<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><rss version="2.0"><channel><title><![CDATA[smbu]]></title><description><![CDATA[Articles]]></description><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/</link><copyright><![CDATA[Copyright smbu]]></copyright><generator>sNews CMS</generator><item><title><![CDATA[I will stop, I will stop at nothing]]></title><description><![CDATA[  SMBU Editorial      
In this murky world in which we find ourselves it is not uncommon to find all sides claiming victory following any period of electoral activity. A party in opposition will point to their favourable performance in local elections and will draw conclusions about what will happen should a general election be held tomorrow.  Meanwhile, the governing party will draw from previous performances and conclude that voters generally like to give those in power 'a shot across the bows' in elections that are of little major importance. "We've heard the message," they will say. "We're listening." Spinning the result of an election or a poll has become commonplace. All parties will feel their message has been 'vindicated' by whatever result it produces. Nevertheless, it is somewhat more surprising to see a local newspaper take the results of a ballot and spin them so much that the actual result is reversed.    

On Saturday, Wycombe Wanderers fans attending the game against Carlisle were polled on two questions: firstly, on whether they were in favour of moving to a new stadium; and secondly, if so, whether taxpayers' money should be used to support such a move. The poll was organised by local Liberal Democrat Councillor, Steve Guy, following the decision by Wycombe District Council to allocate £500,000 to a feasibility study for a new cross-financed stadium at Booker. 
    
The results of the poll have now been announced. Of the 762 supporters polled as part of the ballot, 389 (51%) were opposed to a move. Meanwhile of the 373 in favour of a move, only 249 (33% of the total polled) thought that Wycombe residents should help pay for this new community venture.
    
You might be forgiven, then, for wondering how the Bucks Free Press could publish a story whose headline read   "Fans back stadium move at ballot"?   

The headline has now been changed to "Fans give views on Stadium move" following criticism to the paper of such a wholly inaccurate headline. Nevertheless, the story still paints a favourable picture of the move to a new stadium. For instance, in their analysis of the statistics, the paper points out that of those in favour of a move "two-thirds backed using council cash and land to help pay for it." Technically, of course, this is true, but it ignores the statistic highlighted above, namely that over two-thirds of those polled felt that the Council had no place funding a new stadium at all (i.e. the total of those opposed to the new stadium and those who while in favour felt it should be financed by the clubs themselves).    

There have been many concerns about the validity of the poll conducted by Cllr Guy. Critics suggest that the poll was politically motivated and that the timing of it was 'too early' as those filling out the poll did not have the essential facts to make an informed decision. They have also questioned why rugby fans have not been similarly polled. It is certainly true that the poll is timely. Councillor Guy is the Prospective Parliamentary Candidate for the Liberal Democrats in a General Election now a matter of weeks away. Consequently, one wonders whether Cllr Guy would have been so concerned had the stadium issue been discussed 12 months ago - a few weeks ago he was a relative unknown. Politicians will be politicians. 
    
Meanwhile, supporters have been asking questions about the viability of the stadium proposal for months now with no response - meetings between Councillors, Council Officers and Mr Hayes have to date been held behind closed doors. The Council has already, it seems, seen sufficient evidence to warrant setting aside £500,000 for a feasibility study. Why, then, will it take Mr Hayes an unspecified length of time to issue a detailed public statement on the plans? Finally, as to why Cllr Guy has not polled rugby fans, perhaps this has to with the fact that Wasps are a London-based club who are relatively new to the area, and whose fan base still travel into the club on match days. They are not the taxpayers being asked to finance the stadium and consequently not the constituents Cllr Guy as a PPC is seeking to sway.
    
If Councillor Guy's poll has done nothing else, it has shown that football fans are at best 'divided' on the issue of a new stadium with the raw poll data showing an outright majority (albeit very slim) who are opposed to any new ground. There are concerns about the size of the stadium and how it will be financed, loss of ground ownership, and crucially, how a new stadium will financially benefit Wycombe Wanderers as per Mr Hayes's previous assurances. 
    
To date, supporters have merely heard threats by the tenants through the Press that, unless a new stadium is agreed, they will leave the town. The advantages to London Wasps have been clearly stated. Consequently, supporters of Wycombe Wanderers are entitled to ask how a new stadium will benefit them, as opposed to their tenants. As they look around at an attendance of 4,876 (Saturday's gate vs Carlisle), questions are sure to be raised about whether a new 17-20,000 seater stadium is needed.
    
  SMBU   awaits Mr Hayes's detailed statement with interest and will be examining this to see how it answers the basic questions fans are asking as well as those we have ourselves. We will also be hoping that more balanced inquiry can be undertaken by the Bucks Free Press in future and that, aside from political motivation, Councillor Guy will continue to ask questions of the presiding Cabinet at WDC to get the answers needed to properly inform a discussion that shows no signs of abating.
        ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 09 Mar 2010 10:06:44 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/i-will-stop-i-will-stop-at-nothing/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/i-will-stop-i-will-stop-at-nothing/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[That Was The Wyc That Was]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Pat Henhessey  
    



It's all gone a bit Division Seven at Adams Park, and the IMF has been deployed and I'm waiting to see who rips off his mask during the glorious climax and reveals himself as Jim Phelps. If you're too young to get any of this then all I can do is gently weep into my 1987 Isthmian League Double Winners scarf as social discourse overtakes me like a Lexus Hybrid scooting past a Ford Capri. 
    




Readers voice: "Hey, chin up Pat, we're on a mission and there's no time for weeping, especially after a thrilling win over the Lions."
    



So a week that started with a draw snatched from the jaws of victory at Brentford ended with an adrenalin soaked win over Millwall at Adams Park. Gary Waddock (he needs a nickname, doesn't he? He was known as the Ginger Mourinho at Aldershot, but we've already got our Mousinho and anyway, our man isn't a whinging ego-maniac, so it doesn't really fit...I played with the idea of The Wadfather, but I'm not sure about that...jokes about his huge wad come screaming into your frontal lobe, like some hideous mind vomit...come on, you think of something, I'm doing all the work here) has been gadding about like the bastard son of Barry Fry and Harry Redknapp by signing a whole new team of players. Oh, but aren't they good? Tom Heaton, what a display by the young lad, saving Neil Harris' penalty, in front of the away fans and denying them the opportunity to run on the pitch and be all naughty, well it's stuff home débuts are dreamt of, isn't it? He exudes a calmness and confidence that seems to make both his defence and the crowd relax, like a nice cup of tea or a warm bath, you know nothing bad is going happen, and that everything's gonna be alright. Big call too bringing in Julian Kelly and putting him straight in ahead of Lewis Hunt at right-back. He looked like he'd been playing there all season, showed no signs of nerves and scored too. 

    


It was a bit of a shame about the crowd, in terms of numbers. The decision to make the game all-ticket was a baffling one and rumours of potential argy-bargy and hi-jinks were just the usual hot air from professional fear mongers, the more imaginative of which propagated rumours that the game was to infiltrated by the English Defence League. No jokes about Wycombe needing a defence please, we kept a clean sheet! 


    

This column can   EXCLUSIVELY   reveal the real reason for the all-ticket affair, and it was that there were some Scientologists who'd planned to attend the game and the club had been informed by clairvoyant that L. Ron Hubbard had somehow escaped his fiery damnation and was hurtling towards earth in a foul mood ready to wreck revenge against scientologists everywhere. The health and safety team acted swiftly by ensuring there was no way any Scientologists would get into Adams Park, even ones with Blues Cards. There were also concerns that an ensuing carnage might affect the pitch and that would never have been allowed to happen. Early on Saturday morning Hubbard is said to have crashed into a television transmitter in Bledlow-cum-Saunderton and fallen back to hell through a gap in the earth's crust. 

    


Rumours that Steve Hayes taught Gordon Brown how to throw newspapers about in a seething rage have been flatly denied. An inside source said: “He's a friend of Dave, and they both loves kittens and Wycombe.” In related-matters, rumours that a Wycombe Old Chief-Executives Association was to formed have been scotched. WWFC Nut-administrator Archibald Plankton said “How the cock would we get them all into the Vere Suite?”

    


The column has also had exclusive access to the WWFC accounts and after our financial expert Tom Rodlin cast his expert eye over the figures, the losses this week come to £19,500. Who would have ever believed it?


    

Meanwhile, potty financial shenanigans continue at Portsmouth and Notts County. I once took out a loan to buy a badger, and whilst it gave me some company on the lonely nights, it didn't make the financial returns I'd expected so I just had to shoot it in the end. It didn't half bloody stink and it had given the neighbours cows bovine TB. Some people say football's gone mad.

    


It's over, let it go.

    ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 23 Feb 2010 08:20:06 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/that-was-the-wyc-that-was/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/that-was-the-wyc-that-was/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[You&#039;re a son of a gun and I&#039;m easily led]]></title><description><![CDATA[  SMBU Editorial      
The news that Wycombe District Council are set to allocate more than £700k towards a new Community Stadium for Wycombe and Wasps has understandably ruffled a few feathers. Fair bit of cash that eh?      
Sidestepping the usual debates over the building of such a stadium, and what it means for the future of WWFC, such proposed spending surely signifies a fairly big step forward towards pipe dreams becoming reality. In short, should £200k feasibility studies and £500k strategy reviews signal the time for someone to finally ask Wycombe Wanderers supporters whether they want a new stadium or not?     
The people best place to ask that question might well be the Wycombe Wanderers Trust, yet there seems to be little indication that such a poll is on the way. Pigeon-chested cynics might suggest that asking its members that contentious question might threaten the positions of the Trust’s two elected representatives on the football club board, by upsetting those for whom the wrong answer might prove embarrassing. That is conjecture and quite possibly unfair. But silence does that to people; they draw their own conclusions.     
What is certainly needed is some sort of clarification from the Trust. Members were told that any decision on supporting a new stadium, for or against, would be delayed until the Trust board had received full details of the plan, and how it would benefit WWFC. By supporting Steve Hayes’ takeover proposals in the summer, the Trust have certainly adapted that stance. One of the most obvious consequences of voting for the takeover was a new stadium, shared with London Wasps (Hayes has said repeatedly that the club cannot break even without one). So, in effect, by advising members to vote Yes, the Trust are supporting the new stadium.    
So what we need to know from the Trust is fairly simple: is this it? Is there any other information that the members of the Trust and the rest of the club’s supporters will get to know about? Is there any way that it can be shared with us? There has yet to be any other arguments of how the new stadium will benefit WWFC, so are we saying that the threat of Steve Hayes no longer funding the club is the sole reason we should support leaving Adams Park?     
If that is it, then The Trust should poll the members on whether they support the plans we currently know about, using the information we have been given. If that’s not it, then someone needs to start communicating some cogent points of view on how the future of Wycombe Wanderers will be improved by no longer owning its own ground, and no longer receiving rent from Wasps. Because they appear to be a bit thin on the ground at the moment.     
Below are two posts from the gasroom, one from January 2010 and one from September 2008, yet both still entirely relevant. They won’t be the last well-written articles regarding this subject. The letters to WDC councillors are already being drafted by fans and non fans alike. The Trust needs to realise that opposition to the new stadium will continue with or without their involvement. If they can educate supporters as to why any of the points made below are unfair, or incorrect, then now, with £700k of public money about to be spent, is probably the time to do so.     


  September 2008  

    

  January 2010  

    ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 26 Jan 2010 15:36:49 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/youre-a-son-of-a-gun-and-im-easily-led/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/youre-a-son-of-a-gun-and-im-easily-led/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[We Journey With Nothing But Memories]]></title><description><![CDATA[SMBU soldiers went deep into the snow-bound north from the snow-bound south this week to chat to Leeds fan site The Scratching Shed.    

  Click here to read their words, our words and the spaces in between.      ]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:16:54 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/we-journey-with-nothing-but-memories/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/we-journey-with-nothing-but-memories/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[New Year&#039;s Greeting]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Harry Secombe  
  
What with SMBU being the two-faced Janus of Wycombe Wanderers Independent websites, we thought that a bit of turn-of-year reflection was in order.  
     
The takeover of the Football Club in the summer was a dreadful experience; a distressingly predictable but still terrible turn of events which over-shadowed the promotion only a few weeks before.  But it was also a bit bizarre.  The gifting of the club to the man who had personally presided over losses of an unprecedented £5 million in his four years as Managing Director represented a defeat of all logic.  The case for acceptance of the takeover was made simply in his assertion that he would withdraw his support if he wasn’t allowed to take over and, more straightforwardly, in the use of the A-word by his henchmen.
    
The case for rejection of the Hayes ultimatum on the other hand was eloquently and painstakingly made by many, in print, on the web and in meetings, but held no weight.  The fear of the death of the club (that or an unthinkable ten point deduction) overwhelmed everything.  The majority have accepted as the truth the ridiculous way of thinking put forward by the Hayes, Beeks & co. - that we can only survive with an outsized new stadium, with Wasps, by blanding-up and doing the Corporate FC thing.  
    
The only people left, to turn to, no matter how weak and diluted they are, are the remnants of the Trust.  But the Trust’s thinly attended members meeting in mid-December showed the depressingly impotent new reality.  The Trust Board is keeping an eye on events, waiting for the wheels to come off, looking for the least-worst option.  But they lack any sense of a cause to drive interest and membership.  
    
And yet the latter part of the year has seen fans absolutely up in arms.  Not at the you-couldn’t-make-it-up events of the summer, of course, which merely saw 122 years of proud history sold for half the club’s debt, but because having been promoted, we are now, outrageously, in the relegation zone.  Because we lost some football matches.  This is all the more disappointing for many in light of the expectations whipped up by Hayes et al in the summer – “we’re not just here to make up the numbers” and all that.
    
The convergence of the newly disaffected fans with their Championship ambitions looking like a pipe dream and those embittered by the summer’s events is casting a long shadow over the club just now.  It was even suggested at the Trust meeting that the club Board appreciated that it needed to get the long-term supporters back on side after the ill-feeling brought about by the takeover.    
    
Basking in the glow of his victory on 6th July Hayes had a go at the moaners (in between telling the Trust how to restructure its Board, doing-down the Gasroom and exhorting the club’s shareholders to enjoy League One), saying “if you want to be bitter you will get exactly what you did after the plc vote – nothing”. In this at least he was truthful.  He holds all the cards.  Resistance is futile.
    
But, as it happens, resistance is still absolutely right.  If you don’t want to be rattling around in somebody else’s stadium for your home games; if you don’t want to give up ownership of Adams Park for the sake of a Hilton at the top of the hill; if you want to retain Wycombe Wanderers unique identity before it all disappears … then say so now.  Keep moaning.
    
Because soon it really will be too late.  
      ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 31 Dec 2009 10:48:59 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/new-years-greeting/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/new-years-greeting/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Bill Turnbull Interview]]></title><description><![CDATA[  *2004 Retro Special!*      
We love getting up at the crack of sparrows and watching The Bill Turnbull Breakfast Show. His laid-back, shoes-off style should be an inspiration to us all as we run about looking for a pair of clean pants first thing in the morning. SMBU catches up with the Woodland's regular...    


  So first things first, how, when, and maybe even why, did you become a Wycombe fan?    

We're gloryhangers. My two boys and I jumped on the bandwagon after the third round of that cup run, and been unable to get off ever since. We've been season ticket holders since that year, and sit in the (nearly) silent Woodlands. Why? It's our local club, and so much more rewarding to follow than some big Premiership conglomerate.

     

  What has been your most memorable Wycombe game?    

Apart from the hallowed semi-final? At home to Brentford two seasons ago, when we thrashed them 4-0. They'd beaten us in the Cup, so this was revenge. My editor is a Bees fan and I called him at home after every goal.

