposite me and her husband
is the reason I am a Liverpool fan having taken me as a child. At half
time she realized with no one in Bobland the lucky flag could not see
the football. She came over the road and got it and took it back to
her house and planted it firmly front and centre. The rest is history.
The Gary Mcallister Shrine
I guess a few of you are a bit shocked by my choice of player to hold
above all others and I would qualify it like this. Of course Liverpool
have had better players than Gary, longer serving players than Gary
and players who have achieved an awful lot more than Gary. True legends
like Dalglish, Rush, Yeats, Keegan, Hansen. You could even argue that
the best person ever to be part of LFC is Bob Paisley. But I cannot
think of a signing ever who had a more significant and more concentrated
impact than Gary. Signed in the summer of 2000 he was fairly anonymous
in the first half of the season as he nursed his wife back to health
but as the season reached its record breaking conclusion Gary was the
complete player. Remember the many excellent league performances and
crucial goals, The super cool penelty winner against Barcelona in the
semi-final, The solid cameo in the FA cup final inc setting up the equaliser,
The man of the match winning performance in the 5-4 Over Alaves and
1 goal and 3 assists to boot. But best of all the last minute, 44 yard
free kick against Everton. It won the derby and as we qualified for
the champions league by just one point that year his individual brilliance
and vision had a big hand in that to. Thank you for the memories.