Luis Enrique

Hi Rob I'd love to say I had a well scripted and thought through explanation for him. Sadly I didn't. With a twelve year old brother around he's a pretty clued up seven year old. With a very inquisitive mind. He asked me what all this was about and I probably started in the same place most people would / did. I started with the least I could say 'he did a bad thing' but as the questions persisted, I decided rather than claiming parental privilege and ducking a tough conversation, this was the right time to explain what that was. he knows what sex is already. and he's only going to go and google it and read god knows what if I duck it. i tried to be as matter of fact as possible about what rape was, explaining the serious nature of it, without getting into the full emotional horror of it. it's tough. Good luck!

Well I can't say that what I am going to do is a boycott. But for the time being the going / not going issue has been made very straightforward for me. 20 years ago I only had myself to think about. Maybe I would have put up with it, as abhorrent and inept as this whole business has been. It's hard for me to say. I put up with Lee Hughes I suppose. Now I have three kids, aged 12, seven and two. At the weekend I had to explain to my seven year old who Ched Evans was and what rape was. (Thanks for that Ched, Barry, Simon et al) I had to tell our 12 year old what Ched Evans had done and what the atmosphere and attitude of (some) oldham and away fans would likely be at matches. Maybe I'm wrong about the 'Ched Evans, he f***s who he wants' chants, but I doubt it. Neither of them want to go again. Their mum certainly doesn't want them to go again. 2015 is my 30th anniversary of watching Oldham, I've been all over the country and must have seen somewhere between 500 & 750 matches in that time. Am I going to put my young kids into that? No i'm not. Who knows what happens next, but there must be a fair old chance that's three supporters of the future lost forever, never mind what happens to me.

david_conn Ched Evans: a statement was expected from Oldham Athletic and the PFA, but latest is it's now not going to happen today. 06/01/2015 16:16 absolute. shambles.

i think that is the statement from last month?

It certainly is a difficult topic. Of course one key difference is that Lee Hughes asked for forgiveness. Whereas Ched Evans does not. Until the legal process is over and / or he apologises I am genuinely stunned that any club would go near him. Even in this grubby industry.

if you do a simple traditional style bar scarf (the sort you used to see flying out of car windows every saturday afternoon in the 80s) thick blue stripe, narrow white, narrow tangerine, narrow white, repeat... then i'm in. i know tangerine is divisive but in a bar scarf format it is definitely the most appropriate colour. it's the only 'ownable' combination that makes it oldham. anything with words or badges, i'm out!

i had to watch it three or four times i have to admit. if that had been given against us i'd have been seriously pissed off. modern football.

there used to be all sorts. utd, city, leeds, blackburn in particular. but i've got older and oldham have got :censored:ter. these days it's specifically teams / fans with a sense of entitlement. the traditional media darlings. so utd. and, to a far lesser extent, liverpool. i hate utd. absolutely every single little thing about them. and i thoroughly enjoy doing so. can't say leeds or dons are on my radar. but maybe it's because i'm just not living and breathing the game as i once did.

sunday league / training kit. again. well, there's always next year.

there's a lot of sneering here along the lines of "if you don't like it don't buy it, what's your problem ?" thing is, people want to like it & they want to buy it. people show their support in lots of different ways. plenty of people want to buy an oldham shirt they like & they're disappointed when it turns up & they don't. I'm not into replica kits these days myself but I've no problem with people who are. & I'm not going to sneer at them because they're pissed off they're being offered a crappy off the shelf kit with a couple of badges ironed onto it in a vile colour that they don't like.

a better kit. i'm in the ajax retro brigade. 20+ goals from a striker. fewer loanees. way fewer loanees.

this is probably a really naive comment but if corney stepped down and handed over the running, even ownership, of the football club to the fans, presumably he and the others would still own all the land and would be the club's landlord? is he literally saying he would hand over the ground, the facilities and the surrounding land for absolutely nothing to the fans? this seems really unlikely? confused.

Empire Strikes Back

1st: roger palmer all time: neil redfearn current: no one stands out at mo

all this fuss created by exiting this tin pot trifle. back to first team action at the weekend. thank god.

it's a cup competition we only qualify to participate in by virtue of being :censored:. it's a cup that celebrates being :censored:. there is no glory whatsoever in winning it. it would only serve to re-enforce and remind me & everyone else how :censored: we are. fair play to those that enjoy it. I mean you no harm. live and let live. never been to a JPT match, never will.

i seem to remember he'd got a fair bit of unnecessary stick and got a bit carried away in his celebrations. he played a blinder i think. one that got away.

good. I'll re-engage my outrage

yeah, watching highlights, looked a certain penalty from that angle. he's close to the ball but if you stick your arm up... I suppose it might have missed the arm & hit his head, but looks unlikely.

great team performance & incredible individual performance from tarkowski. my only complaint would be that you have to make way more clear cut chances than that when you dominate a game that much.

that was my first game of the season for various reasons. i think on the balance of play nine times out of ten we'd win that game easily. we showed flashes of really good stuff at times and we were a good watch. until the last minute i was pretty pleased, if frustrated we weren't ahead. the new fullback was great. i thought mills was good defensively but his distribution was dire. the two CBs were both excellent. the middle of midfield was very one dimensional. i forgot korey smith was on the pitch for long stretches of the game. maybe that's more to do with tranmere having no aspirations beyond getting a 0-0. surprised to see schmeltz getting some stick on here. yes there was no end product but he was way, way more dangerous than dayton and montano on the day. sadly the substitutions were a bit baffling and pretty much made the result possible for me. with rooney up front on his own our threat pretty much disintegrated and the game became incredibly scrappy. just what tranmere wanted. i'm sure the plan was to try and draw their CBs out a bit more and move them around but it didn't work at all. goodison won't have an easier game all season. loads of good signs though, and a much better team to watch than we've seen for a long time.

I've got one of his shirts from the promotion season. my favourite player & best midfielder I've seen at oldham bar none.

my sky sports football centre app still says 1-0 to Stevenage (tho 0-0 at HT)

that is a chron picture, the one I bought from them years ago. give them a call!

you used to be able to buy prints direct from the chron. i only know this because i bought a print from them of redfearn scoring the penalty to frame at the time. sadly it's pretty faded now, unlike the memory.