Welcome to Catch
a story of coffee, music and football

what will the chant be?

How does anyone expect the fans to be able to sing the name of the new Saints manager?

Jan Poortvliet’s Red and White Army!

Doesn’t exactly flow off the tongue does it?

blame it on the weatherman

Yesterday, a group of us enjoyed a thoroughly good day at Twickenham watching the rugby sevens. We feared the worst, for the best part of the last week every weather report predicted that the south would be wet pretty much all weekend. Before I left yesterday morning it had improved a touch to rain clearing but still being cloudy. So how on earth did I manage to get sunburnt?

Throwing money at the problem

I’m pretty sure I’m not an expert at these things, but having taken money from low earners by removing the lowest band of income tax, who thought that it was a good idea to make things better by giving only average loss back, and giving it to almost everyone? I can hardly complain about being better off after the standard rate was lowered and I’m not going to pass up another £120, but surely it would be better to give the money to the people who lost out in the first place.

Universal Understanding

It seems that Douglas Adams was right on the money when at the start of ‘The Restaurant at the End of the Universe’, he wrote:

“There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.”

Except that I don’t believe that it’s fiction. It’s certainly true of Government, the tax system, the football league structure, scheduling on certain tv channels and the plot of Lost. By extension, it’s therefore probably true of the whole of existence.

if only for a season

My memory regarding certain facts about my football club may not be up to mastermind standard (Play for us for less than a year and score few goals, I’m sorry you’re just not going to stick in my head), but I can’t remember ever having to buy a new kit every year (with the exception of the one off uefa cup kit, which I didn’t buy anyway) so the news that next seasons kit will only be for a year is a bitter pill.

“a one year cycle brings the club in line with other Umbro contracted clubs and many Premier and Football League clubs.”

Frankly, I don’t care, I’ve always thought that not fleecing the fans for kit was one of the things that set Saints apart from other clubs and sure, they probably need the money but I’m not happy about it.

Yes, I’ll be buying one.

on the pitch

Not that avoiding another relegation is anything to celebrate and boy was it a nervous 90 minutes, but hurrah! I know the photo is rubbish, I didn’t buy my phone for it’s camera.