Normanton Lad
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Posts posted by Normanton Lad
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24 minutes ago, Gee SCREAMER !! said:
Reich against Crewe. Even Brian Clough in residence that evening reckoned it was the best debut he'd seen. Gary Charles as attacking full back before it was a thing against Sunderland opening day. Tore them a new arse in a 5-0
I read that as Raich and thought how old is this bloke to have seen his debut.
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50 minutes ago, ImARam2 said:
Kevin Hector's home debut vs Huddersfield. He was fantastic and although Alan Durban got a hattrick and Derby won 4-3, all the talk was about 'Zac', the King.
I can honestly say, "I was there".
I will second that. I was standing behind the Normanton End goal and in my mind's eye I can still see him racing with the ball towards the goal at the speed of light. I'm talking relatively. No pun intended. Relative to players like Durban and Buxton. They were both quite skilful but to call them a bit slow is an understatement. Most defenders could give them a 20 yard start and still catch them. Hector was a totally new type of player. I'd never seen a Derby player run so fast with the ball under his control.
For me that Huddersfield game was the big bang in Derby's great success over the next decade.
- ImARam2, BOB BIGGS, IslandExile and 1 other
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On 11/04/2023 at 15:35, Brailsford Ram said:
As we celebrated Hector scoring the goal on the unsegregated terraces, I felt a punch to the back of my head. As I turned around to resist a further attack, I could not believe the sight behind me. The Italian fans behind us had run backwards up the terraces in expectation of retaliation! Just like their tanks at Monte Cassino in WW2, the Italian fans only seemed to be able to manoeuvre in reverse gear and remarkably remained at a distance from us for the rest of the game.
Thank you for those great memories, but I think your memory is playing tricks with your reference to Italian tanks at Monte Cassino. You are thinking of El Alamein. Monte Cassino is a mountain and I doubt if tanks – Italian or otherwise – were of much use in the battle. Anyway, the Italians had changed sides by then. After the battle many Italian women, children and animals were raped and killed by Allied troops.
I haven’t bought a paper for years but I think Brian Glanville is still writing. He was very knowledgeable about a lot of topics, but I don’t think football was one of them. I can remember reading one of his articles around 1974 when he said Leighton James was the best attacker in Europe! I liked Leighton but he was never that good even when he was on form.
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2 hours ago, Dordogne-Ram said:
60 years ago today : Everton 4 v Derby Reserves 0 , Goodison Park, attendance "c 4000".
This was during the Big Freeze of 1962- 1963, no football for DCFC since away at Cardiff on 22nd December 1962, 8 (frozen) solid(!) Weeks with nothing to watch.
So, using my rail travel facilities and knowing that their from ground was euphemistically deemed playable In decided to chance it.
On arrival at the ground there were only a few outside the main entrance as I arrived, when a door opened and someone brandishing a handful of free tickets asked if there were any takers, so those of us waiting could not refuse could we?!
We were told which entrance to go to and were taken up to our seats - in the Directors box! Everton played 7 first team regulars, so we were up against it from the start, but at least it was an unlikely new ground to visit. And no, regrettably, I cannot find any details of the Rams line up. Have always had a soft spot for Everton since then.
The mid- 1990s saw me working at L**D's, and for once - well twice actually - it gave me the chance to take in two more away Reserve evening fixtures. The first was at York, where I seem to remember we won, and enjoyed some agreeable conversation with a handful of locals who were most interested to hear how Marco Gabbiadini was getting on, being a former youth player for them.
The second surprise game was- you guessed it - at Bellend Road! Attendance was sparse so got close to the dug-out where Roy Mac was in charge. Rams played them off the park all game until the 87th minute when David Rocastle (ex Aresenal) scored an undeserved winner.
C'estl la vie!
Nice memories. I wonder if there are any football supporters who follow their reserve team away rather than watching the first team at home.
I used to watch a lot of away games. I often asked myself if it was really worth all the travel time and money, but it had become a habit. We often do things because we lack the imagination to think of an alternative use of our time.
