The9

"Quite similar" ? One was a drilled low cross from the left which was diving headed in, the other was a looped right wing cross headed in between the far post and mid-goal by a jumping player. Other than that they were both headers there's barely a similarity.

Christmas Shopping Effect.

Strange. Speaking of "media presence", there's a 3-page article on Saints v Brighton in WSC this month. Not sure it's particulary accurate either, ends up with a lament for the Dell FFS, but sod's law that the writer picked the one game in 15 when we're gash. Three headers, the first was the Waigo diver crossed from the left, the second Lallana's "hey, look, I CAN head" effort crossed from the right which the keeper was nowhere near, the third Hammond's failure to score from the rebound which barely crossed the line and that he didn't think went in. Not particularly similar and definitely not two close range headers, firstly from Papa Waigo and then a carbon copy goal by Adam Lallana to put Southampton 2-0 up at half time.

Not even in jest. :mad:

I think you're probably right, it can't just be the information as anyone could have got hold of it. But why should the Echo have to hold back when the BBC had already reported it, for instance ? Any positives from the club holding a press conference to steer the story have been overshadowed by questions about the legitimacy of the banning of the local paper, any benefits from publishing "early" by the Echo eclipsed by being banned. Everyone looks bad, and I honestly don't think if the ban didn't exist that anyone at the club or paper would be any the worse for it.

I'm hoping that at some point in the future these skills will become so rare I'll be on a million quid a week for removing apostrophes.

Hopefully some of it on me, that was kinda the point.

Picked up on it ? I whinged about it on my Facebook page and the spent part of the morning educating myself on participles and tenses from Wikipedia because I knew it was wrong and wasn't able to explain why...

But it does make a ban for reporting information in the public domain that much more ridiculous.

Dear Daily Echo, I think you should give Dan Kerins a raise. He is awesome. Regards, A. Reader.

To be honest I can't see that this is going to affect their reporting anyway, loads of clubs have done this to various regional papers and they just get their stories unofficially through other sources, so it's a total storm in a teacup. Cortese looks touchy given that the info is out there, and the paper looks petty for bringing Lowe into it. Just out of interest, how was there a letter objecting to the development already on the file when we were linked to it if the development was so hush hush ?

No ? Ok, here goes, from Nov 30th... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/8385342.stm One of the UK's biggest newspaper firms is to charge for access to online content from six of its titles. The Johnston Press websites will either ask users to pay £5 for a three-month subscription to read the full articles, or direct them to buy the newspapers. Johnston is the first regional publisher in the UK to trial asking readers to pay for its online news. Sites in the pilot scheme include the Worksop Guardian, the Ripley & Heanor News and the Whitby Gazette. The Northumberland Gazette is also included in the trial. In Scotland, the Carrick Gazette and Southern Reporter are taking part. And there are millions of websites that don't have their own newspaper...

You can have a go at the Echo for it too if you wish, they've already amended "the story was ran" to the correct "the story was run" since the link originally appeared...

Yes, well done us... http://www.stokecityfc.com/page/CustomerCharter/0,,10310,00.html http://www.hullcityafc.net/page/SupportersCharter/ http://www.readingfc.co.uk/page/CustomerCharter/ http://www.barnetfc.com/page/ClubCharter/0,,10431,00.html http://www.ciderspace.co.uk/supporters/customer-charter.htm http://www.cafc.co.uk/charter.ink http://www.tranmererovers.co.uk/page/CustomerCharter/0,,10365,00.html http://www.mfc.premiumtv.co.uk/page/Club/0,,1,00.html http://www.ntfctrust.co.uk/artman/publish/article_204.shtml http://www.fulhamfc.com/Club/SupporterInfo/SupporterCharter.aspx http://www.barnsleyfc.co.uk/page/CustomerCharter/0,,10309,00.html http://www.hartlepoolunited.co.uk/page/CustomerCharter/0,,10326,00.html etc.

