The Opponent: Bradford City
As I sit here typing I am looking up at Sky Sports 2 wondering how on earth we managed to blow this yet again. We were 60 odd for 1 when I crashed out last night, surely the last couple of months of staying up all hours to watch some below average cricket should have taught me, but no, I’m still here, ready to watch 1 final embarrassment. It seems this week we have learned that Nile Ranger is a bit of a knob (or merely just confirmed what a lot of folk already knew), Mark Cooper has a bit of a sense of humour, Ryan Mason needs to be kept for as long as possible and the fans we took down to Brentford a couple of days back made some great noise and did us all proud. I have to admit when I saw this one scheduled for over the Christmas period I thought there would be a good chance I wouldn’t make it and so it has proven. The memories from Bradford remain fantastic for me, seeing our League 2 winning team celebrate in front of us was pretty special.
So the long journey to West Yorkshire will be beginning fairly early for some today with coaches expected to leave the CG around 8am. If anyone gets there early and is feeling a little peckish go to Greggs, don’t let anyone convince you all these award winning curry houses serve anything better than imported Albanian cat meat, and that’s the good stuff saved for the locals. Bradford is bigger than what I thought, being home to nearly 300’000 people, amazingly it has the youngest and fastest growing population outside of London, much of which is put down to the expanding ethnic population which began after World War 2, with vast numbers of immigrants arriving from Poland and Ukraine, and more so from the 1950’s from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. One of Bradford’s main commercial operations is financial vulture Provident, whose reasonable small unsecured loan APR can start from a generous 1478%. Also hailing from Bradford is northern supermarket giant Morrisons who slowly but surely have spread down south after their successful purchase of Safeway a few years back. Asda is still much better though.
Where the opposition gather – http://www.claretandbanter.co.uk/threads/swindon.37539/Some of their fans seem to think Rafa De Vita should be given a run out against us tomorrow, seems like his career hasn’t progressed too far since we parted ways.
Last 6 – WDDDLL (11th on 30 points) They must have got off to a decent enough start going by their current form and points total.
They have served us both – For some reason I look forward to this bit more every week. Andy Petterson, Alan Connell, Stan Harland, Chris Kamara, Sandy Cochrane, Moses Ashikodi, Stephen Darby, Wilf Shergold, Colin Todd, Tom Helsby, Wayne Allison, Frazer McHugh, Paul Evans, Ted Braithwaite, Peter Downsborough, Billy Paynter, Lee Holmes, William Marshall.
The Odds - Bradford 17/10 Draw 12/5 Swindon 7/4 Doesn’t sound like there is much chance of Rafa starting against us but even still, 0-0 with 10 minutes to go and Parkinson decides to throw him on...10/1 with Bet 365.
The Son Says – The iPad is still king in our household. The peace is unprecedented. He has gone for a 3-0 win to the Town.
The Prediction – Winnable, whatever way you look at it we should have enough, although our inconsistency away from home is likely to play its part. We will thrash them hard, 2-1 with a Nicky Ajose double securing the points in front of 10’222, 299 from Swindon.
And Finally – Interestingly, Bradford were elected to the football league without having ever played a single senior match. In 1911 Bradford City won the FA Cup, by coincidence the cup had been made in the city by Fattorini's the jewellers that same year. Thus, making them the first winners of the current trophy.