If you live in the Dordogne then you probably know The Gardens of Marqueyssac. On a lovely clear sunny day about a decade ago I was there, sitting in the outside café looking far across the valley to distant castles and wondering why I had spent so long living in dumps in the UK when I could have been living there. As a young man mooching around Normanton it never occurred to me that living in, or just visiting, a place like the Dordogne was an option. But if I had saved all the money spent watching away games I could have had a nice holiday there every year.
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Do local league players make up the numbers in under 23 games today? I doubt it. I would guess the average Derby reserve player gets far more than he could get in another job for his age.
Why is there so much money in the game today compared to the 1980s where you had the example mentioned in a post above of a local league player turning down a full time career at Derby because he had better prospects in a bank? The players today are more skilled and fitter than those from the past but I don’t know if they are any more entertaining than yesteryear’s players.
If they are not giving us more entertaining games than we used to get then why are they being paid so much more today? What is the extra thing they are providing that justifies their massive wages? I think they are now paid extra for supporting the system. They are conduits for state propaganda. You can see this with all the blm kneeling and other political nonsense. In the past footballers were not political. I can only think of one who talked about politics or current events and that was Paul Breitner. But he was no state propaganda puppet. He was very anti-state.
Footballers in the past were, on the whole, more articulate than today’s crop but they kept their views to themselves. I've just been watching an England v Spain game from the 1950s and one of the goal scorers was John Atyeo. I saw him play at the Baseball Ground in 1965. He was an absolute goal machine yet he was part-time for much of his career. He was busy studying for his next career. After hanging up his boots he taught maths. Someone like that would probably have had sensible independent thoughts on current events but no one dreamed of asking him about his views. Today we have footballers who are probably semi-literate and innumerate telling us what to think.
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3 hours ago, IslandExile said:
My Dad was friends with Bertie Mee before the second world war. Mee played for Derby reserves. Mee later managed Arsenal to the double and then - thankfully - sold Charlie George to us.
So, my Dad - a fan of those down the road and who play in red (I thought Garibaldi was a biscuit) used to taunt me that he did something I hadn't - followed Derby County reserves away.
I don't think Charlie George had much respect for managers who weren't good players. I know he had bust ups with Colin Murphy on the training pitch. He didn't get on with Bertie Mee. Although Bertie only played a few league games - for Mansfield - his brother George Mee had a long career at Derby and elsewhere.
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3 hours ago, The Last Post said:
I was at the game where we had 10k + think it might have been Liverpool back in the 70s, The year we won the Central League.
I had 2 older school friends who played for the reserves, Andy Rowland from Chadd and was at Olive Eden school and scored the winner for Swindon against Arsenal 3-2 FA cup, Ray Lewis again from Chadd and Olive Eden only 1 maybe 2 games but he did get to play against some of Man Untds big names...I think we lost 2-1 not to sure.
There were quite good players from Derby around the time that Andy Rowland was at school. He was a contemporary of Peter Ward and Steve Powell. Peter Ward probably made the biggest impact but when I read his book he said he couldn't get into the Derby Boys team. I think even today he is regarded by Brighton fans as one of their best every players.
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2 hours ago, hiltonram said:
My first memory of the reserves was standing on the ossie end terrace in the early seventies watching them on a Saturday afternoon when the first team would have been playing away at the same time. The half time scores were relaid to us via the letters that the stewards would put up between the ley stand and ossie end.
I always liked to sit for reserve games. It was cheap enough.
I can remember sitting on a sunny afternoon watching the reserves at the Baseball Ground when the news came through that Derby had beaten Ipswich 6-2 away in the last game of the 75-76 season. For much of that season we were sure that we were going to win the double but it all fell flat at the end . For me that score against a good Ipswich team was a sign that all was not well in the club. How could they be so poor one week and great the next?
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49 minutes ago, chadlad said:
Wasn’t there also an ‘A’ team that played down Sinfin Lane? Was used more for the younger players I seem to remember.
I can vaguely remember watching some of their matches we were living nearby at the time. Not too sure though as I was only knee high at the time. ?
Yes the A team played at Sinfin Lane where the first team trained. I can remember John Robson playing very well for the A team. It was obvious that he a quality player. I went to Sinfin Lane many times to watch the Rams training. It mainly seemed to be a couple of hours of running around and practice games. This was in the Tim Ward days.
