Way Of The Park

Don't know if somebody different has taken on the Tavistock social media side this season, but it seems to have gone downhill. Guess we are spoilt at Plymouth Parkway with the quality of club website, Whats App, Twitter,Facebook, YouTube and Instagram output.

In the Toolstation Western League section of the FA Full Time site, you can access a of wealth of information including team lineups, scorers, statistics and current squad of players signed on, this detail does not exist within the clubs sections in the Peninsula League area. Is this down to the clubs not submitting it, or is it a decision to roll it out at a later stage?

Only unproven allegations against Fergie, but remember George Graham getting the sack and receiving a suspension for taking payments from agents as "incentives" to sign players. Several other prominent managers have also had allegations of similar behaviour in recent seasons (two of them have sons who act as players agents), suspect that it was seen as part of the way business was done by some characters of a certain age. At what point does "doing someone a favour" become taking a bung? For instance, one manager (who is very prominent in the media and has managed in the Premier League) is well known for enjoying a stuffed brown envelope as a condition of his teams playing in pre season friendlies and has signed up relatives of a high profile agent (who then only appear in reserve teams), and get discreetly moved on after a short spell.

No disrespect to Bradford Town, but I'll be cheering on Baffins Milton. Surely the best named club remaining in the competition. Another trip up the A303 to the south coast for Parkway. They'll be getting very familiar with that stretch of road.

There is, however, one bizarre law which has brought together the two debating sides in unison. According to the rules accompanying the technology, any player who chooses to enter the VAR room where the team of officials is sat will be given a red card. On paper, it seems like a normal rule. However, take into consideration that the closest Stadium to the room in question is actually 13 miles (21 kilometres) away! The VAR room is located in Stockley Park, London, with Watford’s Vicarage Road the closest Premier League ground to it. Nevertheless, if any given player across the league decides to jog on to London in order to confront the officials, he will be given a red card. Would be great though to see a crowd of players gather in the reception to berate the officials (in the same way that they gather around referees on the pitch), given the amount of time it seemingly takes to make some of the rulings, the 13 miles from Vicarage Road to Stockley Park could be doable.

Unfortunately Older it is a problem that has never really gone away. It is something that we congratulated ourselves on eradicating (recently read Laurie Cunningham's biography, was quite shocked by the level of abuse he encountered at every match and on streets in daily life), but those views have flourished on in the safe space of social media and emboldened individuals are now re-surfacing at street level and in football grounds.It is a societal problem, not football's, and it is very much still with us. Bit rich of us getting all righteous about behaviour in Eastern Europe, we have had plenty of this going on within English football in the past year or so recently with incidents involving fans of Chelsea, Tottenham, Middlesbrough, Manchester United, Bristol City,Nottingham Forest, Notts County, Brentford,Derby and Brighton contributing to a 43% increase in racist abuse for season 2018/19 (source, Kick It Out). This is pretty much in line though with the rise in racial hate crime in the country as a whole (up 11% in 2018, source Home Office) . People don't become racist when they enter football grounds, or stop having those thoughts/opinions when they leave. They are all members of society with beliefs that are products of background, environment,education , experiences and peers. Not much that football can do about that.

Are Marjon a side that are exclusively students?

Quite agree. Seven days of really big games coming up (Westbury home in the league, Exmouth away in the Les Phillips and Brockenhurst away in the Vase) could do without one of the first choice back four picking up an injury. To reinforce this, just heard that Fletcher Williams suffered a dislocated knee playing for Elburton Villa last night. Loss for Parkway's squad, and desperately unlucky for a player who had only just come back from over a year out injured.

On another note, why are Bodmin not using the number 7 shirt this season? Saw that Tom Harris wore number 77 last night.

Take note Bald One.

Interesting read, seems to confirm that Saltash are the best side in the league at the moment. As Rocky said, they now look like they have the squad to deal with whatever the winter chucks at them and how crowded the fixture list may get come next spring. Think they are too well managed and experienced to drop points against lowly outfits at the business end of the season. Mousehole are the unknowns, signing Tallan Mitchell from Bodmin is a good indicator that they think they can go close. Not putting away the lesser/mid table teams could be their undoing though. Helston have the big ambition. Certain that Massey won't be scared of bringing in the players that he deems necessary, regardless of where they are based and other people's opinions. Bodmin will be top three at best. They are not the club they were in terms of either results or attracting the best players, but they have enough experience at playing and management level (and the ability to bring in players from other leagues when needed) to win more than they lose. Think St Austell have probably exceeded expectations, and (after the summer's turmoil) will be probably be quietly happy with the first few months of the season. Won't win the league though.

Probably why Vatican FC is so successful.

May 2020 could be very interesting then.

One eye on step 5 life already. Steve Massey spoke earlier in the season of how they had identified players they would be targeting for Western League football.