August, 2006:

Deadline Day Doldrums

cpfc.gifOnce again it’s transfer deadline day and it looks like the rumours of 2 or 3 players coming in have come to nothing. Despite raising over £12m in player sales over the summer and spending little over £3m we appear to have finished our spending. That means we haven’t really signed a replacement for AJ which could be the difference between us being top 3 this season or stumbling along to mid table. Incidentally I hope to see AJ get a game for England on the weekend as he’s started very well at Everton.

I have now resigned myself to the fact that no-one is coming in but with rumours of both Ward and Macken leaving we could certainly do with strengthing those areas. The one transfer rumour that just won’t die is Dave Nugent but with the price creeping up towards £4m and him being linked with perenial striker collector Neil Warnock I’m not holding my breath.

There are rumours that the reason we’re not spending the money is that Simon Jordan is finally trying to buy the freehold to Selhurst Park. I’ve never seen this as quite as important as many fans but I guess thats down to the fact that I have to travel 150 miles just to get there and it really wouldn’t affect me that much if we moved elsewhere. A nice shiny new stadium near Gatwick could be quite nice, although I don’t fancy us ending up ground sharing or at an athletics track.

CG Cartoon Overload?

Saw Cars last night and it was a lot better than the reviews had led me to believe. Kathryn and I had permanent grins on our faces all the way through, although the same could not be said of Aled who seemed to sleep for most of it. And when he wasn’t sleeping he was eating M&Ms or drinking the ludicrously expensive slush drink I was conned into buying him.

One thing that did get me though was the number of trailers preceeding the film that were all for kids cartoons done in 3D CG. Most of them looked third rate and low budget. Seems like everyone is jumping on the bandwagon and the genre will surely go downhill as a result.

Still, you can always rely on Pixar to produce quality films. TO INFINITY AND BEYOND!………………

Weddings, Cruises and Cars!

red.jpgDave has been nagging about the fact I have not got round to making my first post…. So here it is!

First of all, Carl and Jodie’s wedding! Not long now – 2 days 16 hours infact! Really looking forward to it, should be a great day. Dave tried on his suit monday – and apart from the shirt not fitting (!) I think he looked great! I cant believe how quick the time has gone.. it only seems like a few weeks ago since they announced their engagement! Dave still has his best man speech to finish off… best not tell Jodie, she’ll kill him!

Looking after Aled tonight – we are going to take him to see ‘Cars’. I have been wanting to see it for ages, and I’m now finally getting around to it!

Not long until our cruise! Just over 8 days!

Pack away those whites

Duck CupAnd so the cricket season has come to an end. Northern had a poor season all told and with a second from bottom finish we should be relegated. Of course there is the matter of the missing 30 points that we decided not to get back.

Having not won an official game all season we finally picked up a win on the last day of our season beating long time rivals Indus (formerly Fairwater) although much of this was down to the return of the prodigal son Mr Steve Hood, who bowled 5 overs for 5 runs and then scored 50no with the bat.

My season was alright but nothing special, a couple of knocks of ten, 3 ducks, keeping consisted of some catches, some drops and a few too many byes. In the field however I did take what was our unofficial catch of the season. And pretty good it was too.

Tonight is the end of season awards for which we will be giving out Batsman of the Year, Bowler of the Year, Player of the Year and the ever important Duck Cup. I might even post the winners later. Let’s just hope next season we get a slightly bigger squad and a couple of decent players and we should be looking to bounce straight back up.

UPDATE 30/08/2006: Winners; Charles was Batsman, Ashley Bowler, Baz Player and Dan won the Duck cup.

And so it begins….

So we’ve decided to start blogging. First and foremost it’s because we’ve owned this site for ages and haven’t done anything with it, so it might encourage us to actually use it.

I guess the first thing I should do is bring the world up-to-date with what I’m up to.

First of all it’s Carl’s wedding on Saturday and the mug has gone and chosen yours truly as Best Man. This of course means I’ve got to do the obligatory speech which until this weekend had barely moved – I’ve got some good ideas (imho) down on paper now though and I just need to actually format it into something I can actually deliver.

Secondly, our Alaskan cruise is under 2 weeks away so there’s that to prepare for on top of everything else. That’s the main push for getting this site done – we plan on updating the blog each day so everyone can see how we’re getting on. Obviously when I say everyone it’s probably just going to be our mums if they get as far as finding the page properly.

Thirdly, my comments on the Palace/Burnley game yesterday. Went up for my first home game of the season and expected us to win by a couple. As is usual with Palace though this didn’t go to plan. Burnley were much the better side in the first half and despite Scowy hitting the post they were well worth their 1-0 lead at half time. We equalised soon after the break and from there you couldn’t see them getting back into it but minutes later we were behind again. Scowcroft got us level with about 15 minutes to go and then only 3 world class saves from Jobi, Hudson and in the last seconds Kennedy kept us from taking the 3 points. Why is it that we never seem to get an opposition keeper on a bad day?