Monmouth Town Kingfishers

by Dick Mac

"New car, caviar, four star daydream, I think I'll buy me a football team." Those of us listening to rock radio in the mid-1970s heard Pink Floyd sing that line in their lamenting ode to wealth: "Money" from the Dark Side Of The Moon album.

It was never clear to me as a teenager why anyone would want to buy an NFL team. As a sports fan in the United States, my relationship to the team I root for is detached from the actual club itself. It was a lyric that rhymed well, but didn't mean as much to me as the buying a new car or caviar (items that more effectively reflected wealth, in my young mind).

It was more than twenty-five years before I learned that David Gilmour was singing about a soccer team, not a football team; and that in England, people were passionately related and connected to their team. Some fan clubs have a seat at the board meetings, regular guys like you and me own shares of the club, and people take the management of their team very personally.

I can't imagine any team in the United States ever allowing their fans to be involved with the running of the team, the decision-making process, or the strategic planning. Our leagues are franchise-based. They are guaranteed a share of the league's overall profits, even if they stink. And if a team finishes last, year after year after year, there is no penalty. The team just limps along with the owners reaping millions in income and the fans becoming long-suffering consumers of a product with no quality control. (Remember the Montreal Expos?)

It's a different story in the rest of the world.

Soccer clubs are valuable possessions. English clubs are so valuable, and in such high demand, that American businessmen are now controlling- or partial-owners of three of the top clubs in the English Premier League, and Arabian businessmen and sheikhs own some others.

We can all purchase shares of a club on the open market. If I remember correctly, the last time a move was made for a controlling interest in North London's Arsenal Football Club, shares were selling for $35,000. For one share.

The top clubs in Europe are pretty valuable:

$1,864,000,000 Manchester United
$1,451,000,000 Real Madrid
$1,192,000,000 Arsenal
$1,048,000,000 Bayern Munich
$  975,000,000 Barcelona

Although I have learned about the stock market and learned how to trade, it never entered my mind to consider shares of a sports team.

Then a friend told me about the Five Pound Football Club (FPFC), an international collection of sports fans that each send five quid to the club and the FPFC would invest in a team willing to give us a seat at the table.

The founders of the FPFC believed that the collective wisdom, knowledge and enthusiasm of a group of fans could help a team in the lower leagues.

So, for eight bucks ($7.93, to be precise), I hooked my boat to a dream, and became an owner of Monmouth Town Football Club:

Our Five Pound Football Club community is a passionate group of football fans from around the globe that believe their pooled resources, knowledge and enthusiasm can help to develop a successful, sustainable club.

See, Online Five Pound Football Club community to invest in Monmouth Town

My team is doing very well this year and will likely be promoted to the next higher league next season. I will not take time to explain the nuances of promotion and relegation in international team sports, but in a nutshell: if you are really good, you get moved up to the next higher league and make more money. If you are really bad, you are bumped down to the next lower league and make less money. There is a real incentive to not stink.

The other owners of the club have embraced our ownership and this Saturday is Five Pound Football day at the team's match against Newport.

Since I will not be in Wales this weekend, I can't attend. But, if you are in the area, perhaps you'd like to check out my team and let me know what you think. If you can make it, here's some handy directions:

The postcode is NP25 3. Exit the A40 at the tunnels and follow the B4293 (Cinderhill Street) towards the town centre. Turn right to the bridge over the River Monnow, continuing on the B4293, and take the second exit onto Blestium Street. Monmouth Sports Ground will be immediately on your right, opposite Waitrose.

Let them know Dick Mac sent you!

Go you Kingfishers!

Scumbags Of The Week

Please note that in the Comments section of this article below, the son of the coach explains part of the story that had not been originally reported.

by Dick Mac

Mendenhall High School football coach Chris Peterson and Simpson County School District attorney Daniel C. Jones are two happy men, now that the lawsuit against them has been dropped and an agreement has been reached with high school senior Coy Sheppard. Sheppard was ridiculed by his high school football coaches for wearing pink cleats during breast cancer awareness month, and when they dismissed him from the team over the pink cleats, the school district's attorney came to the coaches' defense.

They are insisting that Sheppard's dismissal from the team had nothing to do with pink cleats, only with his failure to follow orders.

It is not clear that the coaches ever issued an order that he could not wear pink cleats or face consequences of dismissal, but it is clear that they ridiculed him for the color of his cleats.