     

  And similarly, what's the one game you wish you had been to?    

We couldn't get to the Wimbledon replay as we were staying in the Yorkshire Dales at the time. So we huddled round the radio as the signal came and went, and joined hands for the penalties. I still wish I'd been there, though.

     

  Do you have any other fond memories of following Wycombe?    

Jocky's volley off Ruby's chip last season. Beating Stoke at home and Colchester away. Brownie's sublime passes - and penalties. Taylor's fantastic flying saves.

 
    
  Tony has bought in a lot of new players this season. Have any of them particularly stood out for you so far?    

For me, Clint Easton is showing a lot of promise - a bit like Currie only he can tackle and move a lot faster. If his confidence grows he could be pivotal this season. Gary Silk, so long as he's in the right position (at the back). I really want Stonebridge to do well, but for me he has yet to convince.

 
    
  Is there anything that really gets your goat about Wycombe, or football in general for that matter?
    
The beer's too expensive.

     

  If you could interview Ivor Beeks what would you ask him?    

How about lunch?

     

  How early do you have to get up? And have you ever smashed up an alarm clock in pure rage?    

I get up at 4 a.m., happy in the knowledge that I no longer have to rise at 3 like I used to. I'm too groggy at that hour to feel anything. Smashing the alarm would not be in my best interests as it would wake my wife....

     
  
Do your work commitments hinder you from attending many matches?    

I can get to pretty much all the home matches, even at night. As I work mostly at weekends, it's a bit trickier for away matches - so you won't see me up north this year. But I hope to get to a couple of closer fixtures.

     

  There have been some massive changes to the club over the last six months both on and off the field. How do you foresee the short-term and long-term success of the club?    

 

Short-term: promotion this season.  

Long-term: Premiership. A man can dream, can't he?

     

  What was your biggest TV cock up?    

How long have you got? I've said a number of things I shouldn't have when the mic was live, but fortunately never anything too serious. I take my shoes off sometimes which can lead to complications – Carol Kirkwood picked one of them up once on air and complained that they ponged. There have probably been other more awful memories which I've simply suppressed.

     
  If you could have been in any TV show past or present, which one would it have been?    

I'd like to be on World Cup Match of the Day 2006 please.

     

  Adrian Chiles has managed to wangle himself his own football show just by supporting West Brom. I'd love to see you presenting a lower league Match of the Day programme. Have you ever thought about something like that?    

Adrian - who's a great bloke by the way - knows a great deal more about football than I do. If I had the choice, I'd rather commentate. I've started doing a bit of it at Adams Park and I find I get a lot more out of the game when I have to monitor every move.

     

  What do you think of the local media coverage of the Wanderers?    

S'alright I suppose.

     

  I was watching Breakfast TV one morning when you had the football poet on. I thought you completely out did him with your Wycombe poem. Can we hear it again?    

Gosh, I just happen to have it here with me:  

   

For too many months we pondered,  

Our chances on goal we squandered,  

In game after game we blundered,  

As our hopes like our name simply wandered.  

Our fate now is not ours to choose,  

We have nothing more to lose,  

But while our pride is sorely bruised, We are still the Mighty Blues

 
    
  You also had a Fulham fan on once just after they knocked us out of the FA cup. You were giving him a bit of stick for being bad losers, which was fully deserved if you ask me. Do you get much stick at work for supporting Wycombe?    

Yes. Last season was ugly. First they laughed, then they pitied me, which was much worse. This season's not so bad, fortunately.

 
    
  Does the BBC have a football team or do you ever go for a kickabout with the likes of Rob and Dermot? (By the way, apparently Rob Bonnett's wife taught one half of SMBU English at school!)  
  
We keep rather different hours, so it would be difficult to organise. Beside, Dermot's an Arsenal supporter.

     

  Have you ever been for a day out at Brill Hill, the highest point in Bucks?
    
No.

 
    
  Do you get to meet any footballers at work?    

I met Brownie in a corridor at the BBC once. Kenny Sansom I've spoken to a couple of times on the sofa. Once - memorably - I asked him if he'd played for Spurs. Best moment was when Sir Bobby Charlton brought in the World Cup trophy. I got to interview an idol and cradle the Cup in my very own hands.

     
  
Have you ever skived off work to attend a game?    

Who's playing at six o'clock in the morning?

 
    
  Good point. Do you ever walk into your house to find your family watching ITV and shout at them "turn that off, turn that filth off"?    

What, and miss Footballers' Wives?

     

  And on the same note, have you ever met Alan Parry?    

Cheeky. No.

 
    
  And finally, who is your favourite all-time Wycombe player?    

All-time in my case is rather short. If there had to be one, it would have to be Steve Brown - for the passion more than anything else.    ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Nov 2009 18:10:10 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/interviews/bill-turnbull-interview/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/interviews/bill-turnbull-interview/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[MAN: IRRATIONAL; INCONSISTENT; HAS AXE; IN CHARGE]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Harry Secombe    
So farewell Peter Taylor.  It was fleeting, but certainly functional and you were a real gent. 

     

Temporarily our gross appetite was satisfied, as we first led the league and then fell over the line last May.  But given the grudging way that the promotion we were apparently so desperate for was received by the fans, it was inevitable that things would be difficult when the results turned against us.  

     

It was interesting that bald Northerner, Mark Clemmit  - designed not only to be the Football League’s good egg to but to look like a good egg too – said on Radio 5 that in his self-confessedly old-fashioned view a manager like Peter Taylor who had won promotion had the right to take the team down again before getting the sack.  Like Clem, I’m old fashioned too.  But I like to think there’s a little more method in my madness than in Steve Hayes’ patent double-think.  

     

In an interview so irrational it was made for the “play again and again and again” era of the BBC iPlayer, Hayes spoke to Three Counties last Friday.  He had said before, he said again, that he wants a manager who is going to be here “a good period of time”.  And how do you make that happen? wondered his more jaundiced listeners. You back your manager when he’s in a trough, so that when he’s riding high again, he feels a bit of reciprocal loyalty.   It’s the only way it’s ever going to happen.  

     

Perhaps more telling in the Taylor case was what he went onto say: that he wanted “a manager who understands our culture and our vision and desire and what we want for the football club”.  That’s the royal “we” presumably.  Or maybe “we” as in the Hayes enclave: the Beekses, Kanes, Parrys and Dobsons and Lees, who stood by him in Operation Takeover last summer.  An enclave from which Taylor was conspicuously absent.  

     

But there were more criteria for the new manager in that interview too.  Apparently it’s no longer enough to just attain and maintain third division level, he wanted “somebody who wants to entertain the supporters” too.  Oh and he threw in that Taylor might not have been satisfied by his budget (interesting that Taylor never actually blurted that out, ever discrete as he was) but that Tranmere’s budget was much lower and they turned us over.  

     

So welcome, Gary Waddock.  You clearly have much promise, with an impressive promotion under your belt, an entertaining team and a fair amount of respect from Aldershot’s fans.  As long as you don’t have an 8-game winless run, keep us in the division, keep the fans entertained and never lose to a side with a smaller budget than ours, then a long tenure is surely guaranteed.  Oh, and remember to keep our vain and capricious owner onside.  When you unwrap that Christmas photo frame, just be sure to smile.   

    

 

]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 16 Oct 2009 09:36:14 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/man-irrational-inconsistent-has-axe-in-charge/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/man-irrational-inconsistent-has-axe-in-charge/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[No fixture this weekend]]></title><description><![CDATA[People in the High Wycombe area may instead be interested in seeing a football team operator from Milton Keynes bring their travelling bandwagon of customers and generic staff to town. 

  
    ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:32:02 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/no-fixture-this-weekend/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/no-fixture-this-weekend/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[I don&#039;t believe in what my eyes don&#039;t see]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Brighton Away, oily sailor       

  Bleak. Bleak House, Bleak To The Future, The One Show with Christine Bleakley, Bleak Morrison, Bleak Party, Ivor Bleaks, Bleaky Bleakinsop, That Bleak Bloke Blake. It was a bleak day alright, down on the coast with the sand from the long jump pit gritting our eyes, drying out the tears that were nailed on from 11:45am.      

Brighton town centre was packed with alternative hairstyles and sensible lifestyles. The Drone Army looked typically awry in the sneering hemp cul-de-sacs of the north Laines, their newly-purchased jet black nylon only slightly less tired than the shops knocking out tattoos written in basic chinese and quink.     

The French coast was visible as we stumbled towards the beachside bars with pockets heavy with coins for the slot machines. An afternoon watching a Petey T grindhouse special did not feel appealing as the sun shone like a bullet and the girls of summer sunk  pink and mauve drinks one by one by one. The rigours and sighs of lower league football seemed a world away as seagulls wheeled and cawed above our heads, defecating in spirals of arrogant dismay on the humanity below. Salt and vinegar, and battered sausages; pebbles and sly fumbles by the pier; kiss me quick and hold me tight; let's catch the last train to Hastings.    

Such flights of fancy ebbed away as the £20 tickets began to burn in our pockets and three o'clock neared. Taxis were procured with relative haste and the gentle drive north to Preston Park took us away from our dreams and back to League One.    

You can't complain about the Withdean really, as it's a sad state of affairs for all involved and with fewer roofs than 1944 Coventry, it must be a chilly dungeon for the Albion supporters when winter lifts her skirts. That said, the latest away end, just in front of the triple jump warm up pit but behind the podium steps did not afford much of a view.     

Wycombe lined up in their usual manner, 11 men fairly keen doing something or other but don't get your hopes up. The first few minutes seemed obvious enough; Brighton were appalling and these were there for the taking. Even their ownership of lanky nemesis Liam Dickinson didn't strike fear into the heart, he looked a pale shadow of his Stockport self.     

But as the game limped on and on, and on, it became clear that the only way this would not end 0-0 was either a howler or if Belgrave Harriers turned up for a relay. Half-time arrived eventually and the queue for the food was a Jarrow March for satisfaction. An international weekend means that League One is the top-ranked league in the country for the week but this felt like a non-league game devoid of the humour and camaraderie that £7 match tickets can engender.     

Sitting a bit along from me was former Wanderers utility man and current Peterborough captain Russell Martin and I wanted to scream in his face   “Why? Why are you here, you've got a week off from this hell and yet you came to a game and it's horrible and I can barely breath I'm so broken from years of this fucking shit, and you're a young man in your 20s and you've got a weekend off and you could be at Stonehenge or Cape Town but you're at a tattered municipal athletics stadium watching 15 years of commercialism vomit itself onto patchy grass broken by the pock-marked points of javelins and fat heptathletes.”      

I wanted to say that, but I just nodded hello instead.    

Lateish in the second half Brighton took full advantage of a amateurish piece of defending from the skittish Wanderers defence and veteran's veteran Nicky Forster tucked home in reasonable style. The temporary stands containing Brighton fans punched for the moon and Wycombe supporters clamoured for the exit.     

Walking back through the leafy Sussex suburbs, I thought I caught a glimpse of the fabled League One Dream but it was just a man teaching ultimate frisbee to his au pair. It's a marathon not a sprint.    

]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:34:00 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/i-dont-believe-in-what-my-eyes-dont-see/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/i-dont-believe-in-what-my-eyes-dont-see/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Spy in the house of love]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Ron Waller  
Wycombe 2 Bristol Rovers 1      
We’re off and running, as they say. The two most exciting players at the club produce two most exciting goals, and the win-less phase of destitution is over. Come on baby stop your crying - three points, sun and ice creams for a pound.   
  
For years now we’ve heard that League One was where   we had to get to  . Everything’ll be fine once we’re out of Godforsaken League 2, they all said. It is better, of course, but it doesn’t seem like many people at Wycombe are that up for it. I’m not even that sure I am – it was a close call between this and spending the afternoon   Googling Charlotte Riley  . But I give it a go – a Saturday kick off against a fairly big club is what it’s all about. Before the game, the Hour Glass is full of Rovers fans, Scores is full of Rovers fans, the car park is full of Rovers fans. Turns out there’s a handful of them in the Woodlands as well – effing and jeffing their way round the place, no doubt spurred on by West Ham United’s fat and obnoxious fans the Tuesday before. Stewards insist home fans must endure 45 minutes of abuse, children as well, but they’re used to waiting so there’s little drama. Wycombe fans queue patiently, everywhere. For tickets, for programmes, to change their tickets, to park their car. Adams Park is a Queue-o-rama. Yet Wycombe fans are used to it now and quiet resignation is basically the standard setting for Blues fans these days. 
    
Which is odd really, when you think this is apparently what we’ve been dreaming of for five years. Steve Hayes took the club over amidst words of ambition, glory and the Championship. On the back of a 2-5 gubbing at Carrow Road, that all seemed a little preposterous – one fortunate draw and 3 defeats littered with calamitous defending pointed more to a season long slog against relegation than the next step in the flexible five year plan of Wycombe’s owner. To make matters worse, people claimed Bristol Rovers were decent, had started well, and looked good for 4th in a division jam packed with clubs your mates have heard of. 
    
Turns out they were wrong – Rovers were generally poor and produced a pretty turgid performance, and while Wycombe still conceded a set piece softy and had to rely on   Proper Worldies   to secure the win, this was an uplifting day, not least because it showed that a side sitting 4th caused us very few problems. Leeds and Charlton will battle it out for the title, Southend played football similar to the Brazil 1970 World Cup side, and Norwich were due something pleasant after the start they had. With that lot out the way, we can start the season proper, against sides like this lot.
     
The nitty gritty – Stuart Green seems to be set up in a quarter back position, playing deliberate but well executed 35 yard cross field balls to Phillips and Zebroski, while Ian Westlake  busied round him well. Luke Olivier, filled out and scraggily bearded, looked assured at centre half and Matt Harrold continue to look lively and use the ball well. Taylor’s insistence on using Beavon and JPP together as a tag team substitution, like those twins down your road with whose Mum dressed them in the same clothes and spoke at the same time, is starting to get a bit odd. As effective as it’s been, surely one of those two starting off Harrold is worth a try? Every time they’ve been brought on things have picked up, now must be the time for them to shake off the   Mark Robins Conjoined Twin   role and put at least one of them in the starting line up at Brighton.
    
Pittman’s winner is a screamer, properly roofed past a despairing yokel keeper. Rovers fans get the hump with their team, and rightly so – it’s been a turd Bristolian effort in the second half.  They’re not a happy bunch. Bizarrely romantic scenes of chivalry are on show in the away end from a stick thin young hooligan, sweltering in his green Stone Island anorak, beating away bids on his girlfriend with time honoured gestures and some top class posturing. At half time this almost spills into a real fight as a fat bumpkin in nylon gives it the old stretch and yawn. Wycombe’s stewards look at the stairs and shrug and fortunately the bloke who walks round the ground selling extra programmes at half time manages to sort it all out.
    
I’d like to say the final whistle is greeted with roars, but it’s not really. People seem pleased, but in the sort of way you’re pleased when you feel a shirt on the washing line and it’s dry earlier than you expected, or when an oily pan washes up a lot easier than you thought it would. We’re constantly told that football is a game of   passion  , but it’s not at Wycombe. The fans relationship with the club stinks of a sexless marriage – the separate rooms/stands, the stilted conversations/chants and fake orgasms/goal celebrations. Many look like they’re going through the motions. I think I am anyway. It’s Brighton away next week, but something tells me there aren’t scores of Blues fans booking B&Bs and getting on it next weekend. I’d suspect most of the Withdean away end next Saturday will be on a coach back to Hazlemere by ten past five. I’m not even sure that’s a bad thing. I’ll get back to you.
     
