I'll Think of a Better Title Sometime

And here's one I made earlier...

            I was originally going to call this One Man and His Blog under the pseudonym Phil Drivel, but thought that might be too obscure a reference.  Unkind souls might also have described it as the likely readership figures. Did I say unkind ? I meant realistic.

            Many years ago I read that Panini ‘guaranteed’ that if you bought a box of their stickers you’d get the set. At the age of 30 I was writing for Exe Directory and had enough ‘spare liquidity’ (from my job, not writing for ED, you understand) to buy a box. So I did. And whilst I had to write off to complete the set, I did indeed manage to get the whole collection without having to hang around schools or try to swap stickers with the children of colleagues.  I repeated the experiment at the age of 40 and had no real intention of doing it again until I hit 50.  But then City brought out a sticker album.

            The main problem with the club’s shameless attempt to nab children’s Christmas money* - sorry, I mean sticker album - is that it starts with 53 stickers but there are blank spaces for others to be added if City make any signings.  So that’s an indeterminate number of stickers in the set for a kick off; the stickers are in individual packets of 5 random stickers but you can’t buy a ‘box’.    I had to set myself some sort of target in order to avoid buying the odd packet here and there at random. So I decided that I’d buy in one fell swoop one packet for every Saturday between New Year’s Day and the end of the season.  18 weeks, 18 packets, 90 stickers aiming to get 53 different ones – a wastage rate of just over 40% - an achievable target, I think.  Also, unlike Panini, there is nowhere to write off to to complete your collection by buying the last odd few that you need.

            A further complication is that there are stickers which can only be obtained by visiting businesses, such as Bertie Cozic’s crêperie, but I might be able to get away with looking like an anxious parent/ grandparent rather than a sad, lonely weirdo.

            Oh, and the concern that if I don’t complete the set with the packets I’ve purchased whether there will be anyone to swap with come the end of the season.

 

*I don’t mean this, honest.

 

7th January 2012                  Chesterfield 0 City 2

            I open the first packet (note to self: although it’s a blog, not every entry should start with the personal pronoun) and the first sticker is number 13: Daniel Nardiello. Thirteen: unlucky for some – a bad omen ? Also in the packet are stickers of Guillem Bauza, Lenny Pidegeley, Jimmy Keohane and the left half of the team (for those of a certain age this is not someone who plays ‘left half’, but the left side of a team photo that takes up two stickers).    Bauza comes into the team for the game against the Spireites and Nardiello plays too, although both are involved in a lot of City’s forward play – as you’d expect – neither scores. However, the left half also contains all the players on the other stickers I have got today and, topically, Liam Sercombe who scores City’s second. If you think this is a desperate attempt to bring some correlation to this sticker collecting lark and events on the field, then I suspect you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

 

14th January 2012               City 0 Hartlepool United 0

            The second packet contains David Noble, Dean Moxey, Dan Seaborne, Daniel Nardiello (first swap, second packet) and Richard Logan, who scored last week against Chesterfield.   Nardiello is described by the Western Morning News in their report as City’s “most potent attacking force” and Troy nearly scored from a David Noble free-kick, but otherwise none of them do anything of significance in the nil-nil draw with Hartlepool, but then nobody really does.  Moxey and Seaborne are both currently injured and consequently do not play for their parent clubs.  City may wish to have a word with players about changing their appearance radically from when they had their photos taken for the stickers as David Noble now sports a Mohawk and John O’Flynn has dyed his hair bottle blond.   Did I mention that in the space for the sticker there’s a watermark of the sticker photo but larger than the photo on the sticker ?