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The reserve team set up today is all about bringing the youngster through rather than keeping experienced but aging players on the books.
Those of us who watched the reserves in the 1960s and 1970s got the chance to see some famous names in reserve games.
The other day someone posted on a thread that I can’t find now that his cousin – Peter Stone- had been a reserve player for Derby in the 1960s. I had forgotten Stone but I can see from the records that I must have seen him play many times. It just shows how fallible our memories are. The reserve players I remember are the ones who stayed in the game usually by moving to a smaller club, e.g. Barry Butlin, Cork, Boyer, etc. I followed their careers and it always pleased me to see them doing well elsewhere. I don’t know why but I followed Mick Jones’s career quite closely and I was delighted when he got the job as manager of Telford and disappointed when they went bust shorty after. He ended up with better jobs so it wasn’t such a big thing for him. A few years ago he caused a bit of a controversy when he told a reporter that Derby was no longer the place he remembered from his days as a reserve player. After a long walk around the city he said it had gone a long way downhill and he wasn’t wrong.
We all wish that we had played at least one game in the league. I even envy reserve players who never got a first team game. In the reserves they would have played against some top players and they can always say to their grandchildren that they played against this or that famous player. I can see from the records that Stone played against Stan Bowles when Stan was playing for Man City reserves. I can’t remember anything about that game except that Ralph Brand was also playing for City. I’ve always followed Scottish football and it was an exciting thing for me to see Brand play live. I even went to a Forest game just to see Jim Baxter play. Perhaps Stone can tell his descendants, if he has any, that he had Bowles and Brand in his pocket. I don’t know if he did or not.
One of my favourite reserve games was against Bury in 1975 or 1976. Derby had Alan Hinton, Leighton James and Roger Davies up front. I think Derby beat them 8-0.
Has anyone got any memories of famous players in reserve games?
- chadlad, IslandExile and 48 hours
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Those minutes are fascinating. We can now see what the players were earning then - not much. I wonder why Notty Hornblower was given a complementary season ticket. She is an expert on dresses. Perhaps she was giving advice to cross dressers on the board. The way we played at that time she might even have been advising one or more of the players.
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On 29/01/2023 at 18:15, oldtimeram said:
These were the good old days down at the BBG
https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-derby-county-v-leicester-city-1939-online
Those of us who remember the old ground can see that apart from the floodlights that ground was the same in 1939 as it was in 1969 before they build the Ley Stand. I imagine they spent nothing on it except a few bob for paint and whitewash. Very little money went into the club. We had shopkeepers as directors rather than oligarchs. They didn't spend much but at least they kept us on an even keel.
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On 02/02/2023 at 23:21, Baffled said:
There are some more Derby clips on the BFI site. This one - https://player.bfi.org.uk/free/film/watch-fourth-round-english-cup-newcastle-united-v-derby-county-march-11-1911-1911-online - shows the Rams being led out by what looks like the great man himself, Steve Bloomer, so for once we can say we were watching him rather than the other way round.
That 1911 video is great. Bill McCracken's name can be see on the Newcastle team sheet for that game. He made his debut for Distillery in 1900 and he was still involved in the game in the modern era. He was a manager for many years and then he was a scout. He found Pat Jennings for Watford. One link says he formally retired as a scout in 1971 but I have seen other references that suggest he was still scouting almost until his death in 1979. As a player he was so influential he was the reason they changed the offside law from three to two players.
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3 hours ago, 86 Hair Islands said:
Hilarious that you've not only missed @ariotofmyown's point completely, but also found a way to be offended on his behalf, the colossal irony of which, does rather seem to have escaped your notice.
The balance of your post is one of the most bone-jarringly, asinine conclusions I have ever seen drawn on this forum. Folk construct strawman fallacies every day on these 'off-topic' threads, but yours, by any measure, is an absolute pearler.
There is no such thing a "folk construct strawman fallacy". That doesn’t mean anything. If you mean I have misrepresented his argument then I disagree. He used two stories to support his claim about racism. I have shown that the story about the teacher and the 7 year old is almost certainly not true. Do you think it is true? Be honest and don’t just revert to insults. The second story where he had to listen to complaints from non-whites presumably about whites strikes me as racist against him. It seems like an attempt to guilt trip him just because he was white. Did he have the opportunity to complain about non-white racism? If the “about forty year old woman” was one of the complainers would he have had the opportunity to question the truth of the story? I doubt it. I think that would also be classified as racism. In the current climate even questioning the truth of racism claims is proof of racism.