As the players leave the pitch, they’re greeted by handshakes and high fives from a grinning Steve Hayes, who gives off the air of a proud parent on GCSE results day, but one who knows he’s paid through the nose on private tutors just to get the kid A to Cs in the core subjects. He seems elated, and I hope I can join him properly soon. 
    
I’m trying you know, I’m not being miserable. Confusing times, puzzling scenes.
     
We’re off and running, as they say. 



]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 31 Aug 2009 22:14:08 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/spy-in-the-house-of-love/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/spy-in-the-house-of-love/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[You better shape up, ‘cause I need a man]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Stevedore from Tyneside   
Norwich 5 Wycombe 2      

"You lorrrt are shiiirt!". I'd been in my seat barely half an hour but already the local drawl had begun to gnaw away at my spine. Nonetheless, one could only agree with the profound sentiments of the young delinquent dressed up as a steward, bobbing up and down on his dad's lap. This day was one for the scrap book. When you're down and out and Michael Stipes' dreary lyrics merely tighten the hose on your exhaust, think back to the Carrow Road carnage - you'll realise just how bad it used to be and how far we’ve all come.  
    
All those in favour of the Hayes Hyperdrome will have waddled into Carrow Road trying to cover their twitching loins - you know, there's a hotel RIGHT IN THE STADIUM. The shrinking of the away allocation meant the nylon army was seated in an area better suited to the Bayeux Tapestry. And those who usually like to cuddle together and bark out a monotonous mantra had been broken up and separated like a communist-era nuclear power plant. Such were the cramped conditions, there wasn't even space to hang the 12' by 6'. 
    
The early signs on the pitch didn't seem too disconcerting. PT plumped for two up top and both strikers seemed to be working hard and covering plenty of ground - usually to canter after an aimless ball from one of the other eight outfielders. But Naarch seemed a bit cagey too, before they realised the opposition lacked any creative outlets and didn't seem too fussed on organising their back line either. Set piece, plus absent defending, equals goal - multiply that by three and there's your first half. Oh, and a generic lump up field and a kind gesture from one of their mob allowed JPP to tap home. 
    
The second half was interesting for around 90 seconds when Harrold made space and finished well. But then we were subjected to another generic set piece and inevitable goal. It was all yellow and as predictable as a Chris Martin falsetto warble. Another was nonchalantly knocked in some time later with less defensive resistance than a Rohypnol rape victim.  
    
I don't like to single out a player for having a bad day. And thankfully I don't need to on this occasion; the bulk of the team came away from that game looking hopelessly inadequate. The angry Scot in goal made a few decent stops, so he can have a couple of gold stars, but he doesn't seem keen to come and collect anything that's not on his doorstep, so I'll have one of those stars back. Harrold is a decent striker and his general work rate and decent finish showed that but he's in for a long season if the service doesn't improve - big smiley emoticon face for him. Likewise Pittman - he can have a winking smiley face.
    
You won’t want to hear it, but I don’t think even Tommy Doherty can sort this out.  

  ]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:21:16 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/you-better-shape-up-cause-i-need-a-man/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/you-better-shape-up-cause-i-need-a-man/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Talking With Dinosaurs]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Charlton Away, by JohnBoy      

Three hundred words they said over a pint at The Valley in the ole nylon trousers, cod piece and all. So I've been sitting here ever since wondering what the hell was important enough to sanction three hundred words. The match, happily, was an epic. The first half was a bleak-pit but the second half brought about a Wycombe Wanderers that hasn't been seen for a while. No, not one owned by some 'swanky with a silent S' Loan Facilitator but a team that attacked with verve and energy and a Chris Zebroski with two goals to his name. Worth the last £25 in my bank account? Just about.     

It wasn't just the match though. Wycombe Wanderers is far more than the football. Missing the kick off, and having to grab a seat in front of some guy who, still, by his mid-thirties hasn't managed to work out how to shout abuse at a referee without controlling his saliva. But, come the second goal and a 'Chicken Curry Pie' later, a few rows further forward gave a much better view of the glorious banner and a seat next to someone who you'd want to find yourself next to a football match. Cheese and Onion pasty jokes ensued. Enjoyable times.     

But the entertainment didn't stop there. The train ride home was the eventful part. Despite cries of 'Lose the Nylon, Climb a Pylon' if it weren't for said nylon the verging on homoerotic Wycombe fans-the ones who on the train happily waved their stolen seats from The Valley and their removed clothing items in the air- would never have had the opportunity, once the Charlton fans left the train, to sing some utterly poor JohnBoy songs. I think I might write a few better ones for them.    

Frankly though, nothing could dampen the spirits after that performance. If the Chairboys play that way for the rest of the season, they won't go down. And if the Drone Army continue to quit droning and actually support as they did on Saturday, we could be in for a fun ride. Long may it continue. Fuck the summer's deliberations. I still love Wycombe Wanderers.    

    
    Photographer at match signs up for My Single Friend in second half      ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 Aug 2009 11:37:48 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/talking-with-dinosaurs/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0910/talking-with-dinosaurs/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Repaint the Blues, my saving grace]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Old quotes re-hashed  
  
One thing sticks in the   smbu   collective mind, and throat, from the recent takeover of the club, and that’s the now accepted belief that “  it's everyone's fault we're in this situation  ”, how there’s “  no good complaining now old son  ”, and “  no-one never said nothing ‘bout them there debts at the time. Everyone loved the spending spree  .”   Smbu   scratched its head - surely someone said something?.     
  
Of course our more naïve readers will be pointing out that the money situation doesn’t matter as we are being bankrolled by Steve Hayes. In the nicest possible way this is utter rubbish. While Hayes is providing the cash up front, he is not gifting the club the money; rather, he is building up a nice stash of loan notes with which in the future it may be possible to hold the club to ransom, i.e. when he wants to remove the 25% ownership restriction and buy a hotel! He may not have specified when he will be repaid his money, but rest assured that time is coming.   
  Tory Goon, 02.01.2008    
  
Firstly, if there was ever a token, miniscule attempt by the football club to even slightly address the level of debt and its levels of spending, then the idea of a Chief Executive at Wycombe would be laughed at like the idea of playing David Gipp in goal. But there isn’t, because everything is bank rolled by Steve Hayes, and while he is happy to pay for everything, nobody at board level will do anything other than buy him a beer. Wycombe supporters still talk about tightening our belts and living with our means, yet we’re so far away from that it’s almost laughable. Such phrases have been rendered archaic by the way the club is now run. If Steve Hayes wants a Chief Executive, then Wycombe Wanderers has a Chief Executive, employed on a salary that could buy two Paul Bensons and win us the league. It’s not about balancing the books; it’s about what Steve Hayes wants, and his ambitions with London Wasps.   
  Ron Waller, 13.02.2009    
   
With the lack of anything being done about the spiralling debt part of me thinks the club is being intentionally (or not) run into the ground so that we have no option but to sell the ground and become one with Wasps. 
  
Perhaps overall I just don’t share the vision of Steve Hayes’ future of the club. Rattling around in a massive stadium that we don’t own built pretty much for the advantage of a rugby club from London is something that just doesn’t appeal to me.   
  Mr NG, 16.11.2007    
   

What was the club doing about the debt now? Was anything being done to tackle it other than looking at a new ground? The debt was to Major Major himself, but no, it couldn’t be paid off without this new ground – that was clear. 
  
And that was that. Sure, there was a little banter with the inaudible and taciturn Coach McWhat. And a ringing endorsement from the surprise cheerleaders’ cheerleader, Dr Who, but the message was clear: it was Major Major’s way or no way. The thing that nobody said? “I’ve stuck over three million pounds into your club to make it worth less than no pounds. And now only I can make it worth something again. Follow me.” Go right ahead, Major Major, the silent majority silently responded. Go right ahead.
    Joseph Heller, 24.08.2007    
   
Of course, Wycombe fans have a right to ask Hayes some pretty fundamental questions. Among them: Why do we have to move again? How do you know we’re financially unsustainable when you’ve never actually tried to get the club to live within its means? Weren’t you in charge when we amassed those huge debts? If we sell Adams Park doesn’t that mean we’ve lost our ground just so you can reclaim your loan notes that we didn’t actually ask you to put in to the club in the first place? And, of course, isn’t this essentially the same crude threat that was used when we had to get rid of the Constitution in 2004, a move which was supposed to lead to investment into the club rather than to crippling debts? 
  
The simple fact is that the move is not intended to be in Wycombe Wanderers’ best interests. It is all about London Wasps.  
  Tory Goon, 27.08.2007    
   
The Supporters' Trust should be raising money like mad to take over if any of the Directors die or remove their financial support as I can't see anyone-else doing this. 
Neither of the Trusts need to be involved in day-to-day decisions to achieve their aims. The Directors can't tell the Trust what they hear in the boardroom so where has it got us? 
  
Ooh look, we played a match on a Friday because the fans wanted it. Whoopee. Oh, we haven't sold Adams Park because the Founders Trust blocked it. Now, that would be a result. 
  
I am on record as saying that I was staggered that members of the board that got the club into a serious financial position were allowed to take over the club for themselves. My view is that they've realised that the only way they will get their money back is to sell Adams Park and move to a free stadium, thereby releasing the cash to wipe out their debts. 
  
I'm not convinced that this is for the benefit of the club.   
  Tony Crow, smbu interview, 25.01.2008    
   
On average, the club made a loss of £182k per year in the nine seasons it existed as a professional club prior to their rugby tenants. In the five years the club has benefited from the rugby revenue, it has on average made a loss of £892k per year. Taking the above averages into account it would have taken twenty-four seasons to run up the level of debt the club has accrued in that period (ie until the 2026/27 season).   
  
Wycombe Wanderers Football Club spent 10 years in the division above the one they are currently residing in. In that time the club ran up debts of £2.2 million; the league above is not the Promised Land that the managing director is making it out to be. Those debts accrued over a 10-year period are obviously dwarfed by the sums in the last three seasons, which asks the question: why are the club gambling so much money on promotion (increasing staff costs by nearly £1 million from 2005 to 2007)? The level of debt is out of control, to the point that the very future of the club is at stake.   
  smbu investigation, 05.06.2008     
    ]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 20 Jul 2009 10:48:32 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/repaint-the-blues-my-saving-grace/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/repaint-the-blues-my-saving-grace/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[SMBU Hotel Announces New Menu]]></title><description><![CDATA[  
   
  
  ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:36:08 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-hotel-announces-new-menu-/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-hotel-announces-new-menu-/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Financial Retro Overload]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Financial Report  
by Graham Peart      
Wycombe Wanderers F C Ltd. Financial Director.
first published in the WWFC programme 7th February 1998  
      
Dear Supporter,
    
At the AGM last October the Chairman announced that it was desirable to make some minor changes to the Articles of Association. This is the document which sets out the rules of membership, voting in of officers and other fundamental matters. The reason for proposing the changes is simply to bring the rules into line with current sensible operational requirements. Some supporters have made the incorrect assumption that the object is to tidy up details to make ready to float the club on the stock market or to sell the assets to a wealthy individual. Neither option is desirable or indeed necessary. 
    
WWFC Ltd. has a nett asset value in the accounts which places it in the top 12 of all football clubs in England. If the stadium was revalued to reflect recent improvements, the asset value would rise even further. Your club does not have large debts but neither does it have a lot of cash.
    
Some supporters have suggested to me that the Board might seek a wealthy individual willing to put in "a million or two". This is not an attractive option for two reasons. Firstly we are competing with a number of teams where substantial sums have already been injected from outside, notably Watford, Wigan and Fulham. The timing is wrong. We need these teams to get promotion first. In addition teams including Burnley, Bristol City and Preston enjoy much higher income than ourselves due to larger attendances. If you buy expensive players then you also take on wages for 2 or 3 seasons at a level that we cannot justify on current income.
  
So "a million or two" would not go very far. Somewhere nearer 10m might get you a potential championship winning team but with no guarantees e.g. Wolves, QPR, etc. 
    
Which brings me to the second objection. The club is worth around 10m to the right individual. So selling the club for a few million would be doing an injustice to Wycombe Wanderers members. The other consideration is that once sold, control over destiny has gone - forever. Our stability is envied by most other football clubs and very strong reasons would need to be argued to lose that advantage. 
    
Another angle on large cash injections is to look at the longer term consequences. Not always does it leed to happiness amongst supporters. And there is no certainty of the continuing interest of those benefactors. 
    
The way forward is to continue to invest in our youth team and to produce our own young and committed stars. Also to encourage young supporters to visit Adams Park and yes, to wear our fabulous quartered shirt. That way we can build a team which can fund itself and endure. 
    
That is the position today. For tomorrow I cannot predict. Dear Supporter, please be patient. Our time will come again. We just need to make sure that we are in good shape to take advantage of any opportunity that comes our way in the future.
    
Graham Peart - February 1998
Wycombe Wanderers F C Ltd. Financial Director 
    ]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2009 11:56:01 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/financial-retro-overload/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/financial-retro-overload/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[SMBU Owner Lashes Out]]></title><description><![CDATA[New SMBU owner Clive Wolverton has told SMBU's full time ‘moaning pricks' that he has got no time for them in his vision for the website's future.    

He says he wants to embrace the website's positive elements, thought to be three people in Uganda – and says he won’t allow himself or his colleagues to get dragged down by the consistently negative element.     

Wolverton used to be a regular contributor to the website's finances through cash and that, but he has been frequently attacked on it by a section of the readers who, he says, refuse to see any good in anything he does, especially that time he drove over a large dog and put it on youtube.     

Now, after winning his SMBU takeover battle, he has called for readers to get behind the website or face "a hailstorm of bullets so dense you'd think it was night-time".    

He said: “The butchers of mid-Bucks have made their decision [Wednesday's night’s vote to give SMBU to him] and if they want to continue to knock the site I want to marginalise them, possibly by holding them underground.     



“SMBU culture is counter productive. It doesn’t work and it doesn’t achieve anything. We haven't even got any adverts."     

"If the people who spend all of their time moaning on here were to put just five per cent of that effort into doing something positive for the website like a fancy picture or a blog about business I would be very grateful."     

"They feel they have been wronged and they love to write about things that aren’t right and ignore all the good things like the green and white colour scheme and the fact it often loads.     

"I respect people’s opinions when they say SMBU was shit, but now it's great since I took over, but there are clearly some people who think they have been wronged and who will criticise everything. These people I will hunt down to the ends of the earth and harpoon them with my own wiry arms."     
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:37:37 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-owner-lashes-out/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-owner-lashes-out/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hayesy&#039;s Soulless Afternoons]]></title><description><![CDATA[  
  
    
Wouldn't it be nice to have me own big stadium   
And I’ll make it very clear – it’s blue and black and golden  
   
They say I’m a loner, they call me a fool  
But who are you kidding? I’ve taken it all - ha  
Hayesy's soulless afternoons, I've got less loans to call in,   
Close my eyes and laugh away.    
  
Here we all are setting up for League One  
Cor blimey 'ello all you Saints, where have all your funds gone?   
They've been a pushover, so easy to do  
I've even got backing from an old Doctor Who - oh yes!   
   
Haysey's soulless afternoons, I've got less loans to call in,  
Close my eyes and laugh away...   
   
Now no-one can stop me, I’m going to build,  
An empty arena on Booker airfield - yeah!  
  