 

21st January  2012               Oldham Athletic 0 City 0

            Out of the packet tumble the stickers of Kallum Keane – released before the sticker album and before sponsorship for him could be arranged with Komet Karpets or Krispy Kreme, although the latter’s nearest UK outlet is in Bristol – Callum McNish, Rob Edwards, Martyn Rogers and Dean Moxey, who is apparently approaching full fitness at Palace.   None of them feature in the goalless draw at Oldham, although four of them were hardly likely to.  I find trouble peeling the backs off the stickers as I’ve cut my fingernails; doubtless this is down to poor technique and there’s an easier way then just trying to bend back one of the corners.  So, with nothing to report – except perhaps the simple statistic that one sixth of the way into the process I have nearly one quarter of the stickers (13 of 53) – I’d like to address the testy subject of the blank stickers.  My problem with this is that it has placed the suspicion in my mind that other stickers that do actually feature in the collection might also be being held back.  I say this as one of nature’s cynics. And someone who’d be royally pissed off if, having bought 18 packets of stickers, I was left one short of a complete set by a late addition.  A sneaky look at Exeweb gives the impression that stickers 43, 44, 47 and 50 are difficult to get hold of.  But that’s only based on the experience of three people.  I also wonder whether, if there are still blank stickers at the end of the season and, let’s face it, there are precious few days left in the transfer window to sign players, they could be used for pictures of the Board of Society (see http://www.ecfcst.org.uk/trust-bos).  Or possibly treasured members of ECFC’s staff; who would begrudge Mike Cooper in reception or Kelly Ingleson in the shop being immortalised in their own sticker ?  Or possibly some of those considered more ‘back office’ could be featured to allow us to put names to faces.

 

28th January 2012               City 0 Charlton 1

             Curiously, having discussed their change of image, David Noble and John O’Flynn feature in this week’s packet (that really does sound like a junky – having a regular packet), along with Danny Seaborne, John Delve and Martyn Rogers.  I have a cunning plan: if I buy the Champions League sticker album – a series that came out just after the group games and thus includes both eliminated Manchester clubs, but not, presumably, Apoel Nicosia, I can try to morph Raul Meireles’s Mohawk onto Noble’s head.  All I need now is to find a bleach blond player for O’Flynn’s barnet.  Both Noble and O’Flynn start against Charlton and, according top the official website both get a shot on target.  Otherwise again not much to report on the sticker/ match action correlation.

            Having dallied writing this, I hear that City have signed Luke O’Brien from Bradford. New player, new sticker ? Bugger.

 

4th February 2012               Bournemouth 2 City 0

       Today’s stickers are Scot Bennett, Martyn Rogers (for the third week running), Adam Stansfield, Kallum Keane and Harry Holman. I hadn’t really thought when starting this that getting a packet largely full of ex-players would be a drawback.  When City eventually play on the Tuesday night Scot Bennett starts. It’s got to the stage where I’m so desperate for someone whose sticker I’ve just got that week to do something of significance in the game that I thought it was Scot Bennett who forced a save from Bournemouth’s keeper with a looping header, which was City’s best chance if you don’t count Troy’s blatant foul on the keeper as he put the ball in the net.  However both the Western Morning News and the official site say it was Logie.  Erm, easy mistake to make.  Either it was the desperation or the cold at Dean Court causing me to hallucinate.  Best manoeuvre of the night was the coach reversing around a narrow lane and through a gate to get to the away end without hitting anything. I have heard that another coach was not so fortunate.

 

11th February 2012             City 2 Sheffield Wednesday 1 Jones, Noble
 

14th February 2012             Notts County 2 City 1 Bennett

            This week reveals the Flybe sticker (no 51), Team Right (technically making the first complete page, comprised of, ahem, two stickers), Return of the City poster (no 46), Ryan Harley and Artur Krysiak.  Krysiak makes some vital saves in the 2-1 win over Wednesday; Team Right contains one of the scorers, Billy Jones, and Krysiak.

            As this blog has yet to be published I cannot take any credit/ blame that on Valentine’s Night finally someone whose sticker I got in a particular week does something significant.  I am sure that Artur falling over to let Lee Hughes score was not designed purely to please me and that at long last I’ve sort of got what I have been asking for.  Oh, and I’m sure that it was Scot Bennett who scored as Richard Logan was not on the field at the time.

            It has only now struck me that none of our coaching staff (except Rob Edwards in the former players section) has a sticker of their own.  I find this slightly odd, but it would have made the collection considerably larger. Oh, and it also took me this long to realise there’s a prize for being the first person to complete a set – a £100 voucher for the club shop – but as I doubt I’ll get the set before the end of the season it won’t be me that wins it.

