Why does Mark Stevart (someone who's completely harmless) have the tagline "I post like an idiot" under his name?
I thought that was him trying to be funny.
But seriously, everyone has gripes every so often with one or two other posters but we seem (generally, not just on this board) to have lost the art of not only debate but to be incapable of accepting someone else's opinion as valid if it doesn't match ours. Last season almost every match ratings thread before PB went degenerated into a slanging match between the same sets of posters and it became very boring.
Pubey, I know you had issues last season over something or other - no idea what - and I thought that's what you were referring to so apologies if I was incorrect.
But as an ardent supporter of the zone and main sponsor for many years, I've given my answer to the question asked. If I'm thinking that, then what are other less enthusiastic people thinking?
I come on here daily when possible, even in the off season, but no longer post anywhere near as much as I used to. However, when I do I hope to add something, either by way of making someone laugh, providing a bit of inside info (I don't get much but when I do it's usually interesting) or just some hopefully well formed opinion about the game/a player/the management/whatever, all of which I am happy to discuss until the cows come home.
What I don't particularly want to read is just inane claptrap and personal insults and I know I'm not alone in that. This is where the mods have such an incredibly hard job in trying to keep everything nice and friendly (which is something I think they do pretty well actually), and I know it's something they strive to do because of the vast number of posters who, for similar reasons to me, have either left the zone or become "lurkers".
I think I've just accepted that this is what it is as a new generation of fans come through and old fogeys like me slip off quietly into the distance, full of cynicism as we watch the youngsters and their newly found hope, simply knowing that we've been there, seen it, done it, read the book, watched the film and bought the t-shirt. These kids have no idea how the hope will at some point turn to despair as the blue shackles of Southend United FC slowly wrap themselves around their auras and personas, never to depart, thereby committing the incumbents to a lifetime of frustration, expense, annoyance and dejection, with every so often an event that produces joy and adrenalin at such a level that it makes it all worthwhile.
Actually, that sounds like the zone a bit, doesn't it?
