Campeone (etc)!!!
I got the mail from Brian early evening Saturday as I sat with my Mum in Leeds, nursing her through the first weekends of life without my Dad. As I told her, she stopped watching Britain’s Got Talent and said “great, I’m really pleased, hasn’t Brian won it a few times before?”.
Well indeed he has and indeed this is now 5 times in 7 years a fact which I have proudly passed on to a number of my “celebrity” Twitter followers (279,000 in theory have been exposed to the news to date…) as I kind of feel it’s a good fact to share.
So why is all of this important? Well apart from the fact my 80 year old Mum voluntarily stopped watching two slimline Pavorotti brothers to register her genuine pleasure, it is, in my view at least, incredibly important for Nottsborough Football Club. Not just because it is our 25th anniversary year and not just because it further cements Brian’s place in Nottsborough, SAL and AFA folklore but because it is “life-affirming” for a Club which, despite it’s apparent health (our first three teams may yet all win their senior Leagues), is suffering the same anxieties and problems as many other amateur clubs at the moment.
Now these issues are quietly being worked through and are being somewhat subsumed by the hectic end of the season for all three of our senior teams which is bringing with it a range of disappointment and jubilation in equal measure. Both the 2s (in the AFA Intermediate Final) and the 3s (in yesterday’s SAL Junior Cup Final) have experienced massive disappointments recently but I truly hope that they will appreciate the importance of the 1s performance and of the kudos this gives the Club. And I also hope that everyone in the Club and not least the 1s desperately wants the 2s and 3s to win their respective Leagues (tough though this may be) as everyone understands that what we do in the Leagues, and how we go about doing it, defines what we are as a Club.
I remain intensely proud of what we have achieved as a Club in the last 25 years and I am intensely proud of Brian and the 1s and what they have done since Christmas to turn round what looked like was going to be a (relatively speaking) poor season. But I am as proud of the 2s who are a loyal band of footballing brothers and a credit to the SAL, from both a footballing and sportsmanship perspective and of the 3s who remain as true an embodiment of the Nottsborough ethos that we currently have.
So well done the 1s for a great achievement but remember it’s an achievement that not only defines you as a team but underpins what Nottsborough stands for as a club and it’s as a Club that we stand or fall.
Jonty