Football and Music

You remember in the summer sitting there watching the cricket and at 5 o’clock when Grandstand did the Final Score. Even thought there wasn’t any, or so you thought, they still read out the results.

They went through all the results from Chepstow, from Haydock and from Redcar.
- You are very familiar upon reading these names again but probably still couldn’t place them on a map. I can’t.

Then at the very end the football results from Australia were read out.
Why. You were asking yourself. Why did they do this ? Why are they bothering ?
It was because even though there wasn’t any proper footie being played, Littlewoods and Vernons kept your Dad or your Grandad occupied by using the Aussie soccer matches on the Pools.

There was little or no point in researching or trying to guess how any of these matches were going to end up. They were Aussie teams and at the time before the interweb it was impossible to find out about them.
In anyways the Oz footie was an amateur game in your eyes. The only people who cared about them were the old blokes who filled in their coupons every week without fail.

That was then and this is now…

As we saw in the last World Cup and amongst some EPL teams that Australia have some decent players. They have raised their game and now everybody knows of them.

But their football leagues back in Oz are still not taken seriously. If any Aussie player wants to play competitive football and get into the national team they have to play abroad. The Aussie soccer federation have seen and have addressed this though:

They’ve been taking notes from their American counterparts and the structure of the Aussie A-League is similar to that of the MLS.

These similarities include a wage cap and the signing of a big name player who the Aus Soccer Federation allow to break this cap in order to attract more attention to their league.

Major League Soccer has Derek and the A-League got that little dynamo who played for Middlesboro - Juninho.

You remember him. He was a loyal player to the Middlesbore… when they were in the Prem.

He’s a little lad who could have run through Crouchy’s legs, but one who played with his heart on his sleeve. Who can forget the first time ‘Boro were relegated and the boy wonder collapsed on his knees and cried. After they went down there were discussions on whether they could keep him whilst they played in the old 2nd Division, but with the wage demand and Juninho wanting to make sure that he was still competing for a place in the Brazilian team, he left to play for Atletico Madrid.

He did come back and play in Teeside, three times. The last one was when he helped Middlesboro win the Mickey Mouse League Cup (their first and only cup to date) - and this single win convinced Barwick and his cronies to hire their Manager to coach the current England team, so thanks for that Juninho.

After the Middlesboro/Athletico period he went to Celtic but didn’t settle there. Eventually he went home to play in Brazil.

Now he is back playing in another foreign league and as that league’s featured player. This one didn’t get as much press coverage as Derek’s did, probably to the annoyance of the Aussie Federation.
Junhinio is a is a Marquee player along side other “big” names such as Stan Lazaridis and Craig Moore. As mentioned these players have broken the wage cap to get more bums on seats.

A previous Marquee player and well known to you is Dwight Yorke. He was playing for Sydney FC at the time. - I bet you’ve seen Sydney FC’s name crop up a few time on the BBC footie news. They’ve always been trying to sign a well known player. Last one they tried to get before Juninho was Robbie Fowler. But he decided that Cardiff was better.

Sydney FC as you can tell from those reports have big ambitions and see themselves as the Australian equivalent of the LA Galaxy. In fact there’s a friendly match arrange between them for November 27th which will be cancelled if the original Goldenballed one is injured.

The club has a loyal bunch of supporters nicknamed “The Cove”. Before the beginning of last season they sang backup on a single recorded by Jimmy Barnes about Sydney FC:

» Jimmy Barnes - Sydney FC For Me

This is another one that nearly has that footie/musical perfect storm… Match commentary and some fans chanting. - There is a video for the single too.

The kings of weird lyrics and silly dances have made a return: The Sultans Of Ping FC will be releasing a new single on December 7th.

Oh come on you know the Sultans.

All right I’ll give you one line and I bet you’ll be singing - or be reminded of the song straight away:

“Where’s Me Jumper ?”

See. Told you.

The Irish band were footie mad and recorded a few related songs. Below are some mp3’s courtesy of http://ping.fishtank.org.uk of the Sultans (as they renamed themselves later, but without success, they disbanded soon after) live in concert and studio sessions for John Peel and for Dublin’s 2FM:

» Sultans of Ping FC - Give Him A Ball (And A Yard Of Grass) - Peel Session     (Before the song John Peel says: "There are no Scots in the Sultans Of Ping" ?!)

Sample lyrics: “Give him a ball & a yard of grass/He’ll give you a move with perfect pass/Give him a ball & a yard of space/He’ll give you a move with godly grace”

» Sultans Of Ping - Kick Me With Your Leather Boots (Live At The Savoy Cork)

Sample lyrics: “Socrates and Selnopenhaur are really very nice./ Told you ’bout Ardiles and you said you’d read him twice. /Your stunning social conscience has me running round the bend./Kick me with your leather boots, /Kick me hard again.”

…and the one you’ve been waiting for:

» Sultans Of Ping FC - Where’s Me Jumper ? (2FM Studio)

Sample lyrics: “Dancing in the disco, bumper to bumper/ Wait a minute, where’s me jumper, where’s me jumper, where’s me jumper, where’s me jumper, where’s me jumper ?”

