help_shiny

p.s - as a Cards fan have you ever read "Three nights in August" - it's currently collecting dust at home but I seem to remember it was quite interesting.

AND the next game I went to was in Denver between the Rockies and Reds and there was a complete arse of a woman behind me who turned out to be a ...........................Cardinals fan! I'm telling you Sheridan, you're the best of a bad bunch

I've been to the White Sox and quite enjoyed it actually. The ushers were rude as hell but I found that a lot of people in Chicago were. The footlong Polish hotdog was the mutts nuts and the crowd was well up for it (it was a half price night and there was a fair amount of inebriation in the stands). Just dont overshoot on the way out and go past the tube station or you might end up in a place you dont want to go!

Your Anaheim experience probably took years off you!

thanks for the links Diego - interesting stuff and what looks like great news.

The Ramblers Association need a kick up the . Does anyone have a map with the affected footpaths on them? Spoiling their quiet contemplation of the views! D'heads. Has anyone heard their advert on radio Cavell? If so, enough said. As for the emergency landing area for RAF helicopters!! WTF? I think Claytons, Latics car park and/or the pitch are more than sufficient in the unlikely event its needed. Priceless.

As for the bats, if there are indeed bats in there then surely its easy enough to stick some bat boxes or suchlike into the new structure. Not a problem.

I notice that the floodlight pylons will be going. I know its progress and welcome the new stand but I will really miss them! They've been totem poles showing the location of our beloved Boundary Park for so many years.

Hmmm, maybe I'll buy them and stick them up around my house.

I can understand it being one of them sports (and I hate saying this, as I love live sports etc) that just ain't the same being there to watch. I mean, for example, from up in a stand 100mtrs away, how the hell can you see the K-zone and everything going on....or do they play it live on the screens too at the same time? Like F1 etc. some sports are far better on TV. Only some though.

as you've got the bug I can only say that you'll love it at a live game. Get the best seats you can/want to afford and you'll see plenty. A cheaper option is to go high up but behind homeplate. Only once have I thought that I'd be better off watching on tv and that was in SF and I was as far as possible to be from homeplate and it was a real pitching duel, it was frustrating not really getting a proper feel for it. Plus I was surrounded by a load of w*nker Cardinal fans (sorry Sheridan! )

Plus actually being there you see a lot more of the general play - on tv you only see one small part, you cant see all the bases, all the players until the director choses to do so.

Get yourself booked in for next summer.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

Come on Cleveland.

recorded the skanks v indians, have been watching it on and off as i had to go out. Got to the end of the 9th and the recording ended! aaaaarg.

Really enjoyed that game - mental bug attack or what!

So, all the series are at 2-0. Hopefully they wont all finish 3-0, am enjoying it all too much.

God, I love October!

yeah, but it wasnt the catcher - he was sitting in leftfield. He thought it was going out so went to catch it but ended up knocking it out of the Cubs players hand or putting him off, am not sure he was actually going to catch it (at that point it they only had 4 or 5 more outs to go before they reached the WS). The crowd went berserk, booing and jeering and throwing stuff and he was led away by security. His life was basically ruined and, a lifetime fan, he has never been back. I personally think he was made a scapegoat by the team, they made enough goofs after the incident if memory serves me right. The Cubs could have gone out of their way to point out that errors by their own players were the reason for their defeat but they left him out to dry.

Still, it was funny as f*** at the time!

I'd like to see the Rockies beat the Indians in the World Series. Wont happen mind. I'm looking forward to another NYY-Red Sox ALCS, the last one was a humdinger! It'd also be interesting to see the hysteria in Chicago if the Cubs get even a sniff of glory. To all those who were following baseball a few years ago....Steve Bartman!!!

http://www.canoy.org/temp/sbartman.jpg

"Toby? Toby Wong. Toby Wong? Toby Wong. Toby Chung? ******* Charlie Chan"

have just finished watching the Rockies game whilst, ahem, 'working' from home. Awesome game and then winning it on a bogus decision! I think the umpire thought 'f*** it, I'm well late for my tea'.

I hope they go on to win it all. Go Rockies!