Of course, this scumbag coach and his defenders are back-pedaling as fast as they can in an effort to avoid further bad publicity and potential damages. What isn't clear is that these scumbags have learned anything about (1) how to treat other human beings, (2) the value of honesty when abusing a minor in front of his peers, or (3) that the color pink has nothing to do with a young man's gender identification, masculinity or sporting acumen.

High school football players often supply their own shoes (cleats), and it is not unusual to see a high school squad on the field wearing a rainbow of different shoe colors. It is rare, however, to see pink shoes on a football field. This is rooted in our long-established and completely fabricated notion that pink is a color for girls. And this is what makes the use of the color pink so perfect to promote breast cancer awareness among athletes.

Sheppard's octogenarian grandmother, who is a breast cancer survivor gave him the cleats as a gift, so he could help promoted breast cancer awareness. it doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happened when his coaches saw pink cleats on their football field. Let's see . . . they could have (1) shaken his hand, patted him on the back and congratulated him for supporting breast cancer awareness; (2) giggled nervously and exclaimed that they 'ain't never seen no pink cleats on a football player afore'; or (3) pointed at him and laughed, ridiculed him and questioned his masculinity.

I think it's safe to say that the first option did not happen among a group of good ole boys in Mississippi. I think a sophisticated man in Mississippi (if such a thing exists in Mississippi sports) might have chosen the second option of giggling nervously and remarking on the color of the cleats and let it go at that, but that didn't happen. It's pretty easy to conclude that a bunch of Mississippi leather heads would have ridiculed anyone wearing a girl-y color like pink. So, it's easy to conclude that the third option is the most accurate description of what likely occurred on that practice field.

So, in conclusion, it looks like this: a young man honored his elderly grandmother by wearing a color that raises awareness about breast cancer, a group of adults in authority over this young man hung tightly to their bigoted notion of who wears pink and who wears blue, the young man was ridiculed by the men who are supposed to protect and teach him, these same men decided this was just to much of an attack on their sensibility and fired the young man.

Wow! That's pretty scummy, and for that reason: coach Peterson and attorney Jones, you are the biggest scumbags in the world.

Oh, and Coy Sheppard: thank you for promoting breast cancer awareness, being a great grandson, and admirable athlete.

The Munich Air Disaster

This past Teusday, March 6, 2008, marked the 50th Anniversary of the Munich Air Disater.

British European Airways Flight 609 crashed while trying to take-off from a slushy runway in Munich, West Germany. The Manchester United football (soccer) team and a group of their fans and journalists were on board, and 23 of the 44 passengers died in the crash:

Geoff Bent - player
Roger Byrne - player
Eddie Colman - player
Duncan Edwards - player
Mark Jones - player
David Pegg - player
Tommy Taylor - player
Liam 'Billy' Whelan - player
Walter Crickmer - Club Secretary
Bert Whalley - Chief Coach
Tom Curry - Trainer
Alf Clarke - journalist, Manchester Evening Chronicle
Don Davies - journalist, Manchester Guardian
George Follows - journalist, Daily Herald
Tom Jackson - journalist, Manchester Evening News
Archie Ledbrooke - journalist, Daily Mirror
Henry Rose - journalist, Daily Express
Eric Thompson - journalist, Daily Mail
Frank Swift - journalist, News of the World (also former England and Manchester City goalkeeper)
Captain Kenneth "Ken" Rayment - British co-pilot
Bela Miklos - travel agent
Willie Satinoff - supporter, racecourse owner and close friend of Matt Busby
Tom Cable - steward

This coming Sunday, during a match between Manchester United and cross-town rivals Manchester City, the home team has asked that there be a minute of silence in rememberance.

This is a bad plan. The Premier League has made a blunder by scheduling such a fierce and passionate rivalry on the weekend of this anniversary, because it takes only on idiot to disgrace the event.

Even I, a diehard United hater, believe that the solemnity of this occasion should be respected, but it's clear that someone wasn't paying attention when they built this year's schedule.

This past Wednesday's international match between England and Switzerland included such a minute of silence, and it was not honored by everyone in the stadium.

There is only one event to which I can compare this to in the United States. College football fans may remember that on November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932, out of Kinston, North Carolina, crashed en route to Ceredo, West Virginia, killing 37 players of the Marshall University football team, along with the coaching staff, team boosters, and others. Rivals of the Marshall Thundering Herd were respectful and generous the following year, and rememberances of the incident are treated with respect throughout that region.

Let's hope that the Munich rememberance at Old Trafford this Sunday is given the respect it deserves.

Thanks to Liz for the list of those who perished.



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