Hayesy's soulless afternoons, I've got less loans to call in  
Count the rent and laugh away  
Every word the drones obey   
Once I'm bored, I'll be away....
    ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 08 Jul 2009 15:17:38 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/hayesys-soulless-afternoons/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/hayesys-soulless-afternoons/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Hayesy Days]]></title><description><![CDATA[  
      Sunday, Sunday, Monday, Hayesy days   
Tuesday, Wednesday, Hayesy days  
Thursday, Friday, Hayesy days   
Every day is Hayesy's day   
Bringing his loans to you.    
    
This club ain't ours or yours or mine   
It's Stevie Hayes' (oh Hayesy days)   
Ignore the debt, he says it's fine, oh Stevie Hayes.    
   
Hello Stevie, goodbye Kane   
The reasons for this are inane   
It's his play thing, not the fans'   
He's gonna loan us all all he can.    
   
This club ain't ours or yours or mine   
It's Stevie Hayes' (oh Hayesy days)   
No longer ours, or yours or mine, it's Stevie Hayes'.    
    
He's gonna cruise around the town   
To see where he should build a ground   
At the council, he's got friends   
And framed photos he loves to send.    
    
This Football Club ain't yours or mine   
And now he's here we're stuck with   
These Hayesy days.    
     ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 07 Jul 2009 12:45:15 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/hayesy-days-/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/hayesy-days-/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Exclusive: Councillor Lesley Clarke&#039;s Mantelpiece pictures]]></title><description><![CDATA[    ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:09:48 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/exclusive-councillor-lesley-clarkes-mantelpiece-pictures/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/exclusive-councillor-lesley-clarkes-mantelpiece-pictures/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[End of Season Photos]]></title><description><![CDATA[We gave our old pal Tony Pulis a disposable camera on the last day of the season. These are some of the beautiful moments he captured for us:    


      
       
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      
      ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Jun 2009 11:42:26 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/end-of-season-photos/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/end-of-season-photos/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[2008-09 Season Review]]></title><description><![CDATA[  SMBU end of season review 2008-09      

Here be a review of the season 2008-2009 and what happened within it. We are Wycombe Wanderers and this was our campaign. And let it be known, that it ended in success and festivals. And God was glad.    


  August    
The season began in a gloom matrix as playoff failure lingered in the heads of supporters like the Bicester & Vietnam wars, flashback images of black pudding and napalm at Edgeley Park and futile 46-game campaigns locked in the basement with no chance of escape. New signing Lewwis Spence chumped in an opening day rangefinder against Morecambe but when the unfancied seaside icons equalised in the second half the usual rage surfaced, submarine style. A monumental pinging by Birmingham in the League Cup a few days later led sane-brained people to conclude that 2008-09 was going to stink like a nylon sheath and that they were free to book up any bank holiday weekend they liked in 2009.     

But lo, out of the ashes rose a new Wycombe, an old Wycombe, a binary Wycombe. Consecutive 1-0  wins against usually tough Lincoln and Chesterfield brought back memories of Hotel Lambert's famous DOWNLEY DEFENSE, with Micky Williamson and LJ strolling like war veterans in some memorial gardens. Could Wycombe be on the verge of something massive?    

  Image of the month:   Lee Hagger not ending a sentence with the word 'out'.    


  September    
As the Large Hadron Collider was cranked up, Wycombe benefited from a few deflections of their own, conceding only one goal in four games and cementing themselves as autumn promotion contenders
as they had done so many times before. Leading SMBU executives were forced to miss much of the Brentford home game as the Adams Park ticket collection system required a two hour vetting process. Fortunately, they were inside in time to see Scott McGleish have a johnny eppo after being substituted by the manager now known to aficionados as Petey T. Flinging his kit at the bench like a mooing scumbag, former Colchester striker McGleish sealed his fate with the majority of Wycombe fans, who instantly saw through his fantastic 2007-08 season of badly hit penalties and scuffed shots and realised he was a buzzcut coward who dressed like a soldier.    

  Car-park exit of the month:    “Grow up”.    


  October    
October saw hideous levels of global debt vomit chunky spanners into the financial system but WWFC are famously unhindered by the laws of economics and cruised calmly onwards as the woodlands turned brown and the Vere Suite turned brown and everything turned brown. A sexually alluring home performance against Bournemouth ended 3-1 like a result from back in the 1990s, before fanzine collectors and red wine enthusiasts were cheered by three consecutive 1-1 draws. In the midst of this was a bizarre 7-0 Gash Cup reversal against Shrewsbury who were so excited they pumped out a 10 hour DVD of the match that was Shropshire's biggest selling video since that one of a farmer doing a sudoku.     

  Geography of the month:   Paul 'Hotel' Lambert made a surprise move to Essex minnows Colchester United after previously saying he had to return to Scotland to put his children through prison.    


  November    
November saw the highs and lows of the FA Cup as Wycombe waltzed past non-league franchise side AFC 'Wimbledon' 4-1 in Kingston but then were done up against a willow tree in DH Lawrence's home town of Eastwood. On a sloping pitch underneath floodlights made from scented candles Wycombe lost 2-0, and though they had not yet lost a league game, people in the Chilterns wept openly (from sores) in rank fear. No-one had seen this coming as in recent weeks Wycombe had romped past Port Vale at home 4-2 and then got a traditional away win at Meadow Lane. No-one of note had any real problem beating Vale or Notts County as demonstrated time and again in League Two in 2008-09.     

  Snake of the month:   Hotel Lambert made a pathetic attempt to lure Mike Willamson to Col U. Get back in your Travelodge and polish your Champions League medal, you look well older than 39.    


  December    
Wycombe feasted on goals at the start of advent with Magno Vieira's career reaching a definitive high as he laughed two goals past Macclesfield in a re-arranged 4-0 disco dance at Adams Park. Such confidence soon evaporated as the Chairboys finally lost a game, 3-2 away at Aldershot. Half-time saw dismal booing from certain sections of the ubiquitous Drone Army, and sporadic fighting broke out amongst the travelling supporters, solid cracks to the face being mixed with glancing blows and sly pinches. If this was the result of one defeat then just what would happen if the team suffered their traditional winter collapse, mouth-breathing in the dirt by the verge of the A40.     

A win at Shrewsbury just before Christmas was a brief recovery, the Shrews being pre-season favourites for League Two glory, based in their fairly new non Gay ground. The year ended with a brace of 1-1 draws as Wanderers fans steadied themselves for 2009.    

  Coup of the month:   Karen Adams, granddaughter of Frank, became honorary president of the WWFC Supporter Trust. “I hope the club will sell off something named after me in future years,” she joked, “You can't put a price on progress.”    


  January    
As Britain was covered in a piss-blanket of snow and slush, Wycombe slumped to two grimy defeats that gave the chasing pack a mainline shot of glucose, morphine and merlot. First the proud home record fell as likeable strugglers Grimsby won 1-0, then Bournemouth jerked to a 3-1 win on the south coast in front of a lacklustre Wanderers away following. Like the set-list at a Peter Kay gig, the sensations were depressingly familiar. Phrases such as “hey, the playoffs can be decent fun,” and “I'm going to get an AK-47, walk into the Eden Centre and spray bullets until my fingers are stumps” were being banded around. One thing was for sure, the next few months were going to have more grind than an amphetamine-fuelled sheet metal worker.    

  Resignation of the month:   Barack Obama came in but Keith Blagbrough made bigger headlines as he went the other way and quit as director of club after eating three consecutive sandwiches that fell beneath his rigourous standards. Sadly missed.    


  February    
You want the story of February? Four games, two goals. One of them in a predictable reverse at Valley Parade enlivened by a kung-fu attack by Chris Zebroski (how frightening was it? A little bit), the other a Wycombe goal from juicy new signing Jon-Paul Pittman, a man sold to the supporters as being as glamourously American as Quantum Leap or David Koresh but actually as American as Slash is English, ie not very. But that didn't matter as he guffawed through the Dagenham defence to give Wycombe a completely undeserved win five hours down the district line. Two successive goalless draws closed out the second month of the year in dismal style but even the biggest lover of dream football/The Project had by this point sacrificed his principles and was ready to slaughter new-born animals to get out of the division. The sight of Histon at the top end of the Blue Square Premier was proof that if Wycombe did not escape the bottom flight this time round then there was literally no point carrying on.    

  Document of the month:   Wycombe helped produce a document called 'Imagine The Future' for the local council, which was mainly based on the plot of Terminator II and ended with Desborough Road being engulfed in a nuclear holocaust and the Half Moon being run by cruel robots. Plus ca change.    


  March    
Fixture congestion and religious holidays for Beeks Construction workers meant that Wycombe had to play seven games in March and like a rocket fired directly into your very brain, they brought pain. One solitary win saw the chance of the title evaporate and even promotion now looked like a smear on the back of a goods train disappearing into the distance. Anger and blame was everywhere, as people muscled up and launched vile attacks on the players that they deemed responsible. Poor Chris Casement, on loan from Ipswich, looked like a dog on an oil rig most of the time and he wasn't helped by tuneless barracking from the sidelines. Wycombe games now had so much jeering that players crouched on all fours in fear and tore out the few remaining blades of grass from the pitch with their bleeding teeth. A live TV home draw against Shrewsbury snapped the space-time continuum so much that Gary Holt was briefly happy, a fairly unpleasant sight, it must be said. Perhaps the one bright spot of the month was a pulsating 3-3 draw at Brentford. As the match report said, “we can still finish third”. Bravado at best.    

  Comeback of the month:   Numerous Wanderers heroes from the past came on the pitch before the game against Chesterfield and everyone went “fuck, that's actually pretty good”.    


  April    
April was Kevin Big Potatoes time, six more games including plump clashes with direct rivals Gillingham and Exeter over the Christian festival of Easter. Loan signings John Akinde, Frank Sinclair and Lee Sawyer had added something to the team, even if it was just more variety for moaning fans. But, no, something was up, the move into spring had allowed Wycombe to shake off their winter hairshirt and on a quiet Tuesday evening in Darlington the team secured a last minute winner (from Zebroski) that seemed, like in a spleen-shattering Jerry Bruckheimer film, to signal an implausible turn of fate with our heroes back in the groove. After Darlington, Gillingham were turned over. A subsequent defeat to Exeter didn't really shake anyone's ballbag, instead Wycombe welcomed Aldershot to Adams Park and fired a salvo down their meek soldier necks. Thanks for taking our unbeaten run, here's a Monkman ratatouille. WYCOMBE WERE BACK.    

The drive and ambition continued on a balmy Tuesday in Luton, where a zeal-fuelled Wanderers away support roared their team onto a nervy 1-0 win at non-league Kenilworth Road. Now just inches from the chequered flag, the Chairboys needed just a win from their final two games to be sure, and they were scheduled to face bottom-half bandits Port Vale and Notts County.    

  Departure of the month:   Former manager and local commerce king Mike Keen died aged 69. Sadly there was no opportunity for Wycombe fans to pay respects to him at a home game. RIP.    


  Vale & County    
No Wycombe fan in their right mind thought that the league would be decided at Vale Park and it was a blessed relief to see that less than a thousand made the vile and worthless trip north to a place so horrible it doesn't actually exist. Tuning into the game on a 2003 wap phone at quarter past four it was no surprise to see that Wanderers were 1-0 down and heading for gloom valley. Thankfully, loan signing Lee Sawyer, derided by the Drone Army for a lack of walnuts in his opening few games, struck powerfully to hand the Chairboys a draw and one foot in League One.    

The permutations for the final day of the season were numerous but it boiled down to this: promotion could only be avoided if Wanderers shat it down their legs like eggs benedict. Just a draw was enough to undo the work done by Timber Tony Adams and Lulu Sanchez in 2004. Even defeat could be acceptable as long as Bury didn't manage to swing the goal difference in our meaty faces. But it wouldn't come to that, Wycombe had sold out Adams Park and people were crawling out of the woodwork at some pace. It was all set for a memorable day.    

Sadly, the Wycombe team stuttered nervously and phlegmed up their lines like Romanian actors as a Notts County team officially described as “gash” on the Football League website strolled around Sands like the Hitler Youth. Fans cowered behind their facepaint and chagrin as County cruised into half-time 1-0 up thanks to a 60 yard shot that Jamie Young ushered into his goalnet with sickening hospitality. A second half equaliser by captain Dave McCracken seemed to be enough but a last minute winner from the world's oldest league club left Wycombe fans young and old defecating into bins as those with wireless access to Gigg Lane relayed a sickening train of events that seemed all too likely to end in woe.    

But after five years in this wretched basement they call League Two, Jesus smiled on Wycombe Wanderers and Bury could only ease past Accrington 1-0. The pride of Bucks were up, back at the level they have been so keen to return to, and the fans celebrated by turning on each other in faction-based hatred. This is what makes our club special and they can never take it away.    

  Image of the month:   Different species dancing together in a car park like a sci-fi Darwin disco. These were the salad days.    


  Conclusion    
A season that began in nervous agitation ended in exactly the same way and much of the middle portion was nothing to write home about either. But after seasons of trying to play our way out of this division, thank the Lord that Petey T came along and taught every single one of us that League Two is a bitchy prison that you can only escape with dockyard grit and every excuse in the book. 1-0 wins, 1-1 draws and throwing cup games like Hans Segers at a birthday party is the only way to crawl out of this pit and we've done it. Where WWFC can finish in League One in 2009-10 is almost irrelevant at this point. We've come out of soccer Strangeways blinking eagerly in the winter sunshine and maybe this time we can go straight. Maybe we really can.    

Viva Wycombe, Viva the Blues.    
oily sailor - May 2009     

]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 15 May 2009 00:43:49 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/200809-season-review/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/200809-season-review/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Toxic Loans - Part 2]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Marcus Halberstram  
    
..so where were we?...ahh yes…the Noughties…a time of excess built on a foundation of credit; money that in truth just didn’t exist…Bankers were living it up in their Lear Jets while the rest of the UK picked bits of pepperoni out of their hairy navels whilst stuffing a Dominos into their cakehole. While they were sat there watching the latest reality guff on their brand new 107 inch plasmas which had been bought on the “never never” Bankers were creating different forms of derivatives (which no one – not even now – really understood how they worked)…but they were making money; that was all that mattered….the great money grab was on, as a trader if you were given “half a bar” as a bonus by your boss you’d be slamming the door behind you in disgust…”greed is good”….”you snooze you lose” ….well in fact we did snooze…in 2007 we slept walked our way into the mother of all financial car crashes. CDOs were the catalyst…NINJA (no income no job) mortgages in the US were starting to go the way of the pear (well there’s a surprise)…these had been packaged up as gold plated loans and an investment bank version of pass the parcel ensued…suddenly the realisation was that these were potentially worthless…confidence evaporated….panic followed…banks lost trust in each other and wouldn’t lend to each other…credit on the wholesale markets dried up a few months…. 
    


What did this mean to us?...well at first, it meant we had to get used to the coiffured look and drawling tones of a certain R. Peston popping up in our living rooms every night…that was coupled with the sight of thousands of pensioners crawling out of their tents with a flask of horlicks whilst queuing up at the local Northern Rock branch to get their life savings out. Lloyds bought HBOS…HBOS was toxic….Lloyds becomes toxic…..bad news followed bad news…bailout followed bailout…it was one big almighty belly flop straight into a global recession (…depression anyone?).
    
Next Week – What does the future hold?
    