Ah they don’t write them like that any more…

You can download more of the Sultans live and session recordings (with titles such as: Wake Up And Scratch Me, Red Cadillac and Black Moustache, Riot at the Sheepdog Trials) via: http://ping.fishtank.org.uk/mp3s/

So it seems that second choice Steve is given a second chance with the second choice team we’ll see that smug face on the bench on Wednesday and hopefully that will be his last appearance.

I am not posting this next one for that League Mickey Mouse Cup winning McClown, or for the current “team”, I am posting this because despite everything l will still support England forever more.

(I was going to post another example of a bad decision taken (music-wise) by the F.A, but after Saturday’s result I’ll hold that for our next potential embarrassment.)

If…if we somehow manage to somehow scrape a draw on Wednesday… (going by the latest reports he’s still doing his best to feck it up) everybody will know that we will not be there on merit.

..and if we do get through the whole of England will breath that obvious sigh of relief, then the first action after that should be to sack McClaren.

I wish he would do the honourable thing and resign because I know the spineless F.A will not take the bold action, but neither of these things will happen. They will keep their heads down, take all the flack, count their fat wage packets and slobber at the revenue to be made next summer.

Come next June and we (might) be watching an undeserved coach and a bunch of individual players because right now I can’t see them improving or having a chance of winning unless a new manager is brought in straight after the Croatia match.

So as we watch on Wednesday as the fans are hopefully chanting “Go, McClaren, go.” I want to remind you of a better time when we didn’t have a group of great individual talents, but we did have a great team.

Before the 1970 World Cup the England team released the first official single - that will be posted another time. As well as the single they all went into the studio to record an entire album. Again more about that in the future. For now a track from that LP sung by three England and West Ham team-mates:

» Peters, Moore & Hurst - Oh Sweet England How We Love You

Since there isn’t anything of interest on today I looked at the stats for the site and at the searches to see what you were looking for.

It is obvious that the more interesting game taking place tomorrow is the Scotland do or die match and the search terms bear that out with everybody looking for Scotland songs but more specifically one song which in my opinion is a footie/music and comedy classic. Sorry there Rod it’s not about you. Or about the Krankies, which is more horror than comedy and puts a bit of a sour note on the history. I am talking about…

B.A Robertson, John Gordon Sinclair (and extra information I just found) Jim Watt (world champion boxer), Alan Wells (Olympics 100 meter champion and Georgina Kearney (Miss Scotland), as well as the 1982 Scotland World Cup Squad all sing together on:
» We Have A Dream

- The next item most searched and listened to has a touch of the Krankies to it as well and I can only assume you are listening because you like to inflict pain onto yourselves:

Jess Conrad why do you hate us so ? What did the P.E teacher do to you at school ? Why do you want to take your revenge out on every football supporter because of some dark memory in your past ? Why do we have to live your nightmare ?

And finally in other footie news - an item about Derby County who at the moment are going for Mick McCarthy/Sunderland’s EPL record as the worst. team. ever.

An American company is looking into Derby with a view to investment and takeover. (Why pick a club who are probably guaranteed relegation is beyond me but anyway…) The name of this company is Shamrock Holdings, who are owned and run by billionaire Roy Disney, nephew of Walt.

Yes, Derby County really will be a Mickey Mouse team.

Rod the Mod has turned into a bit of a crooner the last few years, turned into an English version of Barry Manilow. Both of them now raping other people back catalogues and coining it in with cover versions.

But it wasn’t always like that.

I was doing a quick research and on browsing his discography I realised I was more familiar with some of singles than I’d care to admit.

I also discovered something else when looking. The old shagger used the same formula over the years and I’m surprised it wasn’t spotted sooner »

- Make sure the song has ‘Heart’ in the title.

- When making a video - film it somewhere in America’s midwest.
Give it a vintage look, bung in a bit of World War II stuff if you can.

- When recording the single ensure that, of course, bagpipes are used.

- Plus - again of course - get a crowd of people in to sing backing vocals.

Which brings us neatly to today’s entry from the London born Rod…

No I’m not going to rag on him for being born in Highgate. Even though he doesn’t own any property or has ever lived there, it is common knowledge that he is Scottish through and through.
Again it is well documented that he is a big footie fan. Was himself a player once - on the books at Brentford at one time. Been seen at Rangers matches as well I think and can always be found following the Scotland team.

And with being a singer, a well know football supporting Scottish one at that, it was inevitable that they would get together and record something to coincide with an appearance at a major tournament.

I think he noticed the theme with other football singles which seemed to steer away from singing about football itself. In fact they don’t even mention it at all. Rod carried this idea over and covered a traditional about an indigenous plant instead:

» Rod Stewart with the Scottish Euro ‘96 Squad - Purple Heather

Everybody sing along now…

Looking at those lyrics you are think the same as me I’m sure.
Euro 1996 which was played in in June and July. Makes perfect sense.

This was actually the 2nd time Rod sang for Scotland. The first one will be posted another time.