A letter from Lucy

http://www.justgiving.com/tomhayleybailey

I am unashamedly using this blog to plug the charity for Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease which promotes its greater understanding  and treatment and also supports families affected by this awful terminal illness.  This charity has recently been hit by the Government cuts and lost its funding so is even more relient on the generosity of the public than ever.

 A friend of mine wrote this and I am passing it on and asking you to support Tom & Hayleys run for CJD charity by sponsoring them.

“CJD killed our dear dad, a young, vibrant, healthy 62 year old, last year. If you’re feeling generous please sponsor Tom & Hayley, even if it’s just £1.

It’s the only CJD charity in the UK and is a lifeline to families like ours. The government have decided to cut 100% of their funding so now the CJD charity is run entirely on donations. We'd be grateful for every penny that you can sponsor them.”

“CJD is a fatal brain disease which affects one in a million, coming from nowhere for no apparent reason. There’s no treatment or cure. Many haven’t heard of it, or if they have, they think it’s ‘mad cow disease’ – some still make jokes about it. That was a new strain but the classic strain has been around for probably as long as us humans..”

Just Click Tom or Hayleys nose to donate

Please sponsor Tom & Hayley 

CJD Support network

The National Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease Research& Surveillance Unit (NCJDRSU)

Former England Goalkeeper David James excited by women

David James has always been a supporter of Womens football and on the opening day of the Womens World Cup has called for more exposure of the game and not in the way that Sepp Blatter suggested a few years back.

To coincide with the tournament James has written a thoughtful article in the Guardian about Womens football.

Later today (Monday) England take on Mexico and it is a game worth watching.  if you are a guy who chants "You're not fit to iron my shirt", you need to re evaluate the womens game, not as a comparison with the mens but as a sport on its own to be judged on its own merits.

Avoiding Relegation - The River Plate way

Perhaps if when we left the Prem, instead of applauding our players we had reacted like this then Pardew, Varney, McCleod, Weaver etc,. May have been too scared to allow us to do the same in the Championship.



Of course, it did not actually work for River Plate who were relegated for the first time in their history.

dr Kish and the League One Monster

Laegue One Monster wakes!

Dr Kish's recent article / blog post tickled me as it opened with the line - "The League One monster begins to wake from its hibernation" it sent me back 20 or so years when my kids were toddlers and I read them bedtime stories.  My favorite was by Tony Ross and called "I'm coming to get you!"

The story goes :-

"After wreaking havoc on the planets of its own galaxy, a hungry monster sets off in its spaceship for a pretty blue planet called Earth. A little boy called Tommy Brown, who is particularly scared of monsters, is singled out for a visit..."


Now if you know the story you'll understand my analogy with The League One Monster, if you don't and you have kids or grand kids buy the book, its cheap at Amazon, yes Dr Kish, I know you have grandchildren, follow the link!!

Englands Route To Glory Blocked

Last night the Spanish made it a hat-trick - World Cup, European Nations Cup and U21 and on top of that Barcelona have made a clean sweep of the Champions league.  In the past we have seen the Portuguese develop a team at youth level and seen it develop through the different age levels of football to be, if not world beaters, a country that out punches its weight as a footballing nation.

I love English football I want it to succeed at all levels, but I see the Premier League putting up barriers and psychological hurdles created all the time.

England have U21's capable of certainly being in the same final as Spain, it could be argued that we should have beaten them in the 1st match as their goal was a hand ball (that said they had so much possession it led to Pearce saying that if we had so much possession we would have won 5-0 - but we did not Stuart, that is the problem).

England perform badly in tournaments, we go into a tournament expecting to be disappointed, added to that for something like the U21's we tell the players going into the tournament that they are not even the first choice.  Wilshire and Wallcott would have made a massive difference but they were too tired.  Too tired to be part of and key to a successful tournament side.

In club football it is often said that teams don't know how to win trophies until they win that first one be it a Europa league or a League or FA Cup.  Until then their credentials to go on to better things is questionable.

If we were to send an U21 team to a tournament which they believed they could win because the squad members were not merely replacements for tired first choices and the team had the belief that they had match winning players and it was worth turning up, their mentality would be so much stronger for the tournament (Not conceding a wining position to a losing one in  the last minute) and by wining it they would have the experience and taste for success unlike any England team above youth level for many years.


It is about time that the U21's were taken seriously with key squad members being available when the senior squad was not playing and they were primed for success not managed to failure.