  TOP TIP:   On standard variable?…get hooked up with a 5 year Fixed Rate sharpish…
    ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 31 Mar 2009 14:45:38 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/finance-finonce-with-marcus-halberstram/toxic-loans-part-2/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/finance-finonce-with-marcus-halberstram/toxic-loans-part-2/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Toxic Loans took my home]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Marcus Halberstram      
“Credit crunch”, “Quantitative easing”, “Credit defaults swaps”….who’d have thought that these words would enter the daily vernacular of the average Wycombe supporter?  The G20 meet next week (not to be confused with the G14 European footballing elite) with a crisis on their hands…a Global recession, 50% wiped off shares values, Credit lines have dried up, 2 million unemployed and rising…against this backdrop we are sure to see a rising level of civil unrest with bankers being the first target…in my eyes it won’t be just the back window of Fred the Shred’s Merc that’ll be stoved in come the revolution…at Christmas we saw activists entering the RBS head office   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3xEfNyCH9Q&feature=related   …in time we’ll see much worse…that time could well be next Wednesday (aka Financial Fool’s day)…I’ll be lending a couple of trader mates my stab jackets and wishing them bon voyage as they board the 6.30am to Paddington…watch this space…
    
But how did we arrive at such a situation? – Part 1
  
      
    
In my eyes “if you don’t know your past you don’t know your future”…back in 1920s a stockmarket bubble was created and ended in the Wall Street Crash and the Great Depression….in the fall out from this the Glass-Steagall Act was introduced (aka the 1933 Banking Act), it’s job was simple…to keep retail banking and investment banking separate…a sensible move I hear you all say, who wants their hard earned savings being placed on a 3 legged donkey called Sinbad in the 15.30 in Mohali….well, in his wisdom Bill Clinton repealed this act on 12th November 1999…and believe me the City partied like it’s 1999 until the onset of the credit crunch…your normally staid Banks such as Barclays, RBS etc suddenly started involving themselves CDOs (Collateralised debt obligations), CDSs (credit default swaps), SIVs (structured investment vehicles), and no doubt STDs (well certainly the bankers smashed on Cristal who headed to the high class knocking shops during those debauched times)…even Loans companies were to blame…ratcheting up peoples debt levels having obtained cheap credit through the wholesale markets…you’ll note that certain loan companies were sold for many millions of pounds during this period, I’d described these millions as “the fruits of reckless lending and impending misery”…money was being lent out to people with very little being asked (“can you afford to repay this”….”yes”….”here’s 25 bags then”)…all the while no one was looking ahead to tomorrow….it was like flying first class and then landing in Rwanda in 1994…
    

  This week's TOP TIP:  
    
BUY OIL
    ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 26 Mar 2009 12:25:14 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/finance-finonce-with-marcus-halberstram/toxic-loans-took-my-home/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/finance-finonce-with-marcus-halberstram/toxic-loans-took-my-home/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Wycombe keep falling down that same hill]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Wycombe 0 Rochdale 1  
Robert Dwyer  
    
ADAM LE FONDRE's celebrations following his last minute winner for Rochdale were no doubt tinged with more than a little relief, after spurning a glorious opportunity just before half-time, somehow heading wide from no more than five yards.
     
The vistors profligacy had looked to be costly, as they dominated the game but failed to make the most of their chances. They weren't alone however, and unlike Le Fondre, Wycombe's Matt Harrold wasn't given any opportunity for redemption after missing a gilt-edged chance for the home side. 
    
The Wanderers top scorer put goalkeeper Frank Fielding under pressure and the former Blues loanee smashed his kick against the striker who was faced with an opportunity to run the ball into an open goal. As the visiting defenders desperately ran back to protect their goal, Harrold dwelt on the ball for too long, neither shooting for goal nor looking to square the ball to a team-mate, and the strikers hesitancy proved costly as Fielding's desperate challenge knocked the ball loose and it was hacked off the line by a grateful Simon Ramsden.
    
It was symptomatic of the home side's performance, and betrayed a group of players desperately trying to hold their nerve as results becomes ever more decisive in the context of the season. Whilst the visitors made their intentions clear from the start, passing the ball with precision and purpose, their opponents looked indecisive and tentative. Le Fondre might have won a early penalty after being checked by Leon Johnson but referee Clive Penton was having none of it. 
    
Lewis Hunt, returning from injury, was given a torrid time by Nicky Adams, and the home side were grateful to Marek Štěch, who was called upon to deny Le Fondre and then Lee Thorpe before Scott Wiseman's fierce drive drew a fabulous stop from the young Czech goalkeeper.
    
His opposite number, Fielding, was also called upon, and he showed his credentials with a double save, blocking Lee Sawyer's close range effort before acrobatically saving a powerful shot from Harrold.
    
The two seemingly pivotal misses then followed as half-time arrived without a goal. 
    
The home side were clearly the more frustrated. There seemed to be a complete lack of belief, from the players on the pitch through to the supporters in the stands. Fear almost seemed to paralyse the home support, and this fear was being distilled back into the Adams Park atmosphere as a low-level hum, like a detuned radio, devoid of any rhythm. It was almost as if there was a collective cry of "I want to believe", but it takes some will to see a golden goose, when there's just a turkey in front of your eyes.
    
Peter Taylor made the change many wanted to see, John Mousinho replacing Lewwis Spence, but the second half continued in the similar vein to the first. The home side struggled to contain the visitors, who continued to dictate, having won the midfield battle. Every time Holt, Mousinho or Sawyer put the fire out, another one crackled into life, and the home side's hopes seemed to rest on a visitors mistake. However they still couldn't find an avenue past Štěch, who continued to command his area impressively.
    
The frustrations continued to grow as the game wore on, Phillips, who struggled to overcome his own personal battle with the pitch was replaced by Zebroski, who continued to struggle to overcome his personal battle with himself. Matt Harrold looked a forlorn figure, any confidence that remained having drained away after his first-half transgression. John Akinde, struggled with his own growing pains, and his replacement, Jon-Paul Pittman struggled to see much of the ball at all. 
    
For that's what it was - a struggle. There was a time that the pieces fit, but the home supporters have had to watch as they tumble down and fall away. With it comes the desire to point the finger and with just seconds remaining, not only did calamity befall the suffering home side, but it came drenched in irony. Štěch, who had performed so admirably, sent a weak goal-kick out to Adam Rundle, who tormented Hunt one last time, before crossing low for Gary Madine. His effort on goal was blocked but he reacted quickly to turn the ball into the path of Le Fondre, who finished empathically to reap the rewards of a deserved victory. 
    
The home support screamed their agonies, but were left with just more introspection.
    ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 24 Mar 2009 09:12:06 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/wycombe-keep-falling-down-that-same-hill/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/wycombe-keep-falling-down-that-same-hill/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Picadilly Palare]]></title><description><![CDATA[Brentford Away by oily sailor     

Every pub in Brentford/Ealing has the same name: "The New Inn", so
meeting up with people can be a tricky business. "I'm in the New Inn" Barry Kool 
texted at half past 10. "I'm eating a Thai breakfast of snakes and ladders," Peg Henderson barked
into his '98 Nokia. "Shit," I thought "I'm the only one in the New Inn, so where are they?" Turned
out I was in the Lesbian Dockworkers New Inn on Beeks Road, opened in 1906 for workers constructing a ship canal between
Ealing Common and Wembley Arena. Glenn Miller was going to sail to his gigs in a u-boat but funding
ran out.      

Thankfully, everyone managed to find each other by midday and four minutes later the south Ealing
luncheon crowd were glowering into their Guardians and London Review of Books as an impressive
SMBU crew tucked into microwaved potato wedges and Cava. The girl in chunky bins behind the bar was
offering phone numbers left, right and centre and it was shameful to see people leaning over and 
whispering catchphrases and Twitter IDs into her not over-sized ears.    

This was a football day and there was clearly not enough concentration yet. WAS THIS AN OMEN? Yeah, probably.
Fast forward a couple of hours and the Wycombe defence would be up to the same tricks, letting in a goal
so early the Drone Army had not yet abused any player deemed UNACCEPTABLE because of lack of passion
or religion or failure to spend enough time in the Vere Suite being coated in crumbs from sausage rolls.    

The game began, as mentioned, in the worst possible way. The Bees fans, swelled because it was nice
weather and Wycombe are a nice team, were feeling nice, because they were ONE UP. Depression swept
the away terrace like a hurricane and grown men wept as they realised that the last time Wycombe 
came from behind to win was 1984 in a reserve game. "I'm getting out of here," sneered one fan, before
realising that he was on day release and the van with dogs was outside, engine ticking over.    

Then, MIRACLE, Wycombe equalised, it was the new lad. AKINDE. "Let's grind out a 1-1," sang the
fans, "We'll draw our way to promotion like a diesel truck." But Brentford didn't take long to 
reassert their control of the match, with David Hunt swinging in a free-kick that eluded everyone
and flopped into the net with sickening grace. "We need a team full of Hunts," someone near me may
have said and I could only turn to him and say "Yes, yes that's true."    

Stewards were watching Wycombe fans closely as belts and ties were removed. Was a mass suicide on
the cards? No, people were merely preparing themselves to go to the toilet at lunchtime. You can't
go adequately if your belt is on and your tie is swinging like a divorcee in Wendover. But before the half-time
whistle sounded Wycombe came up with another goal, Johnny Mousinho, pride of Amersham, doing the
business against his old team. All those training runs up Rectory Hill had paid off. The interval
was passed with older fans explaining to youngsters that Wycombe were allowed to score twice in the
first-half and that it had happened before.    

Optimism went through the roof within minutes of the restart as new icon John AKinde waltzed down
the pitch and pummelled a howitzer into the goal. "We'll probably win 3-2" sang the fans, optimism
coursing through their veins like Tizer. And we may well have done had Tommy Doherty not kicked out
at a prone David Hunt. "Heal the Hunt," shouted some Wanderers fans, concerned that the kick may
have caused the Brentford player some pain.    

The equaliser came with only eight minutes remaining but for once it was not too much of a blow. A
3-3 at Griffin Park was beyond the imagination of most people before the match and the glistening
muscular presence of John Akinde has given fans new hope as the last 10 games rear up dangerously.    

Traipsing out of the ground into the fading March sunshine it was hard to avoid the feeling that
the 2008-09 season had been saved from a dismal fate. As we walked into a New Inn, one fan turned
and pumped his fist. "We can still finish third," he roared. Aye, we still could, you know.    

  twitter.com/SMBU      ]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:09:05 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/piccadilly-palare/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/piccadilly-palare/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[38 Days That Shook the World]]></title><description><![CDATA[  John Reed  
    
It’s been 38 or 39 or whatever days since Matt Ashcroft took over as the second ever Wycombe Wanderers Chief Executive. From Day 1 to Day 41 or whatever, it’s been eventful, and action packed. What a rollercoaster it has been.  For us all. 
    
When Mick Ashton got appointed, many people were sceptical, some were quizzical, some were clinically obese. But if one man has answered his critics, especially the fat ones, it’s been Marc Ashtin.  Sometimes actions speak louder than words. Sometimes no actions speak louder than no words. Sometimes no words and no actions speak louder than some words and some actions. Louder than bombs. And the bouquets for the big man from Hatfield or Stevenage or somewhere around there have been not been shy in coming.
    
Bryan Seeping, Vice-President of the Wycombe Wanderers Fans United Club, was gushing in both his  praise and his skin, “This Ashington guy has really showed us the way. Just keep it down, play it cool, no need to get busy. He is the man to take us forward. As Iain Duncan Smith sensationally once quipped to great acclaim, ‘Never underestimate the determination of a silent man.”
    
Even 6th most popular WWFC fans website   smbu  , have congratulated Ashen, which is a big surprise because it’s written by the sort of boring blokes you get stuck with at away games, banging on about the constitution and the Trusts when all you really want to do is drink your own bodyweight in vodka and head for a Bolivian limbo club. Trevor Legg, editor of the site, commented, “This fella is showing the way ahead to do things we’d all like to do. Get into work, get to your desk, lock the door and watch back to back episodes of Peep Show on your laptop. Couple down the White Horse at lunch, maybe stick your head in for five minutes if the Ressies are at home on a Wednesday if you really have to, back to the office to Google Image Search Reece Witherspoon all afternoon. Give the BFP a quick 150 worder on the hands-free on the way to Moor Park on a Thursday morning and everybody’s happy.”
    
It’s a refreshing change from the whingeing deadbeats of Wycombe Wanderers ‘worrying websites. The Chief Executive is rumoured to be getting himself settled nicely, finally getting his vinyl in alphabetical order and selling crates of Australian Shiraz out the garage. On top of that, there’s news of Ashbourne playing session guitar on the new Pete Greenwood album, re-visiting some old Slowdive sessions, as well as getting some of his own material laid down in studios in Studley Green.  
    
With all this going on, it’s no wonder he keeps himself to himself. As far as this correspondent is concerned, WWFC have finally got the CE the club needs – let the players do the talking on the pitch, while the backroom boys keep it in the shadows. 
    
To the boring critics rotting in their bedsites, learn from the best, keep it on the Hank Marvin, for all our sakes.
    ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:37:44 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/38-days-that-shook-the-world/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/38-days-that-shook-the-world/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[SMBU on Twitter]]></title><description><![CDATA[Match report from Brentford coming soon.     

In the meantime, nerds and zeitgeist lickers can follow SMBU live on Twitter:     

  http://twitter.com/SMBU  
    
]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 16 Mar 2009 16:10:53 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-on-twitter/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-on-twitter/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[With never the need to fight or to question a single thing]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Dagenham & Redbridge 0 Wycombe Wanderers 1  
  
  JKDH  

    
Following a week where much has been said about WWFC topics bigger than the issue of getting 3 points at Dagenham (see elsewhere on SMBU for that but suffice to say it is not the time to merrily bob along with your head in the clouds and a mouthful of pie) it was time to concentrate on GETTING 3 POINTS AT DAGENHAM.  Massive.
      
Dagenham is nowhere near London whatever anyone tells you. Yes it’s on the tube, but so is Chesham.  But when the fixtures come out it’s up there on the list of BIG away trips. Even on a Tuesday. Laaandan, innit.  Nothing was going to stop the army of Wanderers fans descending upon Victoria Road though. Not on your Furtado. That said, the eerily empty tube was cause for temporary concern but a 500 strong turnout were in full cry (note: this report may be prone to wild exaggeration) eager to see if the reports from Valley Parade were true: “We’re playing well and the new chap looks decent”.
    
Zebroski can be a tad infuriating, don’t you think?  The mist of valentine red that rained down on Bradford was fortunately not accompanied by a large dose of claret, lucky boy. Both of them.  Petey T will sort all that out, but for tonight Wycombe are Zeb-less.  To some the team lose energy, work rate and a willing runner who might nick a goal. To others it is a blessed relief not to be at risk of getting the ball in your face as a result of a professional footballer trying to trap a ball.  It’s all about opinions.  
    
Never trust a ‘keeper in short sleeves they muttered.  But there he is, Jamie Young, and we’re in yellow with Mousinho and Bloomfield providing the (ahem) width in a retro 4-4-2 formation. I momentarily thought I had lapsed into a surreal, Lambert infused, narrow midfield nightmare. But it’s actually OK because The Jamie Young Show is in full swing and - get a load of this - the new chap looks decent.  The rest of the side looked nervous as the swaggery Daggery types piled forward.  No surprise either – if Zeb is out then someone else is going to have to take the abuse if we are not 3 up after half an hour.  Poor Chris Casement.   
    
There was swift passing, good movement, and plenty of ball-out-wide-cross-it-in-gung-ho football on display. All of it towards the Wycombe mob and the ‘keeper with the short sleeves.  Fortunately, the open terrace allowed the tutting to drift into the night.  Wycombe remained solid, occasionally teasing us by venturing forward, with the midfield four trying to get the passing going. Harrold and Pittman were willing targets in front of them, rebuffed in the main by the excellent Okuonghae and the entire home midfield who had clearly read all the weekend tales of a bearded midfield genius and swarmed around Doherty if he dared to put his foot on the ball. Strevens had a couple of efforts, predictably one went in, but the flag went up.  Fear not, we went top of the league keeping things tight, no need to panic.  It’s all part of the masterplan. Half time, huff and puff, 0-0.
    