 

18th February 2012             City 3 Bury 2 Archibald-Henville, Nardiello (pen), Logan

            The packet this week contains Lenny Pidgeley, George Friend, John Templeman, Rob Edwards and Jimmy Keohane. Only Pidgeley makes the 16, but on the bench; Keohane hasn’t featured for months, Templeman and Edwards have retired from playing and George Friend doesn’t feature in Doncaster’s team at Leeds. However, Keohane does subsequently score in the friendly at Bridgwater later in the week.
            Therefore with a bit of a washout on the sticker relevance front – so what’s new ? – I’ve decided to have a meander down the side road of other potential titles for this blog. In times gone by when desperate for the title of an article I’ve used the title of a song from a CD I happened to be listening to (one article ended up with a particularly hippy-dippy title from a Julian Cope trance-style album; whilst I was typing that sentence George Harrison’s Isn’t It A Pity was playing, which seemed apt). When I was transcribing the first instalment of this blog I was listening to The Complete Smiths (cheery stuff); I won’t know until May whether it’s a case of You’ve Got Everything Now or I Started Something I Couldn’t Finish (again possibly apt for this blog). Or possibly You Just Haven’t Earned It Yet, Baby.
            As the blog is about stickers it could have been Ooh Stick You by Daphne And Celeste (where are they now ?), Stuck On You by Lionel Richie (I understand from Google that Paramore have also released a song called Stuck On You, which is a cover of an original by a group called, possibly appropriately on several levels, Failure), Sticky by The Wedding Present or I’m Sticking With You by The Velvet Underground. All, I hope you’ll agree, would be rather tacky (pun intended) and/ or shite names for a blog.
            Then my thoughts turned to Exeter bands; I’m not at all familiar with the Frantic Spiders back catalogue and only slightly moreso with that of Coldplay. Clocks (yes, that ‘l’ is meant to be there), Yellow, The Scientist, Viva La Vida, etc didn’t exactly bring me inspiration. On the whole I think I’ll hang on with the non-committal title I already have.


 

25th February 2012             Huddersfield 2 City 0

 

         This week’s stickers are Bob Saxton, the Pride of Devon poster (sticker 49), James Dunne, Scot Bennett and Scott Golbourne. Dunne and Bennett play in what was apparently Tisdale’s 300th game in charge. Scott Golbourne plays an hour for Barnsley against Coventry. Again nothing much to report. And thus dies another of my great boasts: I once said I could write 200 words on anything. Clearly I can’t. It’s the second such boast to die in the last 12 months; I once said I’d never had a haircut I’d been ashamed of. Then I found my school photo from 1981. .. Well, 99 words on nothing’s not bad (107). Oh, and 29 out of 53, over half way to the full set (120). You’ll also note that I didn’t say those 200 words would necessarily be interesting (134).

3rd March 2012                    City 1 Stevenage 1 Logan

6th March 2012                    Brentford 2 City 0

            The pack this particular week contains Dean Moxey, Supporters’ Club Sponsoree* Tom Nichols, George Friend, Chris Shephard and James Dunne. Dunne, according to the report on the official website, makes a vital tackle in the box to stop Stevenage player Craig Reid, one half of the Proclaimers, and Dunney – that rare thing, a nickname longer than the name it replaces; ironically I had such a nickname for a while “Long-er” – also plays at Griffin Park on the Tuesday. Moxey makes a 10 minute appearance as a substitute for Palace against Peterborough on the Saturday and doubles that against Coventry on Tuesday. Friend isn’t getting into the Doncaster matchday squad – maybe he has the wrong agent. Shephard comes on as a sub for Bath City after half an hour at Luton and apparently vomits violently at half time; it is not known whether this is due to food poisoning, a bug or simply a reaction to Luton as a town. Because of the after-effects of this he misses Bath’s Tuesday game at Barrow. Some people’ll do anything to get out of a long journey. However Supporters’ Club sponsored - did I mention that before ? – Tom Nichols scores; sadly, not for City but for Dorchester Town in their 4-0 win at Weston-Super-Mare – there just aren’t enough hyphens in that sentence. In a week where I don’t get one of their stickers, Flybe renew their sponsorship of the club for a tenth year. I am convinced that they knew I didn’t have their sticker this week and did it just to spite me.

