National League Play offs Thread 2016. Who will win?

[DarkSithLord]

Forest Green Rovers ‏@FGRFC_Official 2m2 minutes ago
FGR striker Jon Parkin has accepted a three-match ban for violent conduct after a bad, late tackle on Grimsby Town's Josh Gowling.

 

[les.gtfc]

Forest Green Rovers ‏@FGRFC_Official 2m2 minutes ago
FGR striker Jon Parkin has accepted a three-match ban for violent conduct after a bad, late tackle on Grimsby Town's Josh Gowling.

Surprised at that to be honest. I thought he'd get away with it. There's no denying it's a well deserved ban though. On another day he could have broken Gowlings leg and fair play to Josh for not making more of it at the time.

 

[Chris FGR]

Bollocks.

He'll be a big miss in the first three games, but delighted he's staying as he has a big influence on a lot of the younger players here. Can see him doing more coaching next season.

 

[The Jovial Forester]

He definitely can't complain, it was a shocker.

 

[GTFCfish]

I've still not seen it, can't find any footage of it.

 

[Greenacres]

Try this:

https://twitter.com/DanBonnington/status/731943139347464194

That is one poor tackle, which clearly the ref missed completely, and should have been a red card.

 

[GTFCfish]

Try this:

https://twitter.com/DanBonnington/status/731943139347464194

That is one poor tackle, which clearly the ref missed completely, and should have been a red card.

When i click on that it just brings up a still photo, when i click on it it doesn't play, cheers anyway though.

 

[Greenacres]

When i click on that it just brings up a still photo, when i click on it it doesn't play, cheers anyway though.

I just clicked on it and it worked for me, maybe try another browser...or maybe don't bother at all, wouldn't want to be found guilty of giving someone recurring nightmares!

 

[GTFCfish]

Do any FGR fans know if the rumours I've heard are true about Steve Arnold's family members fighting with FGR fans at the game who were slagging him off?

 

[The Jovial Forester]

Do any FGR fans know if the rumours I've heard are true about Steve Arnold's family members fighting with FGR fans at the game who were slagging him off?

Didn't see it but have heard the same, though more of a scuffle than a fight I was told.

 

[EnglishRed]

Try this:

https://twitter.com/DanBonnington/status/731943139347464194

That is one poor tackle, which clearly the ref missed completely, and should have been a red card.

Ouch that is horrible in slow mo.

 

[rudebwoyben]

Bollocks.

He'll be a big miss in the first three games, but delighted he's staying as he has a big influence on a lot of the younger players here. Can see him doing more coaching next season.

That's a bit of an unfortunate phrase considering what he just did!

 

[localhero]

That's a bit of an unfortunate phrase considering what he just did!

Judging by the way FGR played at Prenton Park this season I'd imagine that's exactly the kind of influence they'd want.

 

[B2TF]

If I had a pound for every time I heard a fan of a small and/or unsuccessful club delude themselves with claims of potentially mahoosive catchment areas based on tendentious criteria (including many wistful "woulda, coulda, shoulda been a contender" supporters of our ourselves and the Greens) as though attending lower league football is akin to sending your child to school, I could fund damaging and egregious financial doping to match your own (although I wouldn't as a matter of principle).

Moreover this alleged catchment area just happens to be in the Westcountry - an area with a powerful rugby culture and a nebulous football one, where it is very difficult to grow support that is anything other than the sort of glory-hunting with a tendency to vanish into thin air at the first sign of trouble, as again ourselves and the Greens know to our cost.



And if I also had a pound for every time I heard fans of clubs with a private owner with an agenda utter that kind of equally self-deluding claptrap (see James Brent and his widely ridiculed "wobbling lip" whenever his beloved Argyle pension plan loses) I could ramp up said financial doping to levels that would match the eye-watering sums of dirty/blood money Arrobervitch and the human-rights abusing Al-Nahyans have used to horribly skew the football landscape.

Every club and every owner that follows their example - and every fan who salivates at the prospect of joining them - simply props up a pernicious system that has killed the dream for the majority by colluding in the post Sky/Premier League revolution of greed and self-interest which has spawned a procession of de facto financial glass ceilings in its wake. Moreover, this kind of meretricious financial doping threatens the unique and precious depth of the professional and semi-professional pyramid in the UK by fuelling a potentially catastrophic playing-budget arms race.

The bolstering of that destructive model & its contribution to the growth of a dystopian fan culture which, blinded by vacuous glitz and glamour, has lost sight of the huge social value of football, is the reason many view the Ecotricity Marketing FC farce as an abomination. It's exactly the same reason why the vast majority of German fans - where they still value a fan culture and ethos that is worth a s**t - revile the similar abomination of Red Bull Marketing FC, a.k.a. RB Leipzig.

Maybe some fans don't really appreciate what's at stake if clubs continue to be used as Trojan horses in this way and really are jealous. More fool them. By contrast, I am perfectly prepared to swear on the lives of my entire family that I would rather be in Conference South under fan-ownership than reach the ECFC fans' promised land of the Championship under a repellent model like that of Forest Green's with an owner like Dale Vince, who - like the Class of '92 property-developing hypocrites - somehow gets away scot-free with the same kind of nonsense Vincent Tan was universally condemned for. I say that as someone who enjoyed my visits to the old and new ground in our Conference exile and who had a lot of time for the old club and its fans.

There's more to a football club than League position - I wish so many English football fans seemingly hadn't lost sight of that fact.

Will you have my babies? Asking for a friend.

 

[Greenacres]

Do any FGR fans know if the rumours I've heard are true about Steve Arnold's family members fighting with FGR fans at the game who were slagging him off?

It was mentioned on our forum that an incident may have happened on the concourse after the game, but as TJF states it was little more than a scuffle. There is an element at Rovers for whom Steve Arnold can do no right, and they voice their opinion loudly, despite in the opinion of many being an excellent keeper. I think his main problem, in their eyes, is that he isn't Sam Russell.

 

[FGR Stroud]

It was mentioned on our forum that an incident may have happened on the concourse after the game, but as TJF states it was little more than a scuffle. There is an element at Rovers for whom Steve Arnold can do no right, and they voice their opinion loudly, despite in the opinion of many being an excellent keeper. I think his main problem, in their eyes, is that he isn't Sam Russell.

I agree

 

[dalts]

10 years on and we're both in a final on the same day!