Why did he come up with these two stories? Some would say he was angry about racism but I think he probably had an ulterior motive. He was signalling to fellow “wokies” on here that he a “good person” like them. Nowadays it is called virtue signalling. I’ve not posted much on here about non-football topics because as a “non-wokie” I can see I am an interloper. Don’t bother rushing in with the insults because I’m just going to stick to threads of little interest to wokies.
- GboroRam, Comrade 86, Stive Pesley and 3 others
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19 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:
Well, there was at session at work where black and mixed race colleagues talked openly about predjuices they havs faced and one of the questions was when did they first become conscious of racism. Shame you weren't there, but sounds like you know it all anyway.
That session you attended where non-white people complained about white people was very unfair to you. Was there a similar session where a non-white person had to listen to white people complaining about non-white people? I have been racially insulted by black people but I don’t regard black people in general as being prejudiced. Wherever you go you will get people who will insult you. You can’t blame whole racial groups for the actions of individuals.
We should be treated as individuals. You shouldn’t feel guilt or shame, or be put in a session where someone tries to make you feel guilt or shame, for something that had nothing to do with you as an individual.
I have been attacked on this thread for saying that if someone makes a claim you shouldn’t just accept it as truth. I care about truth. The woman’s story about the cruel teacher seemed very unlikely to me for three reasons. First, it was a very cruel thing for a teacher to say and in my experience I have never known teachers who would act that way. Secondly, what the teacher said would be a very difficult thing for a child of seven to understand. The teacher is expecting the child to know that the teacher assesses the truth value of rival claims using her background knowledge. Furthermore, the teacher is expecting the child to know that her background knowledge tells her to always believe the white kid rather than the black kid. Thirdly, we have very few if any genuine memories from the age of seven. I can’t remember a single thing from my seventh year and I am a person who spends a lot of time thinking about the past.
It is possible that the woman is telling truth but I don’t feel guilty for not believing her. If I was accused of a crime where all the evidence pointed to my guilt even though I wasn’t guilty I would just accept my punishment as bad luck. I wouldn’t run around screaming about the unfairness of the world. Absolute truth is a thing but people are not omniscient and we have to we have to rely on what the evidence tells us.
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5 hours ago, ariotofmyown said:
A woman at work about 40 said how her first realisation of racism was when she was about 7 at school in Nottingham. She is mixed race and she told her teacher that a boy (white) had done something naughty. The teachers replied with "look at him, then look at you, who do you think I'm going to believe?"
Someone on here said everyone here would find the above "heart breaking and disgusting".
I don’t find it “heart breaking and disgusting” because I don’t believe a seven year old child would remember a teacher saying that. I think it is probably a false memory. We have very few accurate memories from that age. Also the question the teacher supposedly asked the child with its unstated implication would probably be too difficult for a seven year old to understand. A developmental psychologist would probably say that the child would require "Higher order theory of mind" to get the sarcasm in that question. "Higher order theory of mind" only kicks in after about the age of eight.
I’m afraid most people are gullible. They believe what they read in the papers and what they are told on TV or on the radio. Some of them even think the government cares about them. You can’t just believe something because someone tells you it is true. You need evidence and you need to use critical reasoning.
I’m not saying everyone is a liar but I do think people tell you things for a reason. Perhaps they want to you feel sorry for them. Perhaps they want to sell you something or get you into bed. Whatever the reason, you have ask yourself why are they telling you this. You could ask why am I writing this. What is my objective? My answer is that it a weakness in old people that they like to give advice. Even though this advice is often unwelcome advice and possibly wrong we can’t stop doing it. It is connected to the fact that most old people stop feeling self-conscious and they will start conversations with strangers in a way that would never have done when they were younger.
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7 hours ago, AndyinLiverpool said:
I thought teachers were the enemy within. Now they are the agents of the government? Blimey.
