Assuming this was meant for me. I was in the northam last season but loads of people there aren't interested. Full of atmosphere tourists or geared up knobheads staring at their phone for 90 minutes.
While we're at it. Can I just say the whole 'Woooooooah you fat bastard' sung to the keeper thing is so irritating. It makes zero sense. I could tolerate it if the atmosphere was lively and it was just thrown in amongst a load of other bantery songs, but it's not. And it's the loudest thing that comes out of the Northam, like everyone is sleeping until they see the oppo goalie lining up a goal kick, and then suddenly they all get excited for it. Am I just growing old? I remember we used to do it back in the day, but only on the few occassions when keepers were visibly a bit paunchy (quite common back then).
They very much reminded me of our away support of recent years tbh. 10-15 minutes of going through the songbook followed by hardly anything but singing about libraries and the oppositions rivals etc with the odd rendition of a main song (land of my fathers to our owts). But yeah it does make me laugh hearing a team with a two thirds empty away end singing about **** support. Even noise wise by far the worst down here this season though.
Haha that's exactly what it is. There were people near me who only ever really joined in with that or singing about Tall Paul's penis (cos it was obviously the most hilarious banter thing ever FFS). I might be imagining it but didn't "you fat bastard!" actually used to be "you're ****! AHHHHHH!" Much prefer that version.
I must admit that people staring into their phones for best part of 90 mins, for whatever reason seems a peculiar way to spend £50 for the privilege? It’s not just football though, this obsession with ‘being elsewhere’ when with others, pubs/restaurants shop checkouts (!!!!). Moan over, sorry!!
I think you can say that for every part of our ground & likely at all / most other clubs as well (especially when you’re not “riding the wave”!)
And I'm sure no work place changes at your job has any effect on you, mentally or otherwise. Sports psychologists exist for a reason.
Don’t disagree with that because I am in the Northam and it was quiet yesterday compared to other games however (and I know that this is not going to change) the atmosphere in the stadium is pretty much 100% reliant on the Northam so it would be good if the rest of the stadium got involved a little more. There are small pockets that do but generally it is quiet.
The good guys in the Northam were doing their best, in trying circumstances, at least one new chant, but they seem to lack anyone to choreograph them. They just need something and someone to motivate them, but it's not happening, they definitely gave up long before the end of the game, Can you blame them with the turgid dross that they are being served up?
Then we aren’t playing the right tactics then. I think Still wants a target man like Stewart who we know is prone to injuries. We should have bought a backup for Stewart
Well that's kind of my point, the small pockets is what we had before with the itchen north and kingsland north. There was even a small group trying to build something on the itchen side of the chapel in 23/24 which made quite a big difference in the early part of the season. The club decided they didn't want that and wanted to lump all of those separate groups together in one end which really isn't the sort of club we are and has totally ruined the dynamic. Giving away fans basically free reign in the process. Of all the bad decisions under this ownership this is undoubtedly one of the worst.
This is it for me. People are (potentially correctly) blaming Spors/SR for relying on Stewart and buying a more developmental back up target man, seemingly forgetting that we already had Archer and Armstrong who have shown they can score well in this league as potential back ups to Stewart. The question(s) are more: 1 was it discussed that Stewart might not last a season and there was a large chance he would miss time through injury? 2 if it was, was it then discussed about how Still wanted to play and a backup/rotational target man was needed for that scenario 3 if that was agreed, was Downs seen as that player? 4 if it wasn’t agreed that Still was set on that style, was it decided that Archer/Armstrong could do the job and we would play a different way than if we were playing with a target man We will never know the answers to those conversations so the blame can be shared equally in my view.