*If there is such a word.

10th March 2012                  MK Dons 3 City 0

            Trying to take tips from this:

http://meditic.com/7-steps-to-build-a-better-blog/ <http://meditic.com/7-steps-to-build-a-better-blog/> Particularly the “Hold on, man” paragraph.
            And for your delectation this week; Return of the City poster (sticker 46), David Noble, George Friend (third week of four), Richard Logan and Bob Saxton. Those that have been following this blog keenly (precisely nobody) will have realised that these are all swaps, a first wipeout. I suspect it will not be the last. The Return of the City could be taken to mean City’s return to the bottom four after the result in concrete cow country. Noble is suspended following his sending off at Brentford. I have learned this week that Friend is injured rather than out of favour at Doncaster – birthplace of Bob Saxton – and Logan comes on as a sub at MK Dons. There may be another new sticker too as former Charlton defender Jonathan Fortune has joined until the end of the season. I must try to steel myself to try to get the advertisers stickers.

 

17th March 2012                  City 1 Preston NE 2 Sercombe

20th March 2012                  City 1 Wycombe 3 Dunne

            In the words of John Major’s Spitting Image puppet (possibly quoting from the film Papillon) “I’m still here.” The stickers this time round are Martyn Rogers, Paul Jones, Troy Archibald-Henville, the Pride of Devon poster and the return of the Return of the City poster, which I got last week. Troy at least plays in both games, starting in midfield against Wycombe. Paul Jones plays in both Peterborough’s games and his sticker completes the first ‘proper’ page. After the two results this week the chances of having an extra two (or possibly three) game weeks are fading fast as City’s play off hopes recede.



24th March 2012                  Tranmere 2 City 0

            This week’s fabulous five are suspended David Noble, injured Danny Coles, retired Harry Holman and Peter Hatch, and Eli Bullock, who can be excused for not making the sixteen for this weekend because he was born in 1895 and is most likely to be no longer resident on this earth. His is also the last sticker in the book.
            As this blog isn’t going too brilliantly, the above being an example of how trying to relate stickers gained to onfield events is proving almost impossible. I have decided to introduce a further random factor; I have used the ‘random’ function on Microsoft Works spreadsheet to produce a random page number for me to find in Collins Dictionary and Thesaurus Second Edition 2000 and then another random number to count to a word on that page which I will then try to work seamlessly and unobtrusively into the blog entry. Today it’s the 38th word on page 48: can you spot it ? And it’s not ‘random’ that I’ve used three times in that sentence.
            So, for various reasons the five faces this week were unavailable at Prenton Park. As City are floundering in League 1, the sticker collection founders. Or do I mean that the other way round ? I have 36 of the 53 stickers (assuming new ones have yet to be added – will short term signings like Rohan Ricketts and Alan Gow get to be on stickers ?) and hence, maths fans, need 17 more with six weeks of the season left and consequently only 30 stickers remaining in unopened packets. With a required ‘strike’ rate of over 50% non-swaps and City 8 points from safety both the sticker collection and City’s season could be beyond the point of no return by the antepenultimate week. Cripes.

 

31st March 2012                  City 1 Colchester 1  Cureton

 

6th April 2012                       Scunthorpe 1 City 0
 

            The five faces for Easter week are Callum McNish, Daniel Nardiello, Elliott Frear, Artur Krysiak and Lenny Pidgeley.  Surprisingly having got both goalkeepers in the same week, four of the five turn out against Colchester, with Frear coming on as a substitute.  Oh, and this week’s word is the 49^th on page 479 of the previously mentioned dictionary; again, can you spot it or is it something so ridiculous that even the most skilled of writers couldn’t hide it ?

            Nardiello and McNish get numerous mentions in the Report on the Colchester game on the official site for getting shots at goal and  Krysiak makes a stunning save according to that account.  It also describes fugleman Noble as being “at the heart of everything, playing at his very best”. Pity I didn’t get his sticker and, of course, the goalscorer Jamie Cureton as a loanee doesn’t have a sticker.

