Jul 31
Summer murmurs of Robbie Elliot leaving might well come to fruition this week. Chris Powell mentioned a few days ago that the club are in discussions to extend his contract but one has to wonder why then Powell feels he needs another 1st choice keeper with the OS stating that we are in talks to sign Reading’s Ben Hamer?
Hamer was on loan at Exeter when we played them in the bumper Valley crowd day last February. Matt Taylor would thus know him well.
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“It was a battling performance from the visitors, who matched the Lions throughout a frenetic and absorbing match which will whet the appeitite among Addicks supporters for next Saturday against Bournemouth and the new season” – cafc.co.uk
I can’t help myself, but like a kid stood outside a candy store with his Dad’s wallet I’m a little beside myself with excitement a week from the opening day of the new season.
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After four years of rain affected lethargy, today’s Bermuda Cup Match ended in excitement as Somerset, who had batted like the blind school yesterday, fought back courageously to make a real fist of it and nearly snatched the trophy from St George’s for the first time since 2002.
My son and I were at the Wellington Oval today down at the east end of the island in St George’s to watch the annual proceedings and jolly good fun it was too. It is hard to describe the atmosphere except it’s about as far removed from a Lords test that you can imagine.
The locals dress to impress, well I am sure they impressed someone, the rum and beer flows and wannabe DJ’s compete with each other ten feet apart. The local scaffolding companies make a killing as that is pretty much what everyone is standing and sitting on and I hope, I really hope, they have ruddy good liability insurance.
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I told Johnnie Jackson via Twitter tonight to save some room in the trophy cabinet after he lifted the inaugural People’s Cup, instigated by the noisy 150 Den Bosch fans in the stadium.
I’m not one for friendlies but I was keen to read opinions of tonight’s only home pre-season game and I was looking for style and substance over most anything else. Pleasingly the reports were commendatory with the midfield pair of Hollands and Stephens receiving a lot of plaudits as did Green, who unfortunately will miss the Bournemouth game due to suspension. BWP scored a neat lob and by all accounts the Dutch side were no mugs and played a pleasing passing game as did we.
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My son flew into Bermuda this evening travelling the 6.5-hour flight on his own. British Airways allow children to fly on their own from the age of 5 although ages, rules and regulations differ depending on the route and he has been asking for a while if he could travel here on his own. This morning his Mum was more nervous than he was as he took the whole adventure in his stride.
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It is being widely rumoured that Charlton have accepted an offer of £150,000 from Notts County for Paul Benson. Of course he has to want to leave and agree terms, which team mates McCormack and Francis couldn’t do last week.
This is disappointing news to me. I was always supportive of Benno and his actual goalscoring ratio (1 every 4) wasn’t too bad considering our below average season and the fact that rarely from what I could see did we ever get a decent cross into him.
Therefore I assumed that this was one of the reasons for signing his old wide man team-mate Danny Green, and I was happy to see this combination work last night in the friendly at Aldershot.
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Last September I blogged through the night (my September archive is dominated by it) when Hurricane Igor battered the island throughout the night. It was a scary experience coming a day after I had knee surgery and was hobbling around on crutches.
The hurricane season is with us again and Bermuda is set to have it’s first 2011 brush with nature on Thursday as Tropical Storm (a named storm is not classified as a hurricane unless it has sustained winds of at least 74 mph) Bret passes by the island.
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Aldershot tomorrow night. A name that always brings back some sweet childhood memories because it was at the Recreation Ground that I saw my first ever football match.
It was 1972, or it could have been 1973 but we were at a family friends in Camberley for the weekend and the Dad, Pete, was a regular at The Rec and offered to take me and my Dad along to a game.
Aldershot were playing Southport, or was it Stockport? Or Workington? Always annoys me that…. but I am more certain of the score. It finished in a 2-2 draw but what I remember more vividly is the ground.
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A defeat on the final day of the Addicks’ tour of southern Spain, but a defeat with no shame only more words of encouragement. The Cardiff City media man on Twitter was complimentary of the Addicks’ performance despite losing 1-0 and I am sure the party will return in high spirits. Next up is Aldershot on Wednesday.
