End Of A Century

Another year in the epoch of men comes to an end and while there are still bones propping up doorways in the Meat Clinic, the SMBU end of year awards will be doled out. Happy New Year to all our readers.

Ian Stonebridge Conventional Hair Award
Sergio Torres began the year by banging home his first goal for the club and ended it with short hair and an injury record to rival the Devon Michael Owen himself. News that the Argentine Clementine has started to regrow his mop represents Wycombe's best chance of promotion in 2007.

Ivor Beeks Self-Publicist Award
Once again, the main main Robber Beeks wins the award. Barely seen all year other than on CCTV, he popped up on the pitch at Charlton in his vile brown coat, claiming credit for a win masterminded by Paul Lambert and funded by Steve Hayes. Nice one Beeksy.

Lazarus Revival Award
Alan Hutchinson's media profile has suffered in recent years as the blasted internet has triumphed over phonelines that cost 45p a minute and rape phonecards your mother gave you in case you missed the school bus. But by forging a genuinely amusing double act with Paul Lambert, Hutchinson has seen off his executioners and is now installed permanently at the training ground like some sort of wild-haired sage.

Drone Army A NEW LOW Award
Consistency was the keyword from the Drone Army in 2006 as they maintained a level of squalor from January to December. Abusing children at Swindon, travelling in numbers to Milton Keynes, voting to sell off the ground name again for £8.99, remembering Mark Philo's goal at Sheffield Wednesday (sic), the list was virtually endless. Can they keep it up in 2007? It looks odds on from here.

Grey Haired Media Prick Award
When John Gorman was sacked in the summer, Rob Lee wasted little time in telling everyone how he could not wait to leave the club. "I don't play for Wycombe Wanderers, I play for John Gorman" opined the wolf-haired prick, shortly before disappearing from view. I'd be loyal if Gorman had given me an undeserved England cap but Lee is a no-mark who can be filed alongside Ray Wilkins in the shameful Wycombe ex-internationals folder.

Marketing Disaster Of The Year
There were some heady brainwaves at Adams Park this season, such as the chance to get 20p off a pie if you bought 17 replica shirts and a new club shop with more Wasps in it than the Marsh Gibbon insect zoo. But first prize must go to whoever thought Wycombe's play-off campaign would be improved by handing out plastic tubes and encouraging the fans to clout them like a special needs kid in a drumming school. Shamed on national television, we were the shitty Angel Delight after the gourmet FA Cup final.

Self-Justifying Idiocy Award
In the weeks leading up to the away game at the Franchise, a series of Wycombe fans claimed that it was vital that they travelled to the National Hockey Stadium as the team needed our support. A typical claim was "it's much better if we go to the game and cheer on the lads to the three points!" Well Wycombe fans did travel and were there to see the team get gubbed 3-1. Conclusion, support means nothing so don't sell your principles for a gash day out in the midlands.

Time After Time After Time

The papers may praise Wycombe's players for playing well once every three weeks but the truth is that promotion is slipping away like a crushed dog on a railway line. Titles and promotion are won in mini-leagues made up of the contenders and this season the Mighty Chairboys (tm) are falling short every time. In six games against promotion rivals, Wycombe have gained just one point and leaked 12 goals. Even the single point came as a result of a scrappy last-minute equaliser that was ridiculously praised, like a fancy wallpaper covering up a bullet hole.

As Swindon and even the wretched Franchise cope admirably with their battles for glory, Wycombe fade away, unless of course the game is in the League Cup and there is a chance for a transfer away from the club in due course. These players bottled it last year and we in the Meat Clinic can see no reason why they will not do so again this season.

Our heroes are made of glass and they are teetering on the edge of reason. Can we cope with being let down yet again? Unlikely.

Screaming In The Trees

Vile news from Swindon where as Wycombe succumbed to their usual Boxing Day defeat, the hated Drone Army were witnessed abusing an eight-year old boy simply because he supported the other team. Our Meat Clinic spy noted that a grown man was seen shouting "do the cunt" at the terrified child, a definitive new low for the window-licking retards that follow Wycombe Wanderers.

Don't let the sight of 4,500 happy clappers at the Valley confuse you, Wycombe's support has hit new lows this season and perhaps the PLC's devotion to their sinister CRM system could be used to smoke these apes out. Not content with trekking up to Franchise to support their team (good job lads, those three points could be vital in May), they are now abusing small children.

This is the season of goodwill and yet the Drone Army have shown more cruelty to the young than even King Herod did. We can only pray that a reformed bunch of Chelsea Headhunters shatter their skulls like walnuts against a wailing wall. How full of shame we are, how full of idiots we are.

Lift Your Skinny Arms Like Antennas To Heaven

Enough has been said about Wanderers' ill-starred trip to Milton Keynes at the weekend, though it is fair to say the club will not be going there again. The large numbers that turned out to support the team upset even the most crooked and capitalist members of the Football League board and sources deep within that organisation have indicated that next season, should there be a fixture between the teams, then it will be played behind closed doors, for everyone's sakes.