            For the Scunny game of the featured faces Nardiello and McNish are dropped to the bench and Frear dropped out of the squad completely.  Krysiak makes some vital saves then, as often happens with some keepers, makes a mistake which costs City the game, or a point possibly.  I’m beginning to wonder whether this sticker thing is more of a curse than a blessing.

 

9th April 2012                       City 3 L Orient 0  Taylor, Sercombe 2

            The featured few this week are Martyn Rogers, Troy Archibald-Henville, Ryan Harley, team right and Danny Seaborne.  The word of the week comes from page 920 and is the 43^rd one on that page.  Troy is the only one who plays in the Easter Monday game but ‘team right’ contains Krysiak, Jones, Tully and Dunne who all play and Troy is actually in both halves of the team photo. Martyn Rogers is, to the best of my knowledge, no longer involved in football, and you’d almost get the impression the same applies to Ryan Harley, who has played only half an hour for Brighton in 2012, whilst Seaborne continues his recovery from serious injury. 

            Troy makes a goal-line clearance via the crossbar.  Goalscorer Jake Taylor is the poult of the side at the age of 20, a relatively experienced line-up for City.  On the sticker front it was the second wipeout with them all being swaps, leaving me with 16 required with only 20 left to be revealed.  I’m beginning to wonder whether my strategy was wrong; I bought the packets in two ‘lumps’, largely due to there not being enough in the club shop for my requirements to buy it in one lump.  Also, having had a quick look on Exeweb and talked to a couple of people who are also collecting the stickers, it appears that we are all still  trying to get the same stickers, in particular Graham Weeks. Similarly, I have yet to read that anyone has claimed the prize for completing the set - £100 voucher for the club shop.  This has led me to suspect that certain stickers have either been kept in short supply or have been held back deliberately.  Therefore I may have been better off buying the packets either at the start of each month or even on a week by week basis.

 

14th April 2012                     Rochdale 3 City 2 Nardiello (pen), Sercombe

The word of the week is the 41^st on page 454 – forgot to mention earlier that if there are fewer words on a page than the random number indicated I continue counting again at the top of the page.  You might find this approach flippant but it works for me.  The five from the packets of fast fading hopes are Scot Bennett, Elliott Frear, Steve Tully, Cliff Bastin and, again, Danny Seaborne.  Frear is lucky enough not to partake in City’s 12 minute disintegration at the end of the game at Spotland, having to watch helpless from the bench whilst Tully fully takes his part in the defeat, but failed to rate a mention in the official site report.  So my ‘prediction’ that both sticker album failure and relegation would be ‘achieved’ on the antepenultimate weekend is still on ; City are eight points adrift with nine to play for and the sticker collection needs 14 new ones from 15 unseen stickers. But, as they say, where there’s life, there’s hope.

 

21st April 2012                     City 4 Walsall 2 Nardiello, Gow 2, Sercombe

            The fateful five this week are one of the Flybe stickers (no 51), Scot Bennett, Jake Gosling, The City Will Rise poster (sticker 48) and John ‘Shirley’ Templeman.  Oh, and Britney Spears.*  This week’s word is the 35^th on page 1206.

            On a day when the weather was never likely to swelter – oh to be  in England now that April’s there - Scot Bennett is amongst the substitutes despite having previously been ruled out for the season. Jake Gosling fails to make the sixteen; the win, including a goal from James Sercombe according to the Football League Show, means that The City Will Rise does not yet have an ironic edge nor has it been adopted as an unofficial club motto like that Resurgam guff from down the A38.  However, the sticker collection will not rise as I now need 12 with only 10 yet to be revealed.  Experiment failed in the previously predicted antepenultimate week. Bummer.

 

*Clearly this is a lie, but this was a handy tip from an article by a web journalist; in order to get the most hits via Google put ‘Britney Spears’ in the opening paragraph. As there is no hit count on this blog, I will never know just how few people read this. It’s therefore unlikely that I’ll resort to phrases like “red hot amateur hardcore”  (I believe this has something to do with heated building materials) in order to boost hits via search engines.