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Not content with discovering good coffee at the Tribe Road Kitchen last week, this week I came across a good lunch spot in Hamilton.
The Plaza Café is tucked away upstairs in what is called the Walker Arcade between Reid and Front Street’s and used to be a very third rate coffee shop.
Upon research the Plaza Café got renovated by the owners at the back end of last year and I normally have no reason to venture near it, so when I did stroll past earlier in the week it was a pleasant surprise to look in it’s window at the very sleek interior.
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A new look then to honour the Addicks new look. I hope you like, it’s taken me a few days to fiddle around with but I wanted something that more resembled a magazine with a clean look. I think my previous design was a little bland, although to be honest I have spent so much time staring at this new page that for the life of me I can hardly remember what the old one looked like!
The new-look Addicks meanwhile are out in Spain being put through their paces and we had a very decent win over Bristol City Tuesday night in Lepe. On Friday the Addicks play Cardiff City at the Estadio Guadalquivir of Coria FC in Seville and return to Blighty on Saturday.
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Another new signing today but a strength and conditioning coach, not a player, but one would have to say another important brick in the foundations of the club’s rebuild.
Last week Charlton let go (and I’m probably being polite there) Donough Holohan and have snared 29-year old Laurence Bloom from Southend. Southend’s player-coach Graham Coughlan said: “Speaking on behalf of the whole group we are really going to miss him. He did some unbelievable work for the football club and will be a big, big miss for us. He was a joy and pleasure to work with and whoever comes in to replace him has some very big shoes to fill.”
By all accounts Bloom was on the pitch at Welling before the game on Saturday.
After recently celebrating 3 years on the rock, I thought it was a good time to update my Bermuda Page over there on the right hand side. Feel free to comment.
Freddy Hall. Remember that name? You probably don’t although I suspect my fellow Bermuda Addicks will. Hall is a Bermudian goalkeeper who was on trial with Charlton in December 2009. It didn’t work out and he returned to University in America to finish his degree.
A year ago he was at Plymouth Argyle on trial, but that didn’t work out either and he returned to Bermuda and played the season with the Hogges in the USL, the American 3rd tier. However it was announced today that Gary Johnson has given him a one-year contract at Northampton.
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With a couple of subs in Nick Pope and Ruben Bover Izquierdo, so 13 new faces in total. There is no denying that is a pretty impressive effort from Chris Powell and the board.
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As predicted Jose Semedo signed for Div 3 rivals Sheffield Wednesday today. I’m sorry to see him go but it was hardly unexpected, it’s just a shame that he has chosen to go to a team in the same division as us when one would have thought he had options higher up. Wednesday obviously were prepared to match or improve his current contract and gave him the stability of a 3-year deal.
But, in saying that I belong to the band of people that thought Jose was part of the problem and not the solution. Powell has already signed a whole new midfield and we should be more excited by that than the re-signing of the Portugeser and his Guadalopian mate Racon.
Nonetheless he only ever gave his all in a red shirt and I was proud to sponsor his shirt in his final season at The Valley.
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4 years ago we visited Argentina and whilst there we were fortunate enough to be at a River Plate home game in Buenos Aires (right) on the opening day of the Clausura (closing season). For those unaware the Argentinian league system works on a two seasons a year basis, the Clausura from February to June and preceding that, the Apertura (opening season) from August to December.
This is a Latin American phenomenon and is said to fill gaps in the latter part of a full season (cup competitions are not such big thing in South America particularly) and allows the lesser teams the same amount of games.
Relegations, if any, are done on an aggregate basis, and this is where the cynicism comes in. In the Argentine leagues the average points over the previous three seasons are used to determine relegation, thus making relegation of one of the ‘big clubs’ impossible, well almost.
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3 years on the rock has flown by, probably because I have this inherent view that everyday living here is very similiar. Unlike some ex-pats who move to a new country with an end game like going home after a finite amount of time, we came here open-minded to how long we stayed but acknowledging that we are tied to term work permits and unpredictable government policy.
