Most tinpot thing I ever heard. (tinpot thread)

[shoddycollins]

Celtic Nation are playing West Auckland today in the Northern League.

Steven Skinner has a keen interest in this game. He manages West Auckland and owns Celtic Nation.

 

[ForeverUnited]

Only in the non-league.

 

[Pliny Harris]

Still not as tinpot as recent FC Halifax Town jumpers' badges peeling off to reveal Torquay badges underneath.

 

[The_Boss]

Still not as tinpot as recent FC Halifax Town jumpers' badges peeling off to reveal Torquay badges underneath.

Please share some photos of this!!!

 

[Pliny Harris]

Please share some photos of this!!!

Wish I had some sort of gif of the whole thing. Luckily we swapped kit makers from Vandanel to Adidas just as Torquay got relegated. Play them on a rainy day and it would've been awkward.

 

[shoddycollins]

Haha, can we make this a tinpot thread?

When we were in the Conference I went to a Boxing Day fixture against Morecambe at the old Christie Park, and because there were no pubs near the ground (well none that let away fans in anyway) an off-licence had filled the gap in the market by dispensing beer into washed out milk-cartons which then had to be drunk in the car park outside while a few cops formed a boundary for the 'beer garden'.

 

[Sparrow]

Haha, can we make this a tinpot thread?

[Insert Alfreton Here]

 

[Etty Abrics]

I went to an FA Cup game at Hythe Town (near Folkestone, which we lost), and they had a large pile of manure behind the away end.

Also at Chatham Town there was a tractor in the corner of the ground.

 

[Pliny Harris]

Haha, can we make this a tinpot thread?

When we were in the Conference I went to a Boxing Day fixture against Morecambe at the old Christie Park, and because there were no pubs near the ground (well none that let away fans in anyway) an off-licence had filled the gap in the market by dispensing beer into washed out milk-cartons which then had to be drunk in the car park outside while a few cops formed a boundary for the 'beer garden'.

Yes please. Bloody love my tales of tinpot, me.

My favourite one's second hand, from some Hinckley fans who went to Merthyr Tydfil for a midweek game. They found a dead fox in the outdoor gents toilets.

 

[Aber gas]

I wish I could find a picture of our old santa's grotto . It was a grotty old portacabin with a piece of tinsel stuck to it . Honestly you could not find anything more sinister or shite .

 

[Pliny Harris]

I wish I could find a picture of our old santa's grotto . It was a grotty old portacabin with a piece of tinsel stuck to it . Honestly you could not find anything more sinister or shite .

This is especially relevant to my interests as I have a more seasonal taste for childhood-ruining rackets served up as "Christmas magic."

How about a picture of that old Southend mascot?

Not a slight on shoddy either, but I remember the old Olga the Fox looking like roadkill too.

 

[Roly]

Salisbury's away "bar"...

 

[Aber gas]

This is especially relevant to my interests as I have a more seasonal taste for childhood-ruining rackets served up as "Christmas magic."

How about a picture of that old Southend mascot?

Not a slight on shoddy either, but I remember the old Olga the Fox looking like roadkill too.

That's fucking hideous , poor parents that's going to cost them a fortune in therapy .

 

[B2TF]

Macclesfield

 

[Sparrow]

https://twitter.com/TinpotNonLeague

 

[shoddycollins]

This is especially relevant to my interests as I have a more seasonal taste for childhood-ruining rackets served up as "Christmas magic."

How about a picture of that old Southend mascot?

Not a slight on shoddy either, but I remember the old Olga the Fox looking like roadkill too.

Which Olga? There are two in this picture, or are you referring to the old version of the Olga costume which I can't find any photos of but looked pretty shite.

By the way, a Google image search for Olga the fox also brought this up.

Spoiler

Olga Kurylenko... maybe she'd be interested in becoming our mascot All she has to do is carry a dead fox onto the pitch before kick off and then wiggle her arse to 'what the fox says' for a bit. Easy!

Back on the tinpot theme, although we were a league club at the time, we were made to look pretty tinpot a few years back when a mystery buyer for the club was touted. The directors laid out the red carpet for him only for it to turn out to be a waiter from a curry house in Peebles on a wind-up.

