Bob Bradley

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PGFWhite said:
I must admit I'm feeling the total opposite. I can't remember the last time I felt so disinterested in a game. For me it's like the end of an era. The end of our local club status and the start of a corporate franchise. It's been made worse by the International break which seems to have extended the whole sorry, sordid saga.

I've got a ticket for the game so I'll toddle along to The Emirates to be with the people that really matter, the Swans fans. I'm hoping that a few beers with The Jack Army will re-ignite my mojo.
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I understand that reaction too, PGF. As Swans fans we just have to hope it all comes together. I know what you mean about the end of an era though.
 
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I don't feel it's the end of an era at all, just yet another change.

It's not as if we are a 100% Welsh club anyway. We've had foreign players and managers for years now. Heck we've even had Australian involvement. We've moved to a new stadium. We're basically a football club based in Wales rather than a Welsh football club. Our fan base is dominantly Welsh, and that won't change ever, so for me it's just another set of new circumstances. I still love the club, even with the embarrassment of how we've been dealing with people the last few years.
 
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Well i think it's a massive change myself ...First of all we have been taken over by new owners and we have appointed a new manager from America the first club to do so and it looks like our chairman has lost his powers and could be the next position to be replaced......It is a huge change at Swansea football club and i think there will be more to come....
 
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For the majority of our history we've been a club struggling to stay alive but, a few changes and a few years later we're not. We aren't that sub-standard football team trying to win a muddy match on a cabbage patch against another **** kicking football team. Nope, because things change and now we play the best in the best.

As I see things now, we've changed again and moved on in our unusual, unpredictable way. We have another new set of owners, another new set of directors whose different philosophies on life brings inevitable change. But I couldn't give a **** about that because that's boardroom stuff and I don't support the boardroom and anyway change isn't necessarily good or bad, its just different.

On Saturday, I'll be supporting my team, wearing my colours as I have done for almost 50 years now. I remember my first game, it was the first time I'd ever been to a stadium and the first time I'd ever been in a big crowd. I watched the game from my Bampys shoulders from behind the goals on the west bank. I wasn't interested at all in the football, what I found so exciting and so exhilarating was the volume of sound coming from every corner of the Vetch. It was the shock wave that hit me from the roar when we scored that made me fall in love with the Swans, it was the crowd. The game was against Leyton Orient and we were Swansea Town and I'll always have Swansea Town imprinted in my heart. I was later told because I didn't have a clue then, that we won 2-0, it was 1967.

Nothing really changes for me, Town or City, manager, owner, league, style, it doesn't matter, when I see 11 Swans running on any football field, its the same as it ever was.
 
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But wouldn't it be great if we had some long term stability at the Club, Stumpy? A long term, successful manager and a core of top players who didn't move on to other things? I'd love that.

Sadly, with a Club like ours - a pretty small fish in a pool filled by whales - it can never happen. The best we can hope for with a relatively fast turnover is to have success in fits and starts. That's pretty much been the pattern so far in the Prem.
 
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Kifflom! said:
But wouldn't it be great if we had some long term stability at the Club, Stumpy? A long term, successful manager and a core of top players who didn't move on to other things? I'd love that.

Sadly, with a Club like ours - a pretty small fish in a pool filled by whales - it can never happen. The best we can hope for with a relatively fast turnover is to have success in fits and starts. That's pretty much been the pattern so far in the Prem.
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I think Kiff, in football terms anyway, we've had long term stability in the sense that we've been like one of these new driverless cars. regardless of who sits up front, until recently anyway, we've achieved relative success and reached our destination.

I agree though Kiff, it would be great if we could have a long term, successful manager just to take the edge off things. Its something we haven't had as a club ever if you think about it. Two years seams to be the longest term for any manager as far back as I can recall.

Maybe the American connection now will change that. I've thought about Bradley, after initially unfairly bagging him, and the fact that he is American could work to our advantage. American Soccer is watching our new American manager and they are desperate for him to succeed. Our American owners must realise that his being successful here would have a huge impact across the pond. They must be seen as new world pioneers by the American Soccer fraternity and we know how our American cousins love the challenge of a new frontiers conquer

I can just see it, Bob Bradley as First Lieutenant John J. Dunbar in the frontier epic, Dances with Jacks
 
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My dream time watching football was going to the vetch and paying very little in them days and watching Swansea Town crammed with local players and not a foreigner in sight.....you were watching your own local lads playing against other teams own local lads and that is what i call football teams.....Today most fans are watching teams with players of many national identities with very little or even none at all from the local area so that we are supporting teams in name only.....It's sad really that money now dominates the game and greed has now been firmly established never to end and can only escalate.......I will always be a supporter of the swans but the reality is my support is not about local players any more forming the crux of the side but players who have no infinity with Swansea at all and are playing for money and what they can gain.......We are all use to it now but like a lot of older fans from clubs we still have fond memories when your team was truly played by local lads........
 
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55282 said:
Not in my book....
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Not in anyone's book in most countries now but when i was a lad it was known as Soccer and i would get my usual soccer annual every xmas......We dont use the word Soccer any more but that's the correct name for it......Football is used in a number of other sports so it's not unique like Soccer was.....
 
The clue is in the name. FOOT ball. The Americans have no right to call NFL 'football' nor those Down Under calling Aussie Rules 'footie'. 'Soccer' is an outdated term now in the UK.
 
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I agree it's out dated but im saying the correct term is soccer......Rugby was named football well before Soccer and still is called rugby football club......Football is used widely everywhere and it is soccer who nicked the name football well after everyone else.
 
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55282 said:
If I hear the yank call the game soccer thats my fukn lot.[/QUOTE
This is the history:
In the 1860s, as in most of history- with records as far back as 1004 B.C.- there were quite a lot of “football” sports in existence being played popularly throughout the world and of course, England. Many of these sports had similar rules and eventually, on October 26th, 1863, a group of teams in England decided to get together and create a standard set of rules which would be used at all their matches. They formed the rules for “Association Football”, with the “Association” distinguishing it from the many other types of football sports in existence in England, such as “Rugby Football”.

Now British school boys of the day liked to nickname everything, which is still somewhat common. They also liked to add the ending “er” to these nicknames. Thus Rugby was, at that time, popularly called “Rugger”. Association Football was then much better known as “Assoccer”, which quickly just became “Soccer” and sometimes “Soccer Football”.


The inventor of the nickname is said to be Charles Wredford Brown, who was an Oxford student around the time of Association Football’s inception. Legend has it, in 1863 shortly after the creation of Association Football, Wredford-Brown had some friends who asked him if he’d come play a game of “Rugger”, to which he replied he preferred “Soccer”. Whether that story’s true or not, the name caught on from around that point on.

In the beginning, the newly standardized Rugby and Soccer were football sports for “gentlemen”, primarily being played by the upper echelons of society. However, these two forms of football gradually spread to the masses, particularly Soccer as Rugby didn’t really catch on too well with the lower classes. This resulted in the name switching from “Soccer” and “Association Football”, to just “Football”; with the first documented case of the sport being called by the singular term “Football” coming in 1881, 18 years after it was first called “Soccer” or, officially, “Association Football”.

The game gradually spread throughout the world under the lower class name of “Football”, rather than “Soccer” as the “gentlemen” called it. The problem was, though, that a lot of other countries of the world already had popular sports of their own they called “Football”, such as the United States, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa, to name a few. In these countries, the name “Soccer” was and, in some, still is preferred for this reason.
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