 

28th April 2012                     Carlisle 4 City 1 Sercombe

            So the first futile five are John Templeman, Jimmy Keohane, the Flybe poster (again), Billy Jones and Danny Coles.  The weekly word is from page 983, the 17^th on that page.  Again, a short explanation that it may not be a single word but possibly a short phrase. So it’s a case of spot the redundant phrase (yes, I know it’s all of them).  Keohane is another who has sunk without trace this season, Jones plays the full game but fails to get a mention in the report on the official website and Coles has a long term injury.

            City slip into League 2 as smoothly as raw silk. The beauty of not having a comments section on this blog is that nobody will point out that raw silk is actually rough, or as http://www.thaisilkmagic.com/What-is-Raw-Silk  puts it ‘slightly knobbed’, I think you’ll agree that ‘slightly knobbed’ could equally describe what I’ve done to this blog.  City are, of course, practising for Championship football by finishing their season a week before other teams from Leagues 1 and 2.  It was, of course, also the last day of the regular Conference season. And there is the small matter of a game against Sheffield United next week.

 

5th May 2012                       City 2 Sheffield United 2  Gow, Bennett

            Word of the week is number 31 on page 465.  The final five are Peter Hatch, John Templeman (third consecutive week), Liam Sercombe, Roger Ingham and Alan Beer.  For Roger Ingham see the Jimmy Keohane remark from last week.  Sercombe has scored in each of the last four games, so, naturally, in a week that I get his sticker, he doesn’t.  In fact he doesn’t even get a mention in the report on the official website, which does include a word that was revived by Exe Directory by describing James Beattie as ‘portly’.  The fixture list is less than forgiving, pitting a relegated side against a promotion chasing one, but with both Sheffield sides in League 1, one of them had to be away on the last day and the Football League would want them to travel as far as possible. 

            The programme confirms that the first prize has yet to be claimed, again raising my suspicions about sticker distribution.  So the final reckoning was an agonisingly close 45 out of 53 with, as outlined at the start of this blog, no possibility of simply ordering the missing ones.  Although to fall 15% short of the target should possibly be regarded as abject failure.   The missing eight were 3, 7, 26, 39, 44, the Question & Answer sticker, 47 and 50.  After some horse trading – if you look at sticker 50 you’ll see what a clever play on words this is – I’m left with just three to get.

            Therefore I’d like to appeal to anyone who has any of the following to swap:

26        Jack Furzer

44        Graham Weeks

47        Pride of Devon poster

 

Epilogue:  I have been told that someone else who was collecting the stickers has found out that a sticker of Dermot Curtis to be allocated the last space in the book (number 54). Thus confirming that the strategy of buying two early clumps of stickers was doomed to failure from the start.

 

Addendum: After finishing the season with just three stickers needed after swapping some, I was prepared to give it up as a lost cause.  However, at the Torquay friendly game I was told the stickers were still available (WH Smith had stopped stocking them) and that the packs which opened down the side had the required stickers in. So I went to the club shop on the following Friday: it was shut.  The day after the Palace League Cup game I went in again; they had no packs which opened on the side.  It seems either I’d been misled or that particular batch had already gone. I still bought ten packs. I won’t go through them player by player, you’ll be glad to hear.

 

Pack 1:  All swaps

Pack 2:  Contains Graham Weeks, or at least the sticker with his picture on.  8 packs left to open, 40 stickers, 2 to get.

Pack 3:  All swaps; all multiple swaps.

Pack 4:  All swaps, including Graham Weeks, and Jake Gosling for the third consecutive pack.

Pack 5:  Nothing new.

Pack 6:  All multiple swaps.

Pack 7:  Yet more swaps.

Pack 8:  Contains No 47 the Pride of Devon poster. 2 packs, 10 stickers, just 1 to get – Jack Furzer.

Pack 9:  Steve Tully. Liam Sercombe. Terry Cooper. The Question & Answer sticker. John Templeman. All swaps. Bummer.

Pack 10:  The last pack. The last five stickers. Scot Bennett. George Friend. Richard Logan. Elliott Frear. John Delve. No Jack Furzer. Still no Jack Bloody Furzer. Damn you, Jack Furzer. Foiled again.

 

I have loads of swaps; practically the whole collection I’d say. So if anyone has a swap of sticker number 26, Jack Furzer…