It is well over half a century since I left school but by some freak of nature I still have children at school. I know what is going on in schools today. Teachers are commissars. They are instructing children on how they should think and behave in accordance with government guidelines. Any teacher who goes against the current woke zeitgeist is punished. For example, if they said a man cannot become a woman for obvious genetic reasons then they would be harassed and publicly humiliated. If a teacher today expressed the political and social views of an average person of my age they would probably be arrested as well as being sacked.
This summer I was walking through the park with my youngest son and we passed a heavily tattooed woman with a crewcut and half a ton of metal work on a face like a bulldog chewing a wasp. When she passed my son said she was a teacher at his school and she was "transitioning". When I was at school such a person would not have been allowed to teach. She would not have been regarded as someone who could be trusted to pass on the social norms required by the government of the day. Teachers have always been agents of the government.
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On 26/01/2023 at 11:34, Alpha said:
If anyone has any advice I'd appreciate it. I don't care what she is so long as she's what she wants to be. I dunno if I have a right to be annoyed that inspectors chose to go into school to put this all on kids? It's bloody adults that create any barriers! Initially it's made me angry that they approached her with this stuff in Year 6.
All sensible parents must know by now that our government has been lying to them all their lives. If you don't expect them to tell the truth why would you trust our government or their agents (teachers) to be able to tell your children what is right and wrong.
It is up to the parents to pass on moral standards and the traditions you want your children to keep. If the schools are brainwashing your children with nonsense you need to teach your children about cults and deprogramme them.
If you accept all this nonsense yourself then there is no hope for you or your children.
- Stive Pesley, bcnram, ariotofmyown and 3 others
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38 minutes ago, DavesaRam said:
Well that couldn't have happened to a nicer John Coleman!!!I have been watching Deby County since the Derby County 5 Tottenham Hotspurs 0 in the Brian Clough years, and have never seen such a poor team.
You must have missed the Finn Harps game.
- Eddie, Patrick Rams and DavesaRam
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4 hours ago, Crewton said:
The emotional response of the average UK reader to that article would be that migrant workers in Qatar are treated intolerably by cruel rich Arabs.
The critical reader might draw different conclusions because they start from a position of assuming that most of the “news” they get from mainstream media is propaganda. The British are among the most trusting people in the world and consequently they are very easy to brainwash.
The propaganda in this article starts with the photo. Why was it taken behind a fence? The answer is that it was to give the impression that these migrant workers are being held in a prison camp. Was there barbed wire on top of the fence? We don’t know because the top of the fence is not shown. If it was topped with barbed wire then the photographer would have shown it. That would be too good an opportunity to miss. However, just not showing the top of the fence will trick some into thinking it was a barbed wire topped fence. In other words, the migrants couldn’t escape. What do the harsh lights, shadows and high barracks-like buildings remind you of? A prison. Perhaps even a German Second World War prison camp. This is not just a random photo of migrant workers playing football. It is an attempt to deceive you.
When I was a young man I lived in a worker's camp at a massive construction site. Nearly all the men there were migrants from Ireland. We had no five-a-side football pitch for the simple reason that after a long day digging or pouring concrete you only had the energy to lie on your bed or go out to nearest pub and get pissed. If these migrants in Qatar were being worked to exhaustion they would not have the energy for football.
When you read the article the propaganda starts with the pseudonyms. The most unhappy worker is called Moses! I thought they were building football stadiums not pyramids, but you get the message – slaves being held by cruel Arabs. I know that the ancient Egyptians were not Arabs and that there is no mention of the pyramids in the Bible, but propaganda works on emotions and beliefs rather than facts.
Moses makes the point even clearer for the slower readers when he says “What we are seeing here is modern slavery”. It sounds a bit like conditions in the UK where there are many people being held as slaves by their fellow migrants. The difference is that Moses can go home if he is not happy but most of the slaves here are illegal immigrants and things are not so simple.
Some workers are not paid the minimum wage set by the Qatar government. Who is cheating them out of this money? It looks like the same old story. Migrants are cheating fellow migrants. Most of the migrants living in illegal hovels in the UK have migrant landlords. It is the same with sweatshops. They are employed by migrants on less than the minimum wage in unsafe conditions. If the Qatar is to blame for this then so is our government.