However, there was a moment to come that mattered. One moment that signalled that Wycombe are still here, are still up for the challenge and definitely still in the promotion chase and the title race. A masterstroke for the masterplan. Prompted by good football from Doherty and Bloomfield, the new chap controlled, turned, accelerated and finished with aplomb into the corner of Tony’s net in a moment of rare quality.  
    
Fast forward to the 95th minute and I have rarely been so relieved to hear a final whistle and see a big fat ZERO on the goals against column.  This was not a vintage attacking performance from the Yellows and the Daggery attacks became monotonous in their inevitability, but centre halves and a short sleeved ‘keeper continued to head, block and clear with able support from those around them.  A nod in the direction of Gary Holt, he looked like a happy Gary Holt.  I was happy and Gary Holt was happy.  This is a good thing.
    
The new chap looks decent.  Everybody loves him.  
    ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 18 Feb 2009 16:37:55 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/with-never-the-need-to-fight-or-to-question-a-single-thing/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/with-never-the-need-to-fight-or-to-question-a-single-thing/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Executive Decision]]></title><description><![CDATA[  SMBU Editorial  
    
In July 2004, 94 members of Wycombe Wanderers FC voted against the idea that one day the club could be controlled entirely by one single person. Over four years later, that one person, Steve Hayes, now finds himself in such a position. The debts owed to Hayes mean that his vision, of life intrinsically and inescapably linked to London Wasps Rugby Club, is the one we are forced to follow, with the only alternative being financial ruin. The appointment of Mark Ashton as a non-Executive director of Wasps, as well as Chief Executive of Wycombe, is the clearest indication yet of the future we as fans have to look forward to.
    

Mark Ashton’s past at Vicarage Road is largely irrelevant. The ferocity of the criticism directed at him by Watford fans doesn’t bode well, admittedly, but it remains the actual appointment itself, rather than individual appointed, that should send warning signs to Wycombe supporters. 

 
    
Firstly, if there was ever a token, miniscule attempt by the football club to even slightly address the level of debt and its levels of spending, then the idea of a Chief Executive at Wycombe would be laughed at like the idea of playing David Gipp in goal. But there isn’t, because everything is bank rolled by Steve Hayes, and while he is happy to pay for everything, nobody at board level will do anything other than buy him a beer. Wycombe supporters still talk about tightening our belts and living with our means, yet we’re so far away from that it’s almost laughable. Such phrases have been rendered archaic by the way the club is now run. If Steve Hayes wants a Chief Executive, then Wycombe Wanderers has a Chief Executive, employed on a salary that could buy two Paul Bensons and win us the league. It’s not about balancing the books; it’s about what Steve Hayes wants, and his ambitions with London Wasps. 
    
 

Secondly, Mark Ashton’s position as a non-Executive director of Wasps and what is represents, which is the idea, once again, that Wycombe Wanderers are not enough. Not enough for Steve Hayes, not enough for Wycombe District Council, not enough for Mark Ashton. Steve Hayes couldn’t have attracted someone of Ashton’s experience and ambition by only offering a role at Wycombe. And WDC won’t build a new ground for Wycombe Wanderers without London Wasps. Steve Hayes wouldn’t pump millions of pounds into WWFC if all there was at the end of it was a League 2 title for Wycombe and an open top bus ride through Downley. It will never be enough. This is the future we face – a football club that sits as an after-thought, an irritating little brother that keeps failing his promotion exams, despite its Uncle Steve spending millions on their education. Buck your ideas up son, or it’s Military School/John Beck as manager for you. 

 
    
For us, Wycombe Wanderers are more than enough and it’s been that way for a hell of a lot of other people for over 120 years. It is a thoroughly depressing realisation that the future of the club we love is in the hands of people who, frankly, need something else to keep them interested. 

     

If we have to accept that we’ll never be Manchester United, or we’ll never sign a player for a million pounds, or we’ll never have a ground that holds 20,000 people, then so be it – we are what we are. Tagging ourselves onto a rugby club in order to chase some strange reflected glory in a stadium that isn’t ours, financed by people with one eye on the rugby results, personally, just isn’t my cup of tea. But, with a Wasps director installed as the Wycombe Chief Exec, there’s very little chance now of being able to drink something else. 
    
 

Chin chin, and all that. Excuse me if I pass.
    
]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:30:09 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/executive-decision/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/executive-decision/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The future is not what it used to be]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Robert Dwyer (SMBU Oracle)  
    
With the appointment of just the second ever CEO in our history, it's tempting to look back, doing so allows us the opportunity to understand how we got to this point after all. If you would like to learn how WWFC was administered in the past then you could do no better than read the finest article ever to be published on the official website,
    
  www.wycombewanderers.co.uk/page/History/0,,10430~1291004,00.html  
    

Perhaps now is the time to look forward to the future, to see what it holds for us. After wee all have our individual and collective hopes and dreams, and they're rightly focused on promotion, goals and glory. However even Nostradamus would baulk at trying to predict football matches, so we'll leave that for another time. Any success on the pitch however will rely heavily on the decisions taken off the pitch and with the arrival of our new CEO, there will be plenty of them to be made.
    
Let's not get confused or mixed up here, Mark Ashton may have arrived, and he may have taken up a powerful position, but the driving force behind WWFC is one man, and one man only, Steve Hayes. Alongside Chairman Ivor Beeks and director Brian Kane, he holds approximately 25% shares in WWFC PLC. He also holds the position of Managing Director, however it is yet to be clarified how much of his day-to-day role as MD will now form much of the new CEO's job description. Clearly things have changed considerably in the last few months, Steve Hayes now owns 97% of our tenants London Wasps and this will impact significantly on his time, never mind his deep pockets. Remember Steve Hayes is a family man, married with four children, and his commitments and responsibilities are vast. It is understandable that he has brought in a CEO to share the workload.
    
So what does this workload entail? It certainly includes a new stadium, the big vision which forms the central part of the future of WWFC. A 20,000 capacity "community" stadium, to be shared between London Wasps and WWFC. The preferred location of the new stadium is the 204-acre site of Wycombe Air Park, the freehold of which is owned by Wycombe District Council (WDC). WDC have earmarked £750,000 to cover planning issues and carry out a feasibility study, however this has been postponed temporarily due, in part, to the current financial and ecomonic conditions.
    
This study is just the first stage of what will be a long and complicated road, yet Steve Hayes is a determined and tenacious man, as his estimated wealth of £100million might suggest, and he is far from alone. The new stadium is part of a huge project with a number of big stakeholders, in addition to WWFC, London Wasps and WDC, there is Bucks New Uni, the company that will be running Wycombe Sports Centre and Surinder Arora, a property and hotel tycoon. Arora, with an estimated wealth of £225m, is the owner of the Arora Group, part of which is Airways Aero Associations (AAA) Ltd, who currently lease Wycombe Air Park from WDC for a peppercorn rent. AAA's lease expires in 2014.
    
The new stadium is to be funded through an enabling development scheme. The details of this scheme are unlikely to be revealed for some time, although discussions are likely to have already started and will continue for a while yet. However, with the information currently available, the obvious assumption would be that WDC would provide the land, the Arora Group would fund the building of the new stadium, and WDC would give permission for the Arora Group to build a hotel alongside the stadium and other corporate and sporting commerical facilities. London Wasps and WWFC would sell their assets, particularly Adams Park and the training grounds in Marlow Road, Booker and Twyford Avenue, Acton. The income from the new stadium and associated businesses would be shared between all the relevant partners.
    
The planning process could take a number of years, but could be completed and permission granted for building work to start in 2014, which is co-incidentally when the current lease on Wycombe Air Park expires. Allowing for building work to take two years, it would be realistic to suggest WWFC could start the 2016/17 season playing in a new stadium.
    
The sale of Adams Park and the training ground would, hopefully, cover the current debt level of £7.2m, leaving WWFC in a new stadium, debt-free. However in the four years since WWFC became a PLC, it has lost an average of £1.29m a year. If this average were to continue for the nine years to 2016, WWFC would be £18.81m in debt. If this debt was to be continued to be to covered by Steve Hayes in the form of loan notes, he would be owed £17.46m of that debt. Remember he has a new CEO to pay, and he commanded an annual salary of £494,000 in his previous role at Watford. These kind of figures can soon become confusing and lose their meaning to some, but must be frightening to others.
    
None of this will be news to Steve Hayes, nor hopefully to anyone else closely associated with safeguarding the future of WWFC. In pursuing his vision of a new stadium, Steve Hayes is clearly committing to these (rough) timescales and finances, and so he will be around for at least another eight years, excluding any unforseen circumstances. During those eight years Steve Hayes, in addition to the creation of a new stadium and his family, has both a rugby club and a football club to run. Both clubs will need continued significant investment, which could be close to £15m each in that time. Not least of these will be increasing capacity of Adams Park to adhere to the rugby governing bodies rules.
    
Eight years is a significant amount of time in anyone's life and in that of a football club. In 2016 Steve Hayes will be 55 years of age and possibly looking to retire. Almost eight years ago to this very day we were preparing to face Wimbledon in the Fifth Round of the F.A. Cup. Things were very different back then, and I started this piece by suggesting it was time to look forward, however tempting it is to look back. Having found that temptation to difficult to resist, that F.A. Cup run is a reminder about what all this is supposed to be about, wonderful memories and all the glory, and a joy it brings that can't be bought or found anywhere else. It was also a shared joy and shared dream about what we wanted, and where we wanted to go, together as a football club.
    
The future of WWFC is now being shaped by one man, but is it a shared future? Is it the future, you the reader, and more importantly, fellow Wycombe Wanderers supporter, wants to see come to fruition? If not, the next time you bump into Steve Hayes, or a PLC director, perhaps you might like to mention it to him.
    
Heaven sent you to me. We are accidents waiting to happen.
    ]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 13 Feb 2009 15:28:16 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/the-future-is-not-what-it-used-to-be/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/the-future-is-not-what-it-used-to-be/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Kind Of Blue]]></title><description><![CDATA[  
There are plenty of people who have turned out to be not as bad as first thought, Maxine and Franz Carr spring to mind. It is with this universal truth in our minds that SMBU turn to the official announcement that new uber-leader and Big Cheese Mark Ashton is to be unveiled at Adams Park. He's here at last.    

You've all read the Watford Observer online (for the first time, admit it); you've all heard the tales from across the border. "He destroyed the Hornets", "He promised a Jacuzzi but we got a paddling pool on top of a manhole", "He used to cross the border and raid Amersham high street in a van". We've all heard it, but is it necessarily true?     

Remember, Watford fans are so insecure and weak-minded they used to crowd into the Valley End in the early 1990s to watch plucky Wycombe conquer the non-league. They used to do this in their Watford shirts and their Watford scarves and ruffle our hair and say things like "Guppy should ask for a move to Vicarage Road, he deserves it."     

In short, they’re lily-livered and not to be trusted.     

Furthermore, it's a staunch Wycombe Wanderers tradition that we don't have a pop at off-field staff before they've actually made a sopping wet balls-up of the scenario. No, at Adams Park it's only footballers who get trash-talked and stepped-to before they’ve even pulled on the sacred nylon.     

So we say this to Ashton: clean break, blank sheet of paper, new pair of trousers. We've all left jobs with gunshots ringing in our ears and barbed wire tangled round our glistening frames. You've now got to look out for WWFC and WWFC alone, no matter what the brochure says.     

We've got 122 years of raw Bucks history to defend and that's your job. If you think we   truly   need a new stadium then make a genuine case for it, don't point to blurry PDFs and average hotel income from 2006, a long-gone era when people still actually stayed in hotels rather than hunching up together on the backseat of a Mondeo with a scotch egg.     

Good luck – you're in charge of one of football's big boys now. Wycombe remain giants in our hearts.     

  POSTSCRIPT:   This article was written before WWFC slyly announced that Ashton would be a non-exec director at Wasps as well as CEO of Wycombe. The fact that this turn of events didn't even occur to the cynical hacks at SMBU shows how ridiculous the scenario is. What is going on? Our club is disintegrating around our ears into a pit of tarnished coins.    ]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 11 Feb 2009 12:49:22 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/kind-of-blue/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/kind-of-blue/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[SMBU announce corporate shake-up]]></title><description><![CDATA[  SMBU executives have today announced that due to internal cash flow problems, internal fighting and internal bleeding, a new Chief Executive has been appointed. The City of Radnage and the NAZSPACK stock exchange are said to be "monitoring events on a computer of some sort".    

          

The new broom is expected to develop urgently needed money-making schemes for SMBU and improve relations with local press, if only temporarily.    

Speaking to reporters at a press conference, SMBU major shareholder Jerry Bruckheimer said "it's about time, the pricks in charge at the moment have ballsed this up once too often." Former SMBU contributor Tucker Chump noted "I paid $4.9m into the organisation's pension scheme and all I got was a glossy brochure and a 24-hour a day prostitute hotline. Neither was in any way useful as I am illiterate and was castrated in 1992".    

The new CEO has yet to make a public statement but she expected to change SMBU's font colour from green to yellow and add another 10 readers a month.    

]]></description><pubDate>Fri, 30 Jan 2009 11:36:52 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-announce-corporate-shakeup/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/smbu-announce-corporate-shakeup/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Carpe Diem]]></title><description><![CDATA[  SMBU - we don't do previews.  
Robert Dwyer   
  (SMBU Football Correspondent)   
    
"It's a crucial couple of weeks Jim, these games will define our season." They could be the words any of the managers of the current top ten league two clubs will be firing towards local hacks this afternoon.  The next two weeks or so could be pivotal. The pack are chasing and the Blues are being drawn back in the battle. Peter Taylor has seen his side falter for the first time this season and we now face the acid test to see if we can remain flying high. The former page 7 pin-up is hunting high and low for additions to his squad, and he is far from alone, with transfer deadline day looming like old father time. Could we see Dartford's Cody MacDonald in the quarters soon, or will he be another Robin Shroot (now at Birmingham City) or Graeme Montgomery (now at Dagenham and Redbridge)?
    
In their next five games the Chairboys face two home games, with sides in the bottom half of the table, and then three away games, against sides right behind us in the hunt, lurking menacingly like George Michael in a public convenience. Talking of menaces, first up is Accrington Stanley. You only have to go back to last season's opening game, when Paul Mullin put a spanner in the works. They're on a tidy little run and won't be any pushovers. But they're only Gnasher to Barnet, who are a real Dennis. We've only beaten them once in six football league meetings. They've had a change of manager, Ian Hendon replacing Paul Fairclough, who has moved upstairs. The Bees have one-time Wanderers triallist John O'Flynn in their side, who is in decent goalscoring form and Albert Adomah, who sparkled like a diamond in a dimly-lit football ground back in October. 
    
Meanwhile, Dagenham and Redbridge are at home to Darlington whilst Shrewsbury Town face Brentford at the new meadow. Darlington then have to travel to Bradford City on Monday evening.
    
The window will be shut by then, and the blinds drawn. Well, no-one really needs to see that. It's time to gird your loins and prepare to march into battle at Darlington, Bradford City and Dagenham and Redbridge. A visit to the Quakers, and a possible nightmare vision of the future, a horrifically oversized football stadium with three thousand dead souls wishing their lives away. Enough of that, I'm a positive person. HIV positive. 
    