And then we come to something that is quite literally tinpot. Borehamwood last season in the FA Cup. After winning a fraught replay at Brunton Park coming from behind with two late goals there was a fracas on the pitch and then more trouble in our dressing room which BHW players trashed. The club sent this photo to the FA as part of their evidence of damage

And BHW club officials had this to say:

'Finally an old tea pot they say was put in a urinal by ourselves.. Our observations are again simple, that on our arrival back to the changing room at the end of the game. A tea pot full of hot tea had been put by a Carlisle official on a very narrow beveled ledged wall exactly at the point of entry into our shower area.. Why it was put there is anyones guess but we can show the pictorial evidence of the beveled ledge of little more than 4″ wide and put simply it is no place to balance a hot tea pot..

Our medical department told the club during our investigations, that they thought it was an accident waiting to happen.'

 

[CFC2010]

We had Radcliffe selling cans of larger pitch side out of a cooler box when we played them a few years ago. Great times.

Also remember a Chester fan doing the line at a home game a couple of seasons ago when the linesman got injured.

 

[GTFC1979]

In 2001 (i think) we played York away in the FA Cup, and the toilet in the away end was just a wall to piss against!
We were Championship, they were League Two, and we lost 1 nil, which was nice!!

 

[SamScfc]

Considering this is now the 'tinpot thread' this may aswell be the Conference North thread, right?

 

[Pliny Harris]

Which Olga? There are two in this picture, or are you referring to the old version of the Olga costume which I can't find any photos of but looked pretty shite.

Aye the actual costume one. It looked petrifying and this is coming from someone who spent a substantial part of his childhood accepting sweets off this fox mascot:

 

[Deuce_Bigalow]

Close thread.

 

[Andy Harrier]

For me, it's the referee of the Ebbsfleet v Kiddy match in 2011. Skip to 9 minutes in to see the referee firstly let a foul on Vaughan go, before a shot is taken, hitting Briscoe fully in the face. The referee somehow gave a penalty for handball. He then goes back and books Enver-Marum for the foul on Vaughan where there was no advantage to be taken and several minutes later, Briscoe was stretchered off in a neck brace due to the force with which the ball hit him. This must be the most incompetent refereeing performance, even for this level. There was no logic to any of his decisions.

 

[Jemfy]

Incompetent refereeing is not tinpot, it happens everywhere. If you want stories of incompetent refereeing I am sure if I bothered to count them over a season I could out-do most of you just from the shite ones we get down here (we also get some fairly good young ones on their way up who haven't been ruined yet too, but mostly the old ones who never have and never will officiate any higher).

Moving on however, I bring you the first post detailing just how tinpot it really is outside the national league system (Step 5 and below, all matters are handled by county FA's despite the fact that many leagues cross multiple counties, and therefore have clubs presided over by different local FA's). This is the reason that this thread is likely to be a competition between myself and the Darlo fans. And the Northern League is probably the best run of the step 5 leagues. I'm going to use separate posts to give you installments, to keep separate issues separate so I don't just post a huge wall of text that people won't bother reading.

I just want to now add in that this is the nature of being at such a level where everything is run by volounteers, while there is a lot of complaining that is clearly going to happen, that should be taken in to account. Nobody gets paid to do these jobs in any way shape or form as far as I am aware. I don't know at what level these jobs become paid.

 

[Jemfy]

First story up is the ongoing saga of the fixtures in the UCL. Fixtures in the UCL are drawn up at the start of the season, up until December. At which time they are created and distributed sporadically. Sometimes month by month, sometimes for longer periods of time. We have just been given the final ones. Now I'm not slating this as a way of operating per se, since the idea is to allow flexibility for when fixtures are cancelled to prevent massive backlogs and the issues we have seen in previous seasons (which will come up later...).

Fixtures arrangement can be a difficult job bending to what clubs want and need, especially with ground sharing arrangements etc to take in to consideration, and in a league like the UCL Premier Division where there are 21 teams, it's harder as a team will obviously not have a league match every round of fixtures.