"Issac"- another Biblical migrant – who is a black African says the Qataris call him "Kachara" which the Guardian translates as rubbish. Kachara is a Hindi word. Why would they shout at him in Hindi rather than Arabic? It seems a bit strange, but Issac might be right. He also complains about Asian workers not mixing with the Africans. Perhaps it was the Asian migrants who were insulting him and not the Qataris. Maybe it suited the author better to blame the Qataris rather than other migrants.
There is so much to say about this and all the other nonsense we are fed by liars but life short and I doubt if anyone is interested in my opinions. Nearly everything I once believed I now regard as false so unless I've become usually wise in my old age my opinions are probably just as unreliable as the next man's.
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2 hours ago, TigerTedd said:
I get that we don’t have a divine right to say our ideology / culture / religion is the right one, and everyone else is wrong. Different cultures are what create the spice of life. I’m all for it. I’m glad there was a specifically Qatari influence in the World Cup, and so there should be.
But we’re talking about basic, universal, human rights.
I always say that any functioning society shouldn’t actually need laws to function.
We shouldn’t need laws to tell us it’s wrong to kill people, or steal, we shouldn’t need to laws to tell us what a fair outcome of a situation is, we should just know that, in our bones, we should all have a universal understanding of right and wrong. Ie who another person chooses to love is none of our business.
Of course the world goes in cycles. In 1,000 years time a new dominant civilisation may have risen. Modern Islam or Christianity might be seen as antiquated as the pagan Roman, Greek and Egyptian religions.
but those human rights will always be universal. Treating someone as if they are lesser, will always be bullying, will always be unjust. The Qataris know this. They just don’t give a s***.
Who are we to lecture other countries about human rights when we don’t take them seriously ourselves?
Human rights are supposed to protect us against oppressive governments, but in the UK human rights laws are being used by the government to oppress us. For example, we are supposed to have "freedom of speech" under various Human Rights Acts but the small print in these Acts is that if you offend anyone by using language deemed “insulting” then you are open to a visit from the police. What one person sees as "insulting" might be seen as fair comment by another. There are so many "sensitive" people in the UK that you might as well keep your gob shut and forget about free speech. There is no such thing in the UK.
Usually, I don’t post about politics because my views on many topics seem to be different from the majority view. It is just not worth upsetting anyone.
Human rights claims are usually just attempts to get an advantage for one group at the cost of another. Universal rights is a meaningless phrase because what person sees as a right can conflict with what another sees as a right. People often have incompatible desires.
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6 minutes ago, Shipley Ram said:
Deja vu
I missed that. In Dave Mackay's autobiography I think he said that Alfie Conn's dad was his hero at Hearts. It's a pity Mackay didn't sign him. He would have been a very stylish partner for Charlie George.
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According to wikipedia Alfie Conn was on our books in 1979. I can't remember that. Apparently he didn't play a single game. I don't know why because his competition was players like Colin Chesters and Andy Crawford. Does anyone remember him being on our books?
He was a very talented player. He featured quite a bit in this game :
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9 minutes ago, Crewton said:
I'm not trying to push anything 'down their throats', I'd just like them to stop oppressing one half of the world's population and criminalising other people's sexual preferences. It's the 21st century, not the 7th. Any international tournament should be open to the enjoyment of everyone without fear. FIFA did not fulfill this requirement when choosing Qatar.
As for "rich and decadent old man"? Absolute LOLZ considering the life of the average Gulf Arab.
You're a Troll though, so these posts are unsurprising. I've seen your work before. I can't ban you from this forum, but I'd strongly recommend that someone with the power to do so does.
I only post on this site so I don't know where you think you've seen me before. Why do you call me a troll and why do you want to ban me? All I've said is that the world is a very big place and we in the West are a very small part of that. We should respect other cultures.
Do you always want to ban people who write things you disagree with ? How does that fit with your comments about oppression? That smacks of hypocrisy.
What do you do?
in Derby County Forum
Posted · Edited by Normanton Lad
I study. There is so little time left and so much to learn. I go on a 10 mile walk every afternoon to listen to podcasts and to digest what I have learned. I'm one of those boring old buggers who likes to pass on life tips and I think you should be acting a bit more positively rather than looking for something "to pass the time".