The whistle goes and you stand up and applaud the players off and you turn to your friends/neighbours/spouse/girlfriend/boyfriend/lover! and say:....What? While she is pouring my mug of Bovril the very lovely mrs Godders usually tells me how well Morgan has played and then we settle down to talk about all of the contoversial incidents in the game and how well everyone else has played. I like to make a particular point of praising Guly's contribution in a loud voice with my head turned to his detractors who sit behind me. Why is it that St Mary's is one of the very few places where people call me a daft old git. There are one or two other places where insults get hurled in my direction, well alright perhaps more than one or two but why are people so aggressive? I digress so back to the point of this posting: Almost every week there is good reason to moan about the match officials bias towards the other team and all the fouls committed against us that they have missed. Once I am back from the lavatory and all the swearing and cursing aimed at me by those in our row of seats has settled down I usually ask the very lovely mrs Godders what is for dinner. I remember many years ago under Branfoot watching a very poor and exceedingly boring game against Wimbledon with a good friend of mine (sadly no longer with us) and the whole game we spent guessing the destination of the planes flying out of Eastleigh as they went overhead (this was Wimbledon remember so we were looking up in the air for most of the game), counting seagulls and discussing the merits of Leibniz's notation in Calculus. I can truthfully say that is all I can remember of that particular match.
My conversations at half time go something like this. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. That's to get to the loo. This is ridiculous, this is ridiculous. That's in the toilet queue. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. that's to get to the bar This is ridiculous, this is ridiculous. That's in the bar queue. How much. That's paying for the beers. Gulp gulp gulp. Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me. That's to get back to my seat Have i missed anything
Oh Godders you aren't a moany old git We normally talk about how well we played, or how poorly and if so, what we would do to change etc etc
I spend most of it trying to load up the football scores and end up frustrated for 10 minutes when it repeatedly says connection failed. Guess that's cos it's what everyone else is trying to do Then usually end up playing peggle. (search it, good game)
Ha ha, this is so true of me - I do exactly the same every home game! Don't know why I haven't learnt yet!
I always end up shouting down my phone to my son, 'I can't hear you, it's noisy here.' He never learns and always phones me at the ground...how does anyone speak on a mobile at a match. Can't hear a word.
Also, I seem to spend my half-times desperately trying to hear the PA system to no avail, wondering what the hell is happening on the pitch. Every match, you can gurantee they'll be a man in a suit being awarded some sort of accolade by another man in a suit and the corresponding PA commentary sounds like the drunken ramblings of a man talking into a megaphone !
I hate the speakers at the ground, I remember the Cortese interview at the ML Cup last summer and no-one could understand a word of it
The PA system is designed for a full house. The emptier the ground is, the worse it is, as there's more "material" (e.g. back of the stands) for the sound waves to bounce back off and interfere with other sound waves etc, thus distorting the overall noise. The system needs people packing out the stadium, so that we can "absorb" (sorry for the complete lack of scentific terminolgy there!) the sound waves ourselves and stop them for bouncing back.
Or come and sit in the Chapel. I actually haven't had any problems with the PA system this season, unlike a few years back when it was nigh on impossible to hear what was being said. And, assuming I haven't been spouted a load of nonsense about the PA system, then this would make perfect sense, as the crowds in the Chapel are now bigger than what they once were (a mixture of on field improvements, and changing it to the family stand).
I'm usually in the Kingsland which is pretty full...perhaps we are getting echo from the prawn sandwich seats opposite. I have noticed that the boxes are much fuller now as well...it was awful in League 1 looking at a row of dark empty rooms. Casting my mind back, I remember the speakers in the Kingsland were deafening when SMS opened...think they turned them down and now we can't hear anything...which is better than cringing in pain.
I usually start off by having a good moan about all those who have left their seats before the whistle. This is not just moaning for the sake of it but because of where we sit they are blocking my view of the game. I know it won't make any difference but moaning makes me feel better and I particularly like it if we score while they are in the concourse (or are "beating the rush" before the game has ended). I then try to convince myself that the half-time entertainment is entertaining. Finally, I have a good moan about those who come back late and disrupt everyone again. Sometimes if the game has been extremely good, I may talk about the football.
Half the problem with the tannoy is that people speak to quickly and that bald headed bloke's diction is appalling.
I seldom post but when I see acoustics I JUST CAN'T HELP MYSELF! I'm an Acoustics student, and I'm thinking of attempting to design a better system for one of my free-choice projects next year. So often I spend half-time complaining to my brother about how horrific the sound is! Unfortunately the cost of improving the system at St Marys is probably way too much to be considered feasible for would be considered a minimal gain. For what they're worth, my thoughts are: reverberation time aside (this could be remedied somewhat by making the ceiling at least a BIT more absorptive, I think this would be pretty easy but I haven't done the equations yet), the system was designed to operate at a specific volume (probably too loud for most) to give an even distribution of energy. If you're saying that they turned the volume of the system down, this would result in the system not operating optimally. This would have an impact on the 'critical distance' of the system. Meaning, at a certain point beyond about 1/3 of the way up the stand, the reverberation from the back walls/ceiling bouncing back is louder than the actual source resulting in loss of clarity. One solution is 'turn it back up', but perhaps instead fill-in speakers could be installed from a truss on the ceiling (expensive!) halfway back to give a more even spread, that way the volume could remain lower, and hopefully everyone could hear better. Though these problems are exacerbated by empty sections of the stadium, as St. Brendy said, even when the stadium is full I feel like the system does leave a lot to be desired. I think the speakers they're using must be pretty mediocre, they certainly sound it. I like to imagine I will write a report, make some acoustic models, get a nice grade, show Cortese and he will shower me in money haha.
