This weeks 'Revelling It In'
Just when you thought you’d heard the last of it, history repeats itself. After not scoring for eight months of the season and then notching a few weeks ago, you could be forgiven in thinking that you’d be safe from another version of ‘The Goalscoring Exploits of Alan McCormack’ (I think it’s got mileage as a cure for insomnia!) until at least next season, but no, it had to happen again didn’t it!!
Needless to say I’ve been making excuses not to visit Boots and Laces this week as after I spent all of Saturday night listening to the Irishman waffle on I knew it would be bad come Monday. We’d gone to watch our friend cage fight in Southend and by about nine o’clock I was going to get into the cage with him just to find a means to shut him up!
One person who is safe from any Macca related torture is Clark Masters who is still putting the fear of God into the lads. This was highlighted last week when in training, Lee Barnard lobbed him followed by Jeff doing it to, causing the gaffer to give Sid (a helper at Boots and Laces) the nod and Sid subsequently went about boarding up all of the windows at the training ground. This was no mean feat on two counts, one, and those of you who have been to the training ground will testify, Boots and Laces is predominately made up of glass including the roof, and two, Sid is about 185 years old!!!
Rumour has it that the gaffer would have asked Parms (the Kit Man) to help out but he was too busy playing ‘Cuppy Doubles’ with the youth team to do anything that his day job entails.
Speaking of Lee Barnard, I’m afraid that as a result of the KIA’s national exposure due to Lee’s interview in The Sun, and ridicule he and his friends have thrust upon me, I’ve had to sell it. Apparently the car was ‘too masculine’ as apposed to Lee’s hairdresser mobile, so to blend in with Lee and the rest of the lads I’ve had to get rid of her.
As you’ll know from hearing me whinge about how frustrating my injury has been, you find yourself clinging on to anything that remotely makes you smile, and I can safely refer to something that happened last week as being one of the best sights I’ve seen for a while.
Last Thursday we had a lad called Ewan train with us as part of a prize that his wife had won for him. He took part in the session which at the end included our crossbar challenge, where lads take it in turns to hit the bar from the edge of the area, with the last person to do so having to wash the entire squad and management’s boots as a forfeit.
As the lads walked over to the edge of the area to set up for the challenge I saw the joy on Captain Barrett and a few others lads’ face as they lined up alongside amateur performer Ewan, who would surely be washing everyone else’s boots in ten minutes time.
Imagine my joy when ten minutes later I walked outside to see Captain Barrett scrubbing everybody’s boots, including Ewan’s who had actually been the first lad to hit the bar!
Needless to say I went straight round to Ricky Duncan’s lot and got them to throw their boots into the pile along with my flip flops, and even the ‘moon boot’ got a scrubbing, although I let Adam off dubbing it!
On Monday I heard the news that youth team player Craig Calver had been given a professional contract and I’d like to take this moment to congratulate him. At the Club we are pretty close with the young players and we all know how well he’s done this season in the youth and for the reserves and well done to him.
Commiserations also go out to the lads who were not given pro deals and I wish them luck in finding a Club to fulfil their dream at. I have no doubt it was one of the worst things possible for them to hear, but such is the quality of coaching at the Club that they should all have ample ability to make it elsewhere and I hope they do so.
Speaking of ability I’d like to single out Franno’s (Simon Francis) performance on Saturday which I thought was immense. On Saturday he showed what he is really about and the good news is that performances like that put a lot of pressure on future team selections which can only be a good thing, especially at this time of the season.
Whilst Simon played well I thought the lads all put a good stint in on Saturday against a team who are no doubt underachieving this season compared to last, and whilst it wasn’t vintage football they never really looked like breaking us down and I thought it was a solid show all around.
I thought the crowd was fantastic on Saturday and really boosted everyone there, especially as the glimmer of sunshine usually draws people to the Southend Riveria so thanks for taking the time out to come down to Roots Hall to get behind the guys, it was really appreciated.
On Monday the whole of the first team went for a team bonding meal down at a place called ‘Blue Banana’ on the seafront. There were two points of note that came out of the experience for me:
- The restaurant boasts to have some of the finest fish dishes in the whole of Essex, so James Walker went and ordered burger and chips for his main course! As a result he’ll never be invited to Chez Revell when it opens in the future until he changes his eating habits!
On the subject of food someone asked me the other week whether Granty (Anthony Grant) actually ate anything because he was so skinny. So to stop that person worrying I made sure that Granty ate all of his meal on Monday, although it doesn’t take much doing to get half a bowel of plankton down your neck!
- I was coming back from the toilet when I noticed that Clark ‘Caveman’ Masters’ fish was still moving, and looked a little undercooked. When I asked the waitress why this was, she said that when she asked Clark how he wanted his fish he replied with ‘swimming’! Not only this, Clark eats an abnormal amount of food so he wasn’t full up after his main course, which was relatively unsurprising. What was surprising however was when he got up from his seat, he jumped straight into the Thames and tried to catch his next meal like you see those bears doing with salmon in the documentaries!
Due to Monday my ‘dish of the week’ has a fishy theme to it:
‘Smoked haddock with Mediterranean vegetables and canary potatoes’ – the perfect summer dish!
Take care, and hope to see you all soon.
Up the Blues!
Revs
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