I see Stockman made a few appearances in 'the bigs' this season:

http://sportsline.com/mlb/players/playerpage/448970

A MLB player born in Oldham! Who'd a thought it?!

well that was a kick in the teeth!

The guy with the funny name - is it Knoblauch? The name rings a bell but I cant remember who he plays/played for. I can tell you that it means Garlic in German however!

Phil Stockman...will be looking out for him.

Here's the 2007 payrolls - I'm not sure at what point they take the data from as players obviously move around during the season:

Team Total payroll

New York Yankees $ 189,639,045

Boston Red Sox $ 143,026,214

New York Mets $ 115,231,663

Los Angeles Angels $ 109,251,333

Chicago White Sox $ 108,671,833

Los Angeles Dodgers $ 108,454,524

Seattle Mariners $ 106,460,833

Chicago Cubs $ 99,670,332

Detroit Tigers $ 95,180,369

Baltimore Orioles $ 93,554,808

St. Louis Cardinals $ 90,286,823

San Francisco Giants $ 90,219,056

Philadelphia Phillies $ 89,428,213

Houston Astros $ 87,759,000

Atlanta Braves $ 87,290,833

Toronto Blue Jays $ 81,942,800

Oakland Athletics $ 79,366,940

Minnesota Twins $ 71,439,500

Milwaukee Brewers $ 70,986,500

Cincinnati Reds $ 68,904,980

Texas Rangers $ 68,318,675

Kansas City Royals $ 67,116,500

Cleveland Indians $ 61,673,267

San Diego Padres $ 58,110,567

Colorado Rockies $ 54,424,000

Arizona Diamondbacks $ 52,067,546

Pittsburgh Pirates $ 38,537,833

Washington Nationals $ 37,347,500

Florida Marlins $ 30,507,000

Tampa Bay Devil Rays $ 24,123,500

I'm a big Mets fan - have been supporting (and going) for 7 seasons now. You're wrong about them getting by on little money though - they're a monster club with a payroll to match. They just seem little compared to the evil empire across town. They're the biggest spenders in the National League and the third overall (behind the NYY and the Red Sox)

Big big game today. I cant believe how they've choked, a truly historic collapse but as the Phillies are histories losers we might get there yet!

does anyone else think the club are crap at shifting tickets? You cant sit back and rely on the club website & the Oldham Chronicle to shift your tickets for you because you'll fail. It's easy to blame supporter apathy in the town but the club could do so much more to advertise themselves.

I realise that you can get lots of different accents 'out in the sticks' but come on admit it - this was a small group following a specific youth sub culture and I think were being presented as going back a long way together - not a load of migrants coming together with different accents.

I would also still disagree with the St Georges Flag/Union Flag thing - have a look at any old footage on youtube or photos on google or anything - Union Flags aplenty, vastly outnumbering the St Georges Flag.*

I never quite got this 'reclaimed in 96' thing - a modern myth if you ask me. I think the switch in '96 was the emergence of an 'English' identity amongst English football fans rather than a 'British' one, nothing to do with reclaiming anything from racists.

* - and I mean footage from the 70's and early 80's. Anything since '96 might feature English flags as they started using them at the same time everyone else did.

watched it this morning and enjoyed it - I've enjoyed all of Meadows' films so far ( As stated above Dead Mans Shoes is a great British film)

The sense of dread as Milky goes round and gets stoned with the 'bad' skins was really well done, you just know that something really awful is going to happen and then when Combo's face starts going 'serious' you know its all about to go wrong. I also like the way the film presents both sides of the skinhead coin so to speak.

I do have a few little quibbles - the little lad says "frickin'" several times in the newsagents early on...I've never heard anyone British ever say "frickin'", maybe I just havent been listening. Woody says of Combo "he did 3 years in the penn for me", again that doesnt sound like something somebody in England would normally say. Then there is the usual problem with British films in that you have a cast with wildly differing accents being portrayed as coming from the same place - there are Nottingham,Lancastrian,Scouse&London accents to name a few.

The great thing about Meadows however is that he doesnt adopt the standard rule of British film makers these days and parachute a yank into proceedings merely to make it sellable over there. I also liked the complete freak show that was the school non uniform day - reminded me of my own fashion faux pars back in the day!