Darlo boss Dave Penney, who complained about the new stadium's playing surface last Saturday, may be forced into a transfer tango, with Tim Ryan and Franz Burgmeier both suspended for the Blues visit. With the impressive Jason Kennedy in midfield and the potent Pawel Abbott and Liam Hatch up front, they'll be a real test of the post-Williamson Wanderers defence. If selected, the Darlington match will be the last of Chris Casement's one month loan.
    
Meanwhile Bury meet Dagenham and Redbridge at Gigg Lane and Gillingham take on Bradford City at Priestfield. Brentford play their game in hand on the Blues on the Tuesday away at Accrington Stanley.
    
It could be a Valentine's Day massacre at Valley Parade the following Saturday. The pain starts when you'll be asked to hand over a score to get in. In the times of a credit crunch that really does take the biscuit. Talking of slumps, the Bantams are sliding quicker than the banks share prices. Currently 9th and with just a solitary win in their last ten matches. Stuart McCall has brought in QPR's Zesh Rehman in loan, and it'll be interesting to see whether they can stop the slide before the Blues visit. It'll be your last chance to catch Angelo Balanta in action for the Blues, as his loan spell comes to and end and if you do make the trip to Yorkshire, pick up a copy of The City Gent, the Bradford City fanzine. It's been going for more than 25 years and whilst it's no Wetlands by Charlotte Roche, it is a cracking good read. 
    
The fivesome ends with a trip to John Still's Dagenham and Redbridge. Still must be a candidate for manager of the year already mustn't he? They possess so many potent goalscorers, from Paul Benson to Sam Saunders, Matt Ritchie (on loan from Pompey) to Ben Strevens. Strevens has of course been linked to a move to Adams Park and could be in the quarters for the visit to Victoria Road. Sod's law dictates that if he stays put he'll be on the score sheet. Whilst the Daggers have scored plenty, they've leaked a few too and Still has brought in defender Aiden Palmer from Leyton Orient on a month-long loan.
    
The cool cats will trot out the ultra-cool post-modern deluxe football cliché coined by Sir Alex Ferguson, "it's squeaky bum time". Quite why you'd suffer from flatulence when you've got Michael Carrick, the best midfielder in England, spraying sublime passes around like it's the second coming of David Carroll is beyond me. Especially when your title rivals are floundering like Lawrie Sanchez on Setanta Sports News. We're no fashion-mongers here, at SMBU we've got our dancing trousers on and we're ready for the disco inferno. Peter Taylor and his boys are just suffering from a love hangover, hang on in there baby, keep on jumping and League Two will soon be dancing to our tune once again.
    ]]></description><pubDate>Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:53:55 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/carpe-diem/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/carpe-diem/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Penniless and tired, with your hair grown long]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Ron Waller  
    

Not been much on   smbu   recently, so there’s plenty to catch up on. A blasé round-up of recent endeavours is what’s needed, so toss a jumper round your shoulders, kick back with a pine cone mojito, let go a chunky gas pie and we’ll reconvene in half an hour for some meek discussion and weak tea. 
    
 

  Top of the league, we’re having a laugh  ; the glum faced Wycombe fans drearily croon each week. Could be true of course, if having a laugh consists of traipsing round the country slagging off Lewwis Spence, pausing only to gently mop your heavily bleeding gums with a burger stained serviette. He let us down of course, old Lewwy. We stuck up for him like misguided foster parents after a Knock-Knock Ginger session lead to a borstal stint, only for Lewwis to shin the ball like   Shinnidine Shinndan   forty miles over the bar against Bury when clean through on goal. But he’s alright you know, other than that. Many Wycombe fans like to scream at 19-year-old footballers that are far better than they’ll ever be; the bitterness keeps them warm. But stick up for him, and you’ll feel a whole lot a warmer. 

     

People do seem anxious though; I guess losing to Grimsby at home will do that to you. We need a reaction, preferably in the form of the whole squad lining up and performing   This Time (More Than Any Other Time)   in front of the away end at Bournemouth this Saturday. Some coastal breeze will calm people down, or at least provide some nearby choppy waters for suicidal super-fans not content with losing two games by late January. Petey T is doing the business chaps – update complete. Two league defeats   at the time of writing   is the kind of record that precludes a manager from the amateur tactical analysis football supporters tend to dish out at this time of year. I once left Adams Park in the autumn of 2003 and saw a middle-aged man thrashing about with his hand down his trousers, lurking in the bushes just to the left of the Loakes Park gates. I caught his eye and he looked at me as if to say, “I’ve got a stapler down there that I just can’t get to work.” For some reason I believed him, and for some reason I believe Peter Taylor can get this club promoted this season. Keep it up, you Joker-grinned Leigh-on-Sea scamp. 
    
 

Off the pitch, the Supporters Trust and the Founders Trust merged like an abstemious old couple that have fancied each other for ages finally having a roaring bunk-up. Their new website is a good one, and their membership price is a cheap one (£10). Joining is a no-brainer so go to   www.WycombeWanderersTrust.com   and fill a form in. The Trust still have two Plc Directors of course, one of whom is the temporarily appointed Dave McGee who replaces the out-going Keith Blagbrough. Dave is well known as chairman of the Trust, and for employing ultra negative Catenaccio tactics as manager of his son’s team in the Stondon Park  under 8s league. He seems the only man for the job, and good luck to him. The role to me, at least, is as the fans representative to the Plc board - and as long as it stays that way round, he’ll do just fine. 
    
 

Not that there’s too much for him to do at present. The Trust is set up and ready for action – quietly attracting more members and tidying up its act. The new stadium and the future with Wasps loom large, but almost frustratingly in the distance. The Trust can and will do nothing until the detail arrives but the detail, like attractive young women at the Little Missenden Chess Club, shows no sign of turning up. There remains a nagging doubt about those who harp and carp about the debt, the new stadium and Wasps – that for all the validity in their argument, they seem unable to enjoy, debate and appreciate the actual football. For all our worries about the clubs future, watching Wycombe play should be an enjoyable experience, and talking, learning and loving the game of football is not the same as burying your head in the sand. 
    
 

Every Wycombe fan should enjoy going to games, be they the woman in the Valley End who looks like a cheeky hybrid of Lou Beale and Lou Macari (known as “Lou” to avoid confusion), Steve Hayes, the yummy mummy in the red ski-jacket in the Family Stand who reads Jodi Picoult novels during the game, Dave McGee, Ian Mather, and the old boy who wears seven different shades of beige and does the Telegraph crossword stood in the rain at the front of the Valley. Caring about the death of the club doesn’t necessarily require the death of fun, on match days and in general. Let us never see a world where your favourite Plc director is more important than your favourite player. Your favourite article of association shouldn’t trump your favourite ever goal. While we’re ready for the ideological punch-up should the Wasps merger and new stadium finally screech into town, foot stomping and grumpiness are faintly ridiculous when you’re top of the league. In short, we’ll fight them on the beaches - but whilst wearing Speedos and aviators doing a massive conga line. 
    
 

More updates   soon  . (2010)
    

]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 20 Jan 2009 10:18:02 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/penniless-and-tired-with-your-hair-grown-long/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/penniless-and-tired-with-your-hair-grown-long/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Cocaine, coffee and other great South American exports]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Wycombe 4 Macclesfield 0  

  
  William Poths  
    
If you’d told me five years ago you’d seen Wycombe win a league game 4-0 featuring Scottish and Northern Irish internationals combined with Brazilian, Colombian and Belgian flair I would probably have told you to put down Football Manager and get out more. But that’s exactly what happened at Adams Park last night against Macclesfield Town. 
    

Some of the best matches at Adams Park have been witnessed on cold, wet midweek evenings, from the overturning of a 3-0 first leg League Cup deficit to a team near the top of the Premier League to lead 4-3 on aggregate, to the 1-0 win over Manchester City, to the 5-0 thumping of promotion chasing Burnley in one of our narrow misses from relegation. There is something magical about midweek games at Adams Park. Maybe it’s the atmosphere, maybe it is the fact Adams Park really is in a temperature-sink that works to the home team’s advantage, or maybe I’m talking bollocks and Adams Park doesn’t feel two degrees colder than the rest of the town – but it clearly does.
    

Arriving in Scores for a pre-match beverage it was obvious that the SMBU reporting team weren’t the only ones expecting arctic like conditions – some bloke in a red ski jacket looked more like he was about to do the blue run at Val d'Isère than watch a football match. But he wasn’t alone. Everywhere you looked there were hats, scarves, gloves, thick coats, thicker coats and even the flip-flop lady was wearing shoes tonight.
    

  Scores done, admission complete, warm drink obtained, made kick off?  
    

Getting into Adams Park post PLC conversion has been no easy task, especially for the pay on the day fan. By the time you’d queued for your ticket, given them all manner of information presumably used for an identity theft scam, queued again this time to get in the ground, been strip searched because your iPod looks like a machine gun hidden under your coat, you were lucky it was only 10 minutes into the game by the time you’d taken your place. The latest new “trial” by the PLC board is a sensational idea called a “Pay on the Gate Turnstile” – that’s right folks you now only have to queue once to get into a football ground and not have to hand over pointless information. It sounds like a daft idea that had existed and worked very well for over 100 years up and down the country prior to WWFC PLC but that would be really cynical.
    

On entering the ground in no time at all, even having time to get a cup of coffee from the kiosk, I had the pleasure of watching the kick-off at Adams Park for the first time in ages. Thank you Wycombe Wanderers for listening to the supporters.
    

  Gaelic steel and Samba style  
    

With four changes to the team that lost at Eastwood, brought about by injuries and the availability of loan players, the team looked on paper lightweight, with Ultra Magno making his full league debut and a host of youngsters scattered throughout the side. However, that is never going to be the case in a side containing Gary Holt and The Beard.
    

The Beard orchestrated proceedings as usual, spreading the ball around and bringing everyone into play, and it was fitting that he forged the breakthrough by picking out Vieira’s run across the line who controlled nicely and fired past the despairing Macclesfield keeper. 
    

Following the opening goal Wycombe really did control things. Balanta and Moussa were really looking the part. Knowing they had the security of two former internationals holding 19 caps between them supporting in midfield, they were allowed to express themselves at will. 
    

  Columbian pure  
    

Moussa picked out Balanta with an exquisite pass on the stroke of half time. The Colombian attacked the full back, cut inside and rifled a shot into the top corner for what will surely be a goal of the season contender. The only comparison I can draw from watching Balanta is “Darren Currie with pace”. He is destined for much bigger things than “League Two” and is an absolute pleasure to watch. So often you see 18 year olds bottle it when a burly 14 stone centre half tries to shoe them up in the air, but not him – a drop of the shoulder, a step over and he’s gone.
    
Ultra Magno made it 3-0 early in the second half. A punt downfield from Scott Shearer caused a mix up between Town defender Shaun Brisley and keeper Jonathan Brain and Vieira fired into an open goal.
    

A Lewwis Spence free kick was saved by Brain on 71 minutes but it only fell to Leon Johnson who fired home to seal the three points. Macclesfield never really threatened the Wycombe goal and Matt Bloomfield got a run out for the final five minutes marking a remarkable return from injury.
    

This really was a superb display by the Chairboys. Petey Taylor was forced to make changes to the side that played at Eastwood and they came through convincingly. For anyone who has yet to see Moussa and Balanta playing together, I’d strongly suggest you get to Aldershot and home to Luton. They may well not be at Adams Park for much longer. 

]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 03 Dec 2008 11:23:13 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/cocaine-coffee-and-other-great-south-american-exports/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/cocaine-coffee-and-other-great-south-american-exports/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Five Alive - Number Two]]></title><description><![CDATA[  The Five Greatest WWFC Football League Haircuts       

Five Alive is back with a heavily researched study of the best hair masterpieces of Wycombe players in the last 15 years.     

          

  1) Darren Currie       

Where can you start but with Darren Currie. The buck-toothed relegation expert stayed loyal to the hybrid Hoxton fin/dot.com.mullet long after even the most dirge-souled media nodes had moved on. Currie’s hair was ugly but effective, the very opposite of the way he played football. Even now, scientists at CERN are attempting to discover whether his flappy mane was the reason that his corners sailed into the winter sky troubling nought but hawks and kites.     

  2) Gary Patterson      

There wasn’t much to cheer in late 1995 as Alan Smith started to choke the very life out the club with his withered hands. But a live TV clash with Gillingham in the FA Cup gave the watching nation a chance to observe Gary Patterson’s magnificent set of curtains, swishing in the air like a slightly less offensive Ian Walker. Patterson’s long range screamer inspired him to lift off his shirt and run ecstatically towards Smith in what is now the away dugout. A freeze frame of that image now seems a hundred years old; Smith gainfully employed as a coach and Patterson’s swingy swingy hair. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone. 
    

  3) Craig Faulconbridge      
Craig Faulconbridge came to Wycombe as a talked-up but limited shaven-headed striker but the awaited flurry of goals never arrived. He fell into a routine of regular injuries and was on the long term list when the Sanchez era drew to a grim close. So it was a great surprise that John Gorman restored the ‘Faulcon’ to the team, even more so when people glimpsed his luxurious blond hair, shaped like something from the Chart Show Indie charts. He had reinvented his playing style too, now a wolfish creator supreme rather than a drab goal grabber. Alas, injury struck once again and Craig and his hair disappeared from the professional game as swiftly as they had arrived. 
    


  4) Rob Lee      
Rob Lee is infamous among Wycombe fans for his dismissive attitude to the club once John Gorman had been relieved of his duties. Children across the county still recite “I play for John not Wycombe Wanderers” on Bonfire Night but you could not be so dismissive of Lee while he actually deigned to play for the lowly Chairboys. His trademark flecked side-panels of grey were easy to spot, even on murky days. At first glance he looked like a self-satisfied badger, and WWFC has seen quite enough of those in the 21st century.

    


  5) Ian Stonebridge      
Last, but certainly not least, is the most conventionally haired footballer to ever ply his trade in the British Isles. Ian Stonebridge was certainly not a man to take risks, either on the pitch or in the salon but he deserves a mention for the steely devotion he showed to keeping his neat head frozen in time. Patrick Bateman may have had his hair cut every two weeks to keep it just so, but Stonebridge had 2mm shorn off with a candle every three days. Like action man or a Japanese cartoon character, he looked the same every single day of his career at Wycombe and the fans loved him deeply for it.
    

  Are there any classic do’s missed in this list? Add them below.       



]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 02 Dec 2008 00:05:13 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/five-alive-number-two/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/five-alive-number-two/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Five Alive - Number One]]></title><description><![CDATA[    Five Alive is a new series on SMBU, each one examining five of the greatest things about Wycombe Wanderers Football Club.        

          

  The Five Greatest Night Games at Adams Park...       

  1) Wycombe 1-0 Slough – March 23, 1993.       

It’s hard to believe now but there were fears that the attendance could be hit as this re-arranged game was stuck on a Tuesday night. In the end they came, everyone came. Adams Park has never been fuller than it was that seething March evening with Wycombe and Slough fans alike climbing and falling down the bank behind the Woodlands like a real-life game of Lemmings. Even the Valley Terrace was transformed for one night into a proper terrace with men older than 23 starting songs and the knowledge that if you went for a piss, you were never, ever getting your spot back.     

  2) Wycombe 1-0 Manchester City – November 10, 1998      

Fitness instructors across south Bucks must have been heartened to see the number of people jogging up Hillbottom Road on November 10 1998. The reason for their torrid burst of pace was total gridlock meltdown as the world and his fat wife wanted to see Wycombe take on Manchester City   in a league game  . City had sold their allocation, of course, and had even supplied the Gallagher brothers and Goldie to sit outside the Woodlands bar. Even a Chalfont millionaire couldn’t get them to keep the curtains up during the game. Anyone who offhandedly dismisses the Neil Smillie era at Wycombe should be forced to watch this game on a loop. It was electric.     

