Tumblr, is it the perfect time to sponsor a football club?
Article By Eric Beard (Boston). Photos By Oliver Sparrow (London).
(Source: philosofooty)
Club Website v. Pitchero
Our Club has been with Club Website for a couple of years and recently it has become a little stale, probably as the design of the website hasn’t moved on with the times. For a free website, the data that can be displayed is vast, but there is little control on how this is displayed. This means that hundreds of websites look exactly the same and the adverts seem to take over a little too much. An update has been promised since August, but not been forthcoming.
I’ve just discovered an alternative called pitchero. The design is much less cluttered, and seems to be a lot trendier. Navigation is possibly harder, but I’m sure that’s because I’m less familiar. It also has a member registration feature and some paid for add-ins such as paying membership fees and a club shop. Some well known non-league clubs, such as Chester, have sites designed with Pitchero.
Apprentice
Stuart Baggs: The Brand was so lucky to be in the winning team as I am sure as soon as Lord Sugar gets chance, he will be fired. Baggs was smug, arrogant and annoying as ever but survived as the tanned Christopher got fired.
At the moment Baggs is being given a hard fight as the most likely to go next by the totally negative, and non-contributing Laura. Jamie made a fool of himself when he went blank when asked to back up his comment that he had done many good things in previous tasks. His time is not far away.
The “mono tone” Chris was not too impressive as project manager, but then not many have been with the exception of the blonde lady, whose name escapes me.
Looking forward to seeing Baggs go next week unless he is carried again.
England Frustration
A couple of hours watching England play France last night, brought out several reasons why I normally avoid England friendlies.
- The Mexican wave desperately needs to stop. How can something that started in the 1980s still be one of the most exciting things to happen at Wembley? Time to think of something new.
- Why do we even play friendly international matches at Wembley? Surely from time to time they should be played at Premier League grounds, which will engage the home support more. This was also highlight whether the traditional booing is a ‘Wembley thing’, or a national shortcoming. I read somewhere that 20,000 tickets had to be sold to locals to supplement the crowd.
- Gareth Barry should no longer be an England international player.
- England players are beginning to look like one another so it was refreshing to see Andy Carroll as at least his pony tail stops him looking like Foster, Barry, Milner et al
- The French shirt is appalling.
Ian Hollaway
One of the best and most entertaining of managers threatens to quit if FA fine him for putting out a weakened team.
I know it’s in the rules but surely as he says, he can select what players play?
Rain
The first consistently wet weather of the season has arrived. Watching the rain from my office window, I am certain there will be games called off this weekend because of waterlogged pitches. I’m sure this happens every November.
So, here we go, Kicking things off with Chris Kamara from Soccer Saturday, missing a sending off. What a Legend!
Highest Yet
Need time to recover from writing a huge £1,400 cheque made out to our local school for using the facilities for training and matches. Rather a lot for a month, but what is the alternative?
Dark evening make it impossible to train at any other venue and paying £60 per hour soon mounts up.
Tough Decisions
Even with two matches planned for the U8s this Saturday, it looks like everybody is available, so it will be a difficult choice this weekend, as some boys will not be able to play.
Watched Arsenal get beaten by Shakhtar in the Champions League, so failed my task to get a couple of spare kits ready for the players that haven’t played in a team match so far. This will now have to be a priority for tomorrow.
Apart from that, it has been a very quiet day.
Tuesdays are Busy Days
Back at work today, and managed to download all the Club’s standing order payments during my tea break. As normal the number is different from last month so it takes a while to spot any new payments and any that have stopped.
At lunch-time I had a few quite minutes to think what to do at training tonight as I didn’t get around to planning anything last night.
At 4pm it’s finish work and a quick change into my training wear for tonight, and I realised that I had forgotten to get the mud off my trainers from Saturday. The first training for the Under 8s begins at 5pm and for the first time in a couple of weeks it was a dry evening. A great turnout once again - 21 players, so my assistant and I divide the teams up and we separate to do some shooting practice. The first part was from straight on and from a narrower angle to each side, rotating each turn. Most of the shooting was very accurate, and after a while progression was made so that a defender was added able to put pressure on the shooter. After that, this was progressed to a 2 v 2 so that choices of whether to pass or shoot had to be made. The players then played two 5 v 5 matches with the winners playing each other.
Now at 6pm, it’s time for the U14s. We stared with a Small Sided Game warm up with an emphasis on making a supporting movement by the player that had made the pass. There were some good overlaps and calling for ‘setting up’ a shot, and most of the players made supporting actions. We moved onto a shooting exercise similar to that I’d done earlier, but worked more on placement of shot from different angles. The hour finished with a SSG, and afterwards I decided to sign on another player who had been training the last two weeks.
On getting home, I had the disciplinary paperwork to deal with from yesterday, and a player transfer to another Club. Also received a rather disappointing email that arrived from one of the Schools that the Club uses, that needs to be briefed out to all the teams that play there.