We are very happy here and although if I’m honest we don’t love it, there isn’t much not to like. We miss the cultural things and modern infrastrucure and the things that one takes for granted that big cities bring, but Bermuda is not like living in Jamaica. This is first world on one of the remotest islands on the planet, albeit it can be like living in an English village in the 1970’s.
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This weekend was my 3rd anniversary of being in Bermuda, more on that another day, but I have to tell you that I finally found a coffee shop to rival one I found in my early decent coffee hunting three years ago.
The Tribe Road Kitchen has been open just a few weeks and is on the corner of Reid Street and King Street in Hamilton. The owners stripped down and restored a derelict 200-year-old Bermuda cottage and have used appealing reconditioned furniture and fittings to give it a hip but homely look.
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A day off work today as we closed the office for the US July 4th holiday. This gave me a chance to catch up with some errands and attempt to take stock of the continued incomings at Sparrows Lane.
Young goalkeeper Nick Pope officially signed for the club this morning from Bury Town as did Spanish attacking midfielder Ruben Bover Izquierdo, who impressed last season at Halesowen Town. Previously the 19-year old was on Real Mallorca’s books and was on trial with the Addicks at the end of last season, coinciding with Jeff Vetere’s involvement, unless I am reading too much into it.
What interested me about the announcement on cafc.co.uk was Powell talking of a development squad consisting of Pope, Bover-Izquierdo, Calum Harriot, Freddie Warren, Tosan Popo, Ben Davisson, Yado Mambo and Conor Gough. Nice idea and very continental in it’s thinking and I would imagine that this will lead to more reserve matches next season.
I wrote about and followed quite closely the Island Games two years ago. Yesterday was the last day and the closing ceremony of this year’s tournament held in the Isle of Wight.
25 island nations either part of, or associated with, the 9 sovereign nations of Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Norway, Spain, Sweden, the UK and the Caribbean compete every two years in 14 sports (chosen by the hosts from a list of 18) and the next Island Games will be in Bermuda for the first time in 2013 – sod London 2012, I might just wait for the greatest show on the ocean to come here!
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Matt Taylor this afternoon became Chris Powell’s 10th signing of the summer on the 2nd day of pre-season training. Taylor was out of contract at Exeter and has signed a 2-year deal. This is a player that I did see last year and at 29 Taylor has taken the long road in his career.
As recently as the middle of the last decade Taylor was a goalkeeper and wore the gloves again recently in the sad testimonial for Adam Stansfield. Like Bradley Pritchard, Taylor played for the England Universities team and was then converted to a centre half. Paul Tisdale signed him as a centre-half for Team Bath and then took Taylor with him to Exeter City where he had four very successful years, twice winning the player of the year award, two promotions and captaining the side for the last two seasons including when my son lined up alongside him on the halfway line when he was mascot in February at The Valley.
Aspen, aptly named for the Aspen trees filling its mountainsides (those aren’t individual trees but a large connection of roots!), is one of the West’s oldest towns. Booming in the 1800s during the Gold Rush and becoming a ski mountain in the 1940s, Aspen now attracts the outdoor-loving set who hit its mountains for skiing, snowboarding and snowmobiling, as well as summer and fall hiking, biking, whitewater rafting and horseback riding adventures. Located in the Fork Valley, Aspen’s slogan is “the Power of Four” due to its close proximity to Aspen Highlands, Buttermilk and Snowmass Mountains, meaning a trip to Aspen actually gives you access to four mountains of fun.
Aspen Mountain begins at nearly 8,000 feet at its base, climbing to 11,212 feet in height. Known for its ski slopes, 76 trails over 64 miles keep powder lovers occupied from late November through mid-April. However, Aspen is not for the beginner: there are no green trails on this here mountain. Instead, new skiers and boarders will have to traverse the trails at Buttermilk and Snowmass, the two most family-friendly mountains of the four and about a 20 minute drive away. Beware because kids also get bussed to these resorts as there are no ski facilities for children in Aspen.
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City of London
