Thoughts from the mind of Ben Welby
A colleague of mine is a Chelsea season ticket holder and he just mentioned that last night’s atmosphere at Stamford Bridge had sent a clear message of support for their Special One.
I jokingly suggested that their woes date from the afternoon of January 24th, the day Bradford City turned 2-0 into 2-4. And we wondered what the data said. So I went to Soccerbase and had a quick look.
I’m in the middle of a perfect moment that seems to have got a little bit out of hand.
It’s not the only perfect moment I’ve known in my life, and I hope it won’t be the last but when I take my seat at Wembley this afternoon I’ll know that it’s a notch on the timeline of history to savour.
It’s not the only perfect moment in Bradford City’s history. Jimmy Speirs’ winner in the 1911 FA Cup final might have been the first; in 1999 Stuart McCall got so lost in our promotion to the Premiership that he fell off a car; David Wetherall’s header against Liverpool; the saving of the club in the years that followed. Moments of joy.
But that joy is set against the pain of perfect moments turned to nightmare. May 11 1985 changed our club and our community for ever but it started with the delight at our league title. Those men, women and children will be remembered today.
Photo by Hungarian Snow
Twitter is still evolving but thus far nobody seems to have come up with a clever way of combining the thread of a discussion on Twitter with contributions from elsewhere.
It’s something that has come up in looking after Vital Bradford. I’ve found Twitter an excellent companion to supporting my football club and there’s a very active community with considered opinion and not the sort of stupidity that can plague footballing message boards.
One of the reasons it’s a pleasure is the way you can capture a sense of the match in real-time from all corners of the ground. But even though we are the most followed #bcafc account it’s only a fraction of those who might be interested.
Whatever the subject matter we need to be careful that the coverage of any event doesn’t get stuck inside Twitter. Your updates can get missed by your followers so it’s good to keep them on record somewhere. But it’s actually quite hard to record and curate a specific time-bound period of activity, especially if it involves many voices. Continue reading
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We’re Bradford City fans. Next season is going to be depressing.
You might have missed the news in amongst the fanfare of Cristiano’s obscene transfer to Real Madrid that Bradford City’s Matt Clarke had signed a contract extension. Laughably the Bradford City website says that the ‘giant’ defender will now form part of the squad aiming for promotion to League 1 next season.
There’s no aiming for League 1 next season.
And that’s underscored by the other bit of transfer news. Nicky Law has gone to Rotherham. We had Nicky on loan from Sheffield United last season and then again this. And he’s a fantastic prospect. There are Blades’ fans who thought he was worth a shot in the Premiership and certainly good enough for the Championship. As it was it took Stuart McCall to nurse him back to his best.
At the end of last season after we failed to mount a serious promotion challenge it looked certain he would be coming back. Unfortunately something has caused him to choose the Don Valley running track over Valley Parade.
Ambition? Who wants to end up disappointed anyway. Not to write us off too early but I’m sure that the 2010/11 season will be our year…
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