All this however does not excuse the fact that the UCL fixtures organisers knew that AFCR&D were due to come in to the FA Vase on the 2nd round proper, and that this is a fixture that takes No.1 priority over all other competitions (except the FA Cup of course). A match was scheduled for us on this date on the initial release of fixtures. Not a problem, an honest mistake, match removed from the fixtures and changed to "date tbc". Forgetting this event later down the line when organising further fixtures the league again organise another game for us on the same data, this time against a different team no less! Obviously neither fixture could or would ever take place on that date.

This is a minor complaint however by comparison to the following two. The first of which is that the ground at which we share with landlords WTFC had floodlight failures in two consecutive games (funnily enough against each other). One of which was abandoned, and the second one where half time was called, the problem was fixed, and the match completed. The cause for the first floodlight failure was a local power cut which also cut power to the local retail park across the road. At HT during the second match, UCL officials in attendance announced that all further games at the Dog and Duck (yes, that's really the ground name, and is tinpot in and of itself), would kick off at 2.00pm on Saturdays, and not at all on midweek matches. This despite issue 1 being nothing to do with the floodlights, and issue 2 being resolved during the game. This caused our following Saturday game to get called off since our opposition couldn't raise a team to travel one hour earlier on such short notice apparently. This is just a complete lack of decorum (announcement made over the PA system during the second game)

The final, and most serious complaint is the fixture scheduling itself. I'm not complaining of nonsensical Tuesday night trips to distant places etc, but the fact that 1. we are scheduled to play any remaining Tuesday night fixtures at all anyway and 2. we are scheduled to finish our season on April 6th. Put these together, and especially given how the fixtures are compiled, this is insane.

It's even more least insane that we are in a proper title race, and our rivals will be given the advantage of knowing exactly what they need to do to beat us to the crown, with 3 league games scheduled to take place after our final match of the season. Between now and then we are scheduled for 4 Tuesday night fixtures. It almost seems like a conspiracy given that said chasing side has 4 games in hand with less points on the board. Such an arrangement clearly negates any advantage of having managed to play our league fixtures.

Add to the fact that 2 seasons ago, when we were in a promotion battle with another club that came down to the last few games of the season, we were again in the position of having played more matches and having points on the board. Instead of being forced to cram their remaining matches in to the end of the scheduled season, our rivals were allowed to extend their season by a couple of weeks to fit in the extra games! Thankfully that time they dropped enough points that we were certain of promotion on our final match of the season and no harm was caused, however this isn't the first time that this has happened one way or another! Other leagues mostly seem to get fixtures released for most of, if not the whole season at the start of it, and keep all games pertaining to promotion and relegation battles within the confines of the scheduled season dates. Why the UCL cannot manage this astounds me.

Edit: Wow that post got long!

Next edition: Ground grading, or rather lack thereof. I'll try and find some pictures of the real tinpot places we've played.

 

[Pliny Harris]

Gee, I'm glad we didn't reform at that level.

 

[Paddy]

Shitehawk's floodlights going out various times in their Isthmian Premier winning season when they were losing. At all times the lights went out early enough to force the game to be replayed (in the eyes of the rule book) instead of the results standing.

We were 2:0 up there & the lights went out in something silly like the 75th minute. Lost the replayed fixture... funnily enough their floodlights were fine that night.

 

[HertsWolf]

I went to an FA Cup game at Hythe Town (near Folkestone, which we lost), and they had a large pile of manure behind the away end.

Also at Chatham Town there was a tractor in the corner of the ground.

Ummmm. I've seen that at Molineux....

 

[HertsWolf]

Aye the actual costume one. It looked petrifying and this is coming from someone who spent a substantial part of his childhood accepting sweets off this fox mascot:

There's a mascot in the photo? Where?

 

[shoddycollins]

In 2001 (i think) we played York away in the FA Cup, and the toilet in the away end was just a wall to piss against!
We were Championship, they were League Two, and we lost 1 nil, which was nice!!

The toilet in our home end is just a gutter along the outside of the stand.

 

[Sparrow]

The toilet in our home end is just a gutter along the outside of the stand.

You'll fit right in next season then when you're relegated.