Oh and one last quibble - there is a great thing made about the English flag in relation to the racist Skinheads - I very much doubt whether this would have been the case in the early 80's, Union Jacks would have predominated.

Does anyone else think that the end of the film was a bit rushed? It was a almost as if Meadows thought - "sod it, I'll just have him attack everyone and then finish with a scene of the young boy at home" - we have no idea what happened to Milky, Combo et al.

I'll give it a 7/10.

I'm almost certain that we never ran out to M O D - to my mind it was always played before then, 2:50ish maybe.

As for the Rockford Files can anyone confirm my memory that it was only played after night games?

http://www.thesandbox.net/arm/rockford/mul...me_original.mp3

for me this tune will always evoke nightime at Boundary Park, there is a drizzle falling from the sky, the game has just finished and I'm shuffling past the floodlight pylon at the corner of the Chaddy End. Ah, memories!

if I was ever rich and stupid enough to own the club I would have Mouldy old Dough played pre game (is it still done? I tend to stagger in at 2:59 breathing beer fumes) and the Rockford Files played at full time. Ahhhh them were the days

sod Leeds and sod their fans.

If it was another 'lower league' club then they wouldnt even be playing. Out of the 40 odd occasions over recent years when clubs have gone into administration every single one of them has fulfilled the league rules on coming out of it - Leeds havent, they're run by a crook and now they're paying the price. If it was us or Hartlepool or Rochdale or etc etc then they wouldnt even have been given the 'golden share' - the 15 points is just a special measure to allow the rules to be broken as it would be PR disaster for the league if Leeds vanished into oblivion. A choice between being docked 15 points and being chucked out of the league? No choice at all really is it?

Yes it's hard on the fans but people cant be allowed to hide behind that. Punish West Ham for continually lying to the league? Oh no we cant do that - what about the poor little fans. Punish Leeds for taking the p***? Oh no we cant do that - what about the poor little fans. Sod 'em all. I hope they go down. and down again. and down. down. down.

WE ALL HATE LEEDS

AND LEEDS

AND LEEDS

ho hum, never mind lads - chin up, we've all got a new Holiday Club

who? what? why? where? when?

methinks he making that bit up. lets beat him to within an inch of his life

I'm surprised by this as they only gave him a 1 year contract in May. So either a)he's coming to Oldham for a month or so to get fully match fit (but wasnt he fit by the end of the season anyway?) or b)him and Martin O'Neill have had a big fat tiff

Not sure what Latics gain by trumpeting the news before the deal is done though. What's to stop another club - say in the Championship - coming in and spoiling the deal.

For me, Hughes should have received a far longer sentence - and if that were the case, we wouldn't be having this discussion, because by the time he saw light of day again, he would be too old to play. My problem with him is the way he drove away and hid for nearly 2 days, knowing what he had done. What a vile character. I don't really want to see him in a Latics shirt, irrespective of how many goals he could score, I really don't. But that's just my opinion.

yes, thats the point - its not just a case of 'oops, I had too much to drink, could have happened to anyone' - he ran off and left them to it in the wreckage. Not a nice man and not someone who I could ever warm to, I'll still cheer him on if he ever pulls on the famous blue but he'll always be an utter w*nker in my eyes - its not as if I havent cheered for Latics players before who I dont like. I hope he doesnt get parole so soon but if he does then I hope he does a blinding job for us. He could be a real asset to us. I do think that many of his most ardent supporters on here wouldnt be that bothered piping up on his behalf if he was a crap player.

As for him having serious mental problems at the time - a) that is still no excuse and b)sounds like something the defence would cook up to try to reduce the sentence in an unwinnable case.

On the other hand - however terrible a thing he has done its not his fault that he only got 6 years, its not his fault he might be released after 3 and its not his fault someone wants to give him a chance. Arrg, a man could tie himself in knots weighing this up. Well, I think I have anyway.

Methinks this one will run and run.......

After reading The Sun's helpful "OLDHAM GRAB SOCCER KILLER" exclusive I think he's going to get a very tough ride. If he's released and all this actually happens of course.

Something that I didnt realise was that not only did a man die instantly but his wife died the year after from her injuries and that the man driving the other car is now in a wheelchair. 3 years?