That said, the thought of the Wycombe "supporters" yelping like haggard mules in a two-bob hockey station did bring joy to my heart on Saturday as I didn't spend good money to help something evil (unless you count ETA as evil, which some people do).

Tomorrow sees a happier event, when the wretched scabs of Wycombe's fanbase will join forces with the great and the good and head to Charlton's The Valley to see the team take on Charlton's Charlton Athletic for a place in the League Cup semi-final, stage of kings (level 32).

And it comes down to this: would you take a season in which Colchester United got promoted to the Premiership and Reading got into the Champions League and Oxford won the Conference, would you take that season if Wycombe won the League Cup. Straight between the eyes, two barrels, full frontal. Of course you would, it's worth sending a wagon of gold to your enemies if it allows you to enjoy the feast at Beltane.

None of those things will come true, but deep down they could and that's what makes us wake up sweating in the night, hand blindly reaching for the Plaster of Paris and the netting.

MK Wrongs

I was 16 and in love with Elizabeth Young
If she had let me sit next to her in maths
I'd have given up at least a lung
Still, I got an invite to her party
In a club in Milton Keynes
Two rules: no trainers, no jeans

So this is a nightclub, heaving with teens
If she had acknowledged me at the door
I'd have lived within my means
As it was I bought Southern Comfort
With some lemonade of course
You know, at weekends she rode a horse

At 11:46 they started spraying foam
I think it was actually car cleaning fluid
But we danced on in the garish dome
I tried to catch her eye but it never worked
She was eyeing up Milton Keynes boys
And I was lacking a debit card and poise

I was picked up at 3.00am in the autumn glare
Driven back over roundabouts covered in leaves
My heroes remained Dave Carroll and Vic Reeves
But as I left I had one last thought
Keep me out of Milton Keynes, it reeks
Leave it to Satan, Winkleman and Beeks

Gathering Storm

This idea that Wycombe fans should go to another game on Saturday, while the club are playing their non-game against non-club Franchise really is not one of the brightest in the history of thinking. I have been to AFC Wimbledon to watch a game before and the sight of a group of smug Brentford fans parading around in their red and white shirts was fairly odious.

"Look how holy we are," they seemed to be saying, the football supporting equivalent of celebrities who roll out every time Children In Need comes around. "We deserve respect because we have come to see little AFC instead of the evil Franchise." Laudable sentiments but like certain brands of gin, a lot less palatable when it's right in your face.

The fact that Wimbledon are away in Aldershot this weekend makes it even more unattractive. It is the most unpredictable military town this side of Basra and the chance of a clammy one in the face is riding high. Surely this weekend should be used by Wycombe fans to expand their minds, to start chapter eight of their autobiography, to pour paraffin on the television and set it alight before Christmas plunges it further into mediocrity.

If you love the game of football then for God's sake don't watch any this weekend. The Meat Clinic will be playing swingball on the top of Brill Hill, sometimes you can see Henman's face in a cloud if the wind gets up.

Snow And Lights

Exciting commercial times this week at Adams Park as the new club shop opened, packed to the rafters with the latest textile sensation: the "Frank Adams" clothing range, for the true fan who wants to show his appreciation to the great and man and also look the part as he is skulking around Waitrose eyeing any woman using a basket but not a trolley.

While the very idea of putting Wycombe Wanderers' greatest benefactor (excluding loan notes) on a range of clothes is bizarre in the extreme, the 400-strong commercial department seem to have misunderstood the word "tribute", which nowadays is used mainly to describe a statue or a named bench or a leafy parkland renamed in honour of a person of standing. WWFC bean munchers instead seem to have reverted to the other use of the word, namely money given in submission by the lowly to the rulers.

For the cash gained from the "Frank Adams" clothes will not go anywhere but the 6p per second drip drip debt that is mounting like a sexually aroused horse, and all so that the fanbase can look like young Tory farmers, on their way to protest about not being able to shoot peasant children right in the head in the name of ghastly sport.

Is this the image we want our club to protect in the early 21st century? Do we even have a choice? I'm off to wrap a scarf around my neck and fill my beige body warmer with pebbles. A lay down in the Misbourne is always a weighty matter.

You Never See A Nipple In The Bucks Free Press

I've seen the poison letters of the horrible drones
about the hate mob peril and the club's thirst for loans
how rugby is fun, and wholesome and good
I've seen property prices celebrated and support for Rudolf Hess
but I've never seen a nipple in the Bucks Free Press

I've seen the plans for a shopping centre made entirely of glass
Hunchbacked councillors evicting everyone fast
Terrorists in the wood, plotting our deaths
Loakes Park 1990, abusing George Best
They were right on that one, I confess
but I've never seen a nipple in the Bucks Free Press

Another away report cobbled from the net
How many facts wrong this week - do you want a bet?
A double page spread on Wasps latest match
In 1956 you could leave the door on the latch
Now here comes Beeks in another financial mess
but I've never seen a nipple in the Bucks Free Press

Now comes another cup game, up north in the dark
And most of this poem is down to John Cooper Clarke
He wrote quite a lot, this man's written less
But neither's ever seen a nipple in the Bucks Free Press