The Britishless-Euro08 hit our screens over the weekend and with it another nail in our coffin of depleted memories. I have to say I'm not a great England fan and our non-appearance makes it much harder to justify watching the daily games. Mrs Nelson, for one, fails to see the pleasure to be gained from watching Switzerland v the Czech Republic on a Saturday evening, - "when actually are you going to mow the bloody lawn" - although the dire football that we served up in the last World Cup perhaps makes us fortunate that we won't be embarrassed this time around.
But what does hurt is the complete lack of any Addicks players among the entire competition. Gone are the days when the bulletin would report the exploits of the Hermannator and Rommers as they struggle to qualify, the efforts to get Lukewarm and little Darren into the english team, and even lamenting that Di Canio was too old to make the Italian squad. And then there was El Karkouri, Faye and Diawara in the African Cup to worry about. And gone to are the days of watching Kinsella battle it out with the giants of Germany.
These days, with our glorious past apparently behind us, all we have is the embarrassing pastime of spotting if there are any players that bear a passing resemblance to anyone that used to play for us. And calling your mates attention to the fact that Jarolim of the Czech Republic looks remarkably like a younger Spud Murphy. And then its not as if we can fool ourselves into any useless speculation that Pards is over there on the lookout for new signings, for there's precious little chance that anyone in Euro08 will lower themselves to consider football in the fizzies next season.
And I have to say that the horizon doesn't look very promising, despite the fact that we have managed to secure a new sponsor in JD Sports, and specifically their Carbrini range for the teens, for one year after the demise of housing giant Llanera.
Once again its back to fashion, following on from our link with all:sports in 2003, who JD Sports "acquired" in 2006 after they went into adminisation like most of our previous sponsors; take note JD. And if we had a crystal ball and could have looked at the JD Sports website before we saw the kit perhaps we might have expected something more trendy, aka the current German kit with a stylish number on the front or the striking Joma Seville kit as mentioned on CharltonLife, just to give us all a much needed lift.
But, no, we're Charlton and we can't afford to take the opportunity to set a fashion and lead the field. And just to confirm the matter, the poll in charltonlife, admittedly with only 111 votes, has the most votes, 34%, for "don't like either home or away shirt" which must be surely a big negative for the club. The word naff has been used and the style seems more in line with a trip back in time to the Eighties with FADS on the starship Enterprise than a voyage into the 21st century.
In fact, and not wanting to cast stones, its pretty obvious that somebody in the club has stuck his oar in where it doesn't belong for the design, when compared with all the other trendy stuff on the website, looks distinctly out of place.
Having said all that there is a better full frontal on the JD Sports website.... ( is it my imagination or does that Mark Hudson look a dead ringer for Scotty?) and all you have to do is place your finger across the glaring white stripe and it looks half-decent ( and round the back too apparently...)
But as to who exactly can we point the finger at as responsible for the one stripe too many, perhaps we'll never know. And we'll just have to wait and see if after FADS, The Woolwich, Viglen, MESH, Redbus, all:sports and Llanera will Carbrini beam us back to the Promised Land?
4 comments:
Perhaps there would have been more votes if there had been a category of "Who gives a crap?".
I assume the intent is to promote the sponsors design style, while maintaining a semblance of Charlton Athletic tradition.
From an old fart's perspective, someone obviously cocked it up as it looks like a fruit salad.
But then it is not 'geared' towards us oldun's -is it?
Old Fart and an oldun is it; you do yourself a great disservice young Ken. You'll as old as you feel ( or is it who you feel?) and anyone that can see a fruit salad in these shirts obviously has his marbles in the right place.
The club would be better off going back to the days of allowing the fans to vote on it - then there is no cause for arguments. You would have thought that would be easy with the website tech.... Oh!
Thanks for the picture, Ken. Its always a good tonic to laugh at other peoples problems and it'll help to keep our Christmas Card list down to reasonable numbers.
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