It's not "rigged", it's structured to ensure each group has a geographical mix of teams and that each group has at least one decent side in it (or the hosts). That ensures that the bigger stadia get the bigger matches (featuring A1, B1, C1 etc) because the logisitics of organising ticketing, accommodation and transport for 32 teams and all of their fans (plus the knockout stages) in only 6 months is hard enough without having Brazil or South Africa play 3 matches in the 40,000 seater grounds whilst (say) New Zealand v Honduras gets drawn to be in a 90,000 capacity stadium. It would also be patently rubbish if a European team qualified for the World Cup and found itself playing 3 other European teams in the group, and the same for all the other Confederations except Oceania and North/Central America, who don't have enough representatives to fill a group. Also, A1 is the hosts in order to ensure that their matches are scheduled for the biggest grounds, as there will be by far more of their fans around than anyone else's. If you really want to complain about something, start on the nature of the seedings, which has been based on entirely different criteria for the last 3 tournaments and is never decided before the competition qualifying ends, never mind before it begins - or UEFA seeding the Playoffs entirely unfairly to try and get the best teams through when they were all second placed in their group and should have been treated equally. Or Henry's handball. The structure of the draw, in making it a truly worldwide tournament, is about the one thing they do get right.

People in glass houses...

Quite. Matthew Le Tissier = Craig Maskell. And I never thought I'd type that.

Personally I'm in favour from a number of different perspectives : As a Saints fan, the football club would get a bigger ground on the cheap and having our ground used as a World Cup venue is prestigious, and historically enduring. As a Southampton resident, the City's profile would be raised worldwide and it might invite investment and business that otherwise wouldn't be there. From a footbally supporting perspective there will be thousands of football-loving visitors packing out the bars and clubs, creating the unique atmosphere you only get at World Cups, and a huge outdoor venue for watching other matches on a big screen, which was pretty cool in 2006 at The Common even when it was just for one match. Plus as a 3-time World Cup attendee I'd be booking my tickets a good 2 years before the tournament anyway, and I'd only have to trundle down the road to see a match or 4 (then again I'd be going wherever the matches were, like at Euro '96). Actually not that many tickets go to the competing FAs, it's probably about a third each for fans of the competing teams, official partners/sponsors/other FAs, and worldwide football fans. Difficult to tell exactly as the competing teams' fans always hoover up any spares that were sourced from the other groups. From a tedious geek point of view there is a requirement for a certain number of hotels and a particular level of infrastructure, so there would probably be a bit of road-building and motorway/airport improvement, and if a nation wants a purpose-built training facility (like England have had built in Rustenburg) that might be a possibility too. Not interested in any of that ? There's always "Portsmouth couldn't do it".

I have been reliably informed that there are no trains at all on Dec 26, so on the Boxing Day Bank Holiday there might actually be a half-decent service. As I'll be somewhere in Hertfordshire or Cambridgeshire on the morning of the game I'll be driving anyway.

Should be addressed to Sir Alex Ferguson too if I'm not mistaken. Makes the address and addressee look a bit weird though, all those peers at the start.

Wow, literacy not a factor in the Marchwood area ? If that's worth complaining about, it is also probably worth using punctuation. A load of that "land ownership history" is completely irrelevant as well. I'm not best impressed with the redaction in the doc either, are they supposed to leave full addresses in public documents like that ? And there's a third party named in the CC: line next to where they've blacked out the email address...

That's going to cost you. Can we have a list of pubs you'll be attending (and when) for the next 10 years please?

Oh God, just ignore him, if he's not on a total wind up he's too thick to understand anyway.

It doesn't appear to have stopped the local authorities in numerous Japanese, South Korean, Portuguese or US venues who didn't have top flight, or in some cases any, football team from having stadia built from scratch to raise their profile internationally. Admittedly there are a few post-tournament white elephants where football clubs haven't taken up residence (Aveiro and the Stade de France spring to mind), but that's still much more of a risk than investing when there's been a football club with at least 15,000 people attending for most of the previous 50 years.

Or unplugging it. Who uses bloody fax machines nowadays anyway ? There's absolutely no reason why online transfers couldn't be processed (other than the adminners wanting to protect their bureaucracy).