  3) Wycombe 2-1 Millwall – December 19, 2000      

Each game in the FA Cup run has it’s own loyalists, with rarity nerds clinging onto Grimsby away like an RNLI lifeboat and populist buffoons still showing you pictures of their trip to Villa Park. The true highlight of the run, in fact, was the replay at home to Millwall in the second round. Not only had Lions’ boss Mark McGhee proclaimed that his side would have it easy on Adams Park’s lush pitch (remember those days?) but many Wycombe fans were of the opinion that it would be better to lose as we only had Grimsby in the next round and the team needed to concentrate on the league campaign. Instead, Paul McCarthy produced an overhead kick and the Millwall fans got stuck on the train near Seer Green & Jordans. The rest is history.     


  4) Wycombe 3-8 Aston Villa – September 20, 2005      

The only defeat in this list but what a game. This was the night that it became clear that Honest John Gorman was not a football manager but a deranged necromancer so committed to what would become known as The Project that he   didn’t even know what the score was  . Yes, they may have chuckled on Sky Sports News as the Villa goals rained in. Yes, the Villans in those days were a morbid shell of a team under David O’Leary but it remains the case that at points in this game Wycombe tore them open like a dog getting into a frozen pizza. It was the start of a crazy few months of situationist art on grass.     


  5) Wycombe 4-2 Rotherham – October 1, 1996      

For any kid whose teenage years started in 1990, it was an era of unbridled joy. New grounds, Trophy finals, promotions, Wembley, TV games, Billy Bonqua. You simply didn’t get this at Redbridge Forest. But then came the darkness, the sticky black horror of Alan Smith and the mid 1990s. Phlegmatic Wycombe supporting veterans had seen this before but the new generation was genuinely repulsed at what was happening to what had been in their eyes a holy club. The relief, therefore, when Wycombe powered to a 4-2 win in the first game after Smith had been given a Beeks Bullet was palpable.   Things were back on track  . They weren’t, of course, but that’s another story.     

  Are there any classic games missed in this list? Add them below.       





]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 25 Nov 2008 11:59:57 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/five-alive-number-one/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/five-alive-number-one/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[The hills were smoking as the men withdrew]]></title><description><![CDATA[  AFC Wimbledon 1 Wycombe 4  
  
    Stevedore from Tyneside    

    
“It’s going to be like playing on a paddy field”. “My mascara will run”. “I haven’t owned an umbrella since 1986”. “Are tracksuit trousers waterproof?” The melodramatic outpouring from all corners of South Bucks and beyond on Monday afternoon was washed away come the end of the evening, not by the intermittent cloudburst, but by a sleek and slick Wycombe performance which harked back to the O’Neill era. 
    
Whereas the 1994 FA Cup outing to Hitchin was never going to end in mascara-laden tears (despite the BBC’s wishes), the thought of a trip to the commuter hell that is Norbiton did leave a few Petey Taylor doubters showing signs of nerves. And who can blame them? The South West Trains bourgeois (non) express from Waterloo was rammed with suits tooled up with golfing umbrellas and number-locked briefcases – the corners of those things are well sharp. 
    
Some members of backroom staff seemed fairly relaxed before kick-off, with the sweat-fuelled live entertainment of the Sir Robert Peel helping half a bitter go down in record time. 
    
  You just walk right in, walk, walk, walk right in   
    

The Adams Park stewards have received some praise of late and even left with OBEs from a recent customer service awards ceremony. But those in the fluorescent jackets at Kingsmeadow also deserve a special mention. Not only did they ask which team we supported when asked where the away end was, they also let us stroll into the ground without even asking to see a ticket;   a waste of £10.   A cash only turnstile is one thing, but no turnstiles at all is another league - er, quite literally.
    
Right, time to all cram under this roof. There’s a gap. In we go. Nice and cosy. Should I just piss in the pocket of the bloke stood in front of me? Nah, there’s no queue for the toilet here. There’s no queue for anything. This is more like it.  A couple of minutes’ silence for our fallen comrades, followed by a minute of arse scratching whilst the camera crew yomped across the pitch, and then the game was at full throttle.  
    
  Making good use of the things that we find  
    

Well, Uncle Bulgaria and co were running about a lot and winning corners. The chair brigade were soaking it all up though: drizzle, harder drizzle, balls into the box, wayward passes, sloppy defensive passes… oh, a goal. My, that was easy. And it’s Matthew “Matty Harry” Harrold who’s scored. That’s nice. 
    “
Come on Wycombe, they’re rubbish”, cried the small child behind me. Well, had he been able to see the pitch, he’d have realise we were just a bit too good. But point taken, kiddo. The Dons centre halves were about to team up for a spit roast on Zebroski, but he flicked it on to The Prince, who mugged the keeper and slotted home. That kid was right after all; they’re not that good really. And there’s a first half hat-trick for Matthew! A lovely slot home. What? Oh, off the post was it? Sorry, didn’t see that one. The message on my phone revealed the keeper made a good save. Well done him. 
    

  Hot chip   
    
Half-time came and went in a haze of steamy chips. It was the most comfortable I’ve been at a game for years. If I could have kicked back with a spicy cocktail, I would have. But those wet conditions could always cause a few issues, you know. Just one slip and they could be in. And then it was. Looked like it shot off a shin pad/knee/ankle/clavicle and their bloke tapped it in. Their fans were pumped, that’s for sure – one bloke actually took his scarf off and swung it AROUND HIS HEAD. 
    
  A local player, for local people  
    

Thankfully Local Hero John Mousinho decided to take control. A Keith Ryan-esque charge into the box created a gap in their defence bigger than Dr Challoner’s School gym, leaving it to Matty Phillips to park the ball in the net and become the third, or possibly fourth, or maybe fifth youngest player to score a first team goal. 
    
Chants of “easy, easy” emanated from a part of the away terrace covered with a halitosis and smegma-scented cloud. But the fourth goal was just that. The Challoner’s High School choir hit another octave as Mousinho stroked a ball to The Player Formerly Known As Average to jog on to, get down on his knees and hump the ball over the line. 
    
All credit to the plucky non-leaguers for giving us such a pleasant evening. But Petey and the players deserve most of the plaudits for a truly convincing and “professional” performance. 
    





 

 
]]></description><pubDate>Wed, 12 Nov 2008 14:05:11 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/the-hills-were-smoking-as-the-men-withdrew/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/the-hills-were-smoking-as-the-men-withdrew/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Little Shop of Horrors]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Ron Waller  
    

  Browsing the dim back corner of a musty antique shop, opened an old book of poetry. Angels flew out of the pages, I caught the whiff of a soul.  
    
There is one place at Adams Park where you don’t have to queue. And it is the only place. The Programme Hut stands alone, like a proud war veteran dressed only in his pyjamas, the pin from his medals drawing blood from its heavily wrinkled man boob. That hut reminds us of the football we all love, reminds us of the players, the goals, the blood thirsty challenges, the embarrassing defeats, the thirty yard screamers and the squandered open goals. Too often at Wycombe Wanderers other things get in the way – politics and personalities, ticketing and bickering, drab internet characters sapping the life from football with battles of semantics. But in the hut, it’s all there, there in black and white and occasional smeared colour.
    
You can never underestimate the influence of musty smells and nose hair on the smbu generation – a sizeable collection of Wycombe fans trapped between a bookish romanticism for football’s history and traditions and hedonistic matchday drunkenness, designed to take the edge off dreary fixture lists. Programmes, comics, fanzines, annuals; they all played their part in captivating the imaginations of young kids. Whether it was   Hot Shot Hamish   for whom scoring an overhead kick from 30 yards was an easy tap-in, or the puzzle page in a programme, the earnest football literature of the past somehow resonates like no other. And it’s all on offer in one tiny, less-than-shiny hut. Go on, give it a try.
    
As one   smbu   contributor put it, The Hut has seen a   whole lot of sex and a whole lot of memories  , and it’s hard to believe that at least one of the sales team in The Hut hasn’t given the thumbs down to a home game with Macclesfield in favour of double locking the plywood door and getting down to an afternoon of bespeckled rumpy-pumpy with a saucy classroom assistant from Widmer End.  Even the most conservatively minded readers must have wondered why those Bob Lord Trophy programmes are quite so crumpled and why Barry White bellows from a tinny speaker behind the FA Trophy collectables.
    
But even the steamy side of The Hut can’t diminish the innocent, wide-eyed romance of the place, a haven for the quixotic dreamers that reminisce of the days before four course executive lunches and club websites with 15 full-time writers with sales targets, ringing   Wall Street style   bells when the hits reach 50 for the day. That Hut might as well sell Mills and Boon and be staffed by Barbara Cartland look-a-likes, such is the soaring romance. Take a look through just one of the programmes, any one; they’re all the same. Slanted diagonally across the cover are the Match Sponsors, local shops or gangs of yobs who’d drunkenly decided to sponsor a game after staying for one too many on a Thursday night.   Today’s match sponsors are Ted, Bob and Reg from Downley – thanks for the tenner you tight bastards.   Fast forward twenty years and the same sponsors would need a countrywide bucket collection just to pay for a match day ticket at Adams Park. To sponsor a match, they’d be flogging kidneys or splashing petrol round head office like a mid-nineties Phil Mitchell.
    
Then there are articles. Actual articles – you remember them. Bits of writing designed to inform and entertain, not just try and sell you something or brainwash you into NEVER STOPPING GIVING US YOUR MONEY. People even offered their own opinions. John Goldsworthy’s programme notes of the late 80s read in 2008 like polemical tirades from The Morning Star¬ – rallying against ID cards and the like. It is astonishing, life affirming and when it’s topped off with grainy photos of perms, taches and kits you’d long since forgotten, it’s hard to beat.
    
A world away then from the thought of watching Wycombe in a 20,000 capacity, all-seater black and gold monstrosity up in Booker. But even that lies in the shadow of the programme hut, and all it stands for. Who would bet against the club’s articles of association having a lost clause that any new stadium must incorporate The Hut within the dugouts or main stand? Many in the Valley End believe that if nuclear war were to hit Sands, The Hut would stand, with only minor tearing to the covers of a few Reserves team programmes in the front plastic boxes. 
    
The history detailed in 50 years of programmes isn’t one of bitterness, but one of glory and style. The overriding feeling on leaving the queue-less Hut is a positive one. It hammers home why we bother, why we started a bizarre ritual of traipsing round the county supporting a football club from Buckinghamshire. It documents everything we’ve experienced, loved and hated, ate and drank. The point of it is to revel in the past and make us bother with the future. There’s a lot of moaning, resentment, fear and loathing about the future, and sometimes, on the Internet and at the ground, it becomes all encompassing. To let that happen is to miss the point and a crying shame. Supporting Wycombe Wanderers shouldn’t be joyless and grey and textbook. 
    
Look at Celtic Day last season. On paper, and on the gasroom, a strange and perhaps insulting idea that our support is so poxy that we need to take the begging bowl round to Celtic to try and get some pity filled, second club fans. In reality, it was superb. A chance to meet some fanatical followers of a big, weird football club, sing some super songs and witness up-close some of the biggest glasses ever manufactured. Vests and blazers, teeth like wheelie bins but hearts like dustbins, the 40 Celtic fans embraced the day by drinking from 7am and rounded it all off by being dragged screaming out the double doors of the Vere Suite and chased round the car park by some of the unfittest looking stewards in the Western World. In 20 years an 18-year-old Wycombe fan will read the full story of that day in a programme bought, well, you know where.
    
Hit the Hut. 
    ]]></description><pubDate>Tue, 04 Nov 2008 10:46:56 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/little-shop-of-horrors/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/home/little-shop-of-horrors/</guid></item><item><title><![CDATA[Mark the blanket where the sparrows play]]></title><description><![CDATA[  Rotherham United 0-0 Wycombe   
TGAS      

The first thing I thought when I approached the bizarre structure that is the Don Valley Stadium, is how much I missed Millmoor. Not something I thought I would ever say, but it’s true. The football phrase ‘corridor of uncertainty’ was born from the alley that used to take you down to the away end and it was a good attempt at a lower league ground. .
    
What’s worse than the Hayes dream of four and a half thousand fans rattling around in a 25,000 all-seater stadium? 3,471 fans rattling round in a twenty five thousand all-seater stadium - with a running track.
    
I essentially have three main problems with running tracks at football matches.
    
1)	It takes me back to a painful childhood memory. Circa late 80s I ran in the final (that’s bigging it up somewhat as there were no heats or semi final) of the county 100m at our beloved Handy Cross. Winning after 5 metres I was duly swallowed up by the rest of the field, trailing in by at least 30 metres. It was at that point I realised I’d always have to model my game more on Teddy Sheringham than Tony Daley.
2)	The other end of the pitch is almost impossible to see.
3)	I wonder if the teams can even hear the supporters or if it makes it akin to a Sunday league kickabout on the Rye.
    
To be fair, the first half wasn’t much off the quality you would see in such a game, apart from two majestic pieces of play from arguably the two best players on show.
    
Firstly, the Doc feigning a clip up the line, waiting for the onrushing Reuben Reid to go airborne then dragging it back inside before scooping a pass forward, was worth the trip alone. The fact that Reid had to be carried off, potentially due more to embarrassment than injury, made it all the sweeter.
    
Secondly, Willo making a beeline for a ball that most centre backs would have left to go out of play by the corner flag. Not only did he drag it back into play, but then put in a couple of shimmies that Gupps would have been proud of, before delivering a first class cross. If only he could have got on the other end of it as well we might have actually looked like scoring.
    
Thankfully, this was as stereotypical a ‘game of two halves’ as you could get and the Blues came out looking like a different team in the second half. The travelling fans were also a different class, dropping the drone army fuelled and frankly pitiful attempts to rip into the Rotherham faithful, and replacing it with vociferous backing for the team. It worked.
    
Apart from a top draw save from the boy Shearer, it was Wycombe making most of the running and the introduction of Matt Phillips was certainly a catalyst in making our play somewhat more ‘entertaining’.
    
To be fair, Rotherham were trying to knock the ball around, although I got the impression they aren’t quite good enough to play that way yet. Our own ‘tidy’ midfielder Gary ‘I hope Gary Holt is happier now’ Holt was content to pump the ball up into the wind. Maybe some of the Rotherham players should have taken note, especially the defender who put Matt Harrold through on goal, with a better pass than we managed to find all day. Another bleedin’ obvious observation, I know, but dear Matt is no Robbie Fowler. I agree he does do a lot of fantastic work in the build up but he didn’t even look half confident of finishing this early Christmas present. I couldn’t help but feel that a certain sulky Northampton bound veteran would have mopped it up like a naan.
    
Another goal fest then, but still enjoyable. Fair play to our fans for making a fist at producing an atmosphere and fair play to the Millers faithful for even turning up to that woeful establishment.
    
One final thought - they obviously don’t think much of their football tenants seeing as they didn’t even turn the bloody scoreboard on for them. Maybe that would have saved a certain female roving reporter the embarrassment of giving the full time score as 0-1. Either that or in her head Harrold had finished his chance and we were still top of the league. I know that’s how it was in mine.

    ]]></description><pubDate>Mon, 03 Nov 2008 15:46:41 +0000</pubDate><link>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/mark-the-blanket-where-the-sparrows-play/</link><guid>http://www.smbu.co.uk/match-reports-0809/mark-the-blanket-where-the-sparrows-play/</guid></item></channel></rss>