dubai_phil

Ah Spoof.... You know what? After years of hoofing the ball up in the air in Salsibury & District League Div 7, going fishing instead of rugby while at school and smoking and drinking too much, I finally got to achieve one of those miracle moments in life while here in Dubai back in 2003. Yep, what's more I was quite successful. I reached the Quarter Final of the WORLD SPOOFING CHAMIONSHIPS yep, sadly, such a thing does exist. It was an event that was tagged onto to the yep even sadder - Gulf Spoofing Championships of that year, which I have been to about 5 times now. The whole night is hysterical, Black Tie & Tux, no ladies allowed, 90 quid all you can eat and drink, starts at 6pm and ends at 1am, and about 200 of Dubai's long serving/suffering ex pat community in attendance. The booze and food is given free and all the money raised goes to charity, normally for under-privileged kids in Palestine It has a whole suite of rules, special names for calls (eg Belgrano - for sank - cinq - five; Steffi - for Graf - The German Virgin - Nein - Nine etc), impossible calls - eg calling 10 when there are only 3 players etc. Breach of the rules is punishable by a fine of a Bottle of Port, everyone, even the Chaps from the Colonies speak in an unfathomable Upper Class Twit accent. There are two qualifying rounds with the winners from each table progressing to the Quarter Finals where you are Auctioned. All the money for the bids is put into a kitty and split 80% to the winning OWNERS (not the spoofers) and 20% to the runner up. The Winner gets a trophy and is required to order a proper "Spoofing Jacket" Sort of thing that would garish at Henley regatta in sort of Green red & Yellow stripes. The World Champion then receives a (sponsor donated) free trip with his better half to the following year's foolery. Previous venues have included Monaco, Sydney, New York, London etc. The event here is always a curtain raiser for the marathon drinking session that is the Dubai Rugby 7's as there are always a load of stupid old farts in town. My younger brother came one year and remarked "This truly is the most ludicrously stupid thing I have ever had the mis-fortune to take part in" I pointed out that this was more likely to be the fact that he was trying to down his second bottle of Port in one go but not sure the advice got through. Oh and was my success due to special training regimes? Extra practice sessions? Was it fook, I was just late and was about 4 pints behind everyone else so until I got as p*ssed as the rest it seemed quite easy.

0-4 But if we start out playing 4-4-2 then a tighter game and possibly 0-2 But have to say with the Free Vodka for chicks later tonight at Rock Bottom, I could be wrong and the chances of scoring could be higher than I thought :-)

No problem. Had a sudden Surge in my attention span. I went to the DHL office to send some papers to UK but it was closed so had to use UPS instead, it was a useful Back-Up. I don't generatorally have these problems, but I wanted to get it all done this afternoon in case somebody Spikes my drink at Rock Bottom tonight. Anyway, for those ITK I was going to post about the damage since we lost the Powerchute payments but decided that would get too dull.

Nice to have a thread not worrying about Board Room Power struggles

You are unfortunately not allowed to post on this forum as you are simply a worried fan. Worried fans should stick to bbc.co.uk, TSW is currently only open to fully paid up members of warring.parties.com Humour over. You are actually right, it doesn't matter ONE IOTA at this moment how we got to this mess or WHO got us to this mess. The ONLY thing that matters is how we either 1) Survive long enough to be bought (ie get through the worst of the downturn) or 2) Get out of this ourselves. As an analyst more than a faction, I just don't think we have the time or the luxury now of wasting ANY of the people around our club, but I am also getting more and more convinced that some people (not necessarily posters) may have ulterior motives to further damage the sinking ship. Oh and in reply to Delmary No I'm not wrong, and neither are you. Salz COULD have come in much earlier, and I am sure that on TSF Morph and others indicated he wanted to stay behind the scenes. The "Lowe Return" planning only gathered pace around the time of the Wolves away game which was around February of last year. Before that it was an idea, around then it became a plan. A great deal seems to have happened behind the scenes between the time MW was "alleged" to be meeting an investor for dinner in London in late Nov/early Dec and Andy Murray beating Roger Federer in Dubai. Salz made his offer as an attempt to stop the return, but by then the train-wreck was in motion and it would only have been seen as an attempt by Leon to retain influence/control. Time now for a lot of people on all sides to understand that simply getting the keys to the executive loos at SMS isn't really ging to do a damned thing for us

You know you're gonna wish you'd left the kid behind and come to Rock Bottom...... But meanwhile I'll be at Rock Bottom surrounded by overweight p*ssed minging Brit Chicks and wishing I was at the game. Grass Side Other Always Greener....

I think we already passed that point. I think it is clear that a tweak on the rudder is needed. We can't afford anything other than what we have, so maybe a little more "help" from Wotte behind the scenes may be the only INTERNAL answer, but I also think any public pronouncements about the structure right now would be wrong. Meanwhile following through the logic of previous posts, back to my bugbear. 1) We started the season broke 2) We have become more broke 3) We don't see the decisions made by Lowe as working 4) With all the problems Lowe is now more devisive than ever 5) There is still not actually a viable alternative EXCEPT another bout of musical chairs So, we come back to square one, what this club needs AT THIS TIME Is to acknowledge we are in the sh*t To have ALL the majority shareholders working together "To save the club they love" To have an INDEPENDENT chairman strong enough, bloody minded enough to bang the heads together and use the (what appear to be very FEW) skills of each of the 3 amigos. Salz didn't want it before because of the mess, Mike Richards was proposed at Runnymede but isn't probably the right person, so we need to find any other wealthy Saints fans who want to HELP US. I am still convinced that making the club "almost sustainable financially" in the past few months will make us an attractive investment opportunity, but right now anyone with money ONLY wants to hoard their cash. We HAVE to survive until things get better. Too many factions scoring points and not enough working together. (Perhaps a DAMN good start would be Rupert to acknowledge the mess and publicly state that he is ONLY working to save the club and that as soon as a viable alternative comes along he WILL go and wish us well) Oh and play 4-4 bl*0dy 2 tonight

Two comments Luker did give an interview and explain why we weren't doing promotions so he is due a little slack, even if we all think it is obvious. Plenty have said that Lowe makes very few decisions on money at the moment (except how to save spending it), the Bank does and we've mentioned that one before as being called "virtual bank administration" Banks & business sense - hahahahahahaha What we SHOULD have done is come up with some sort of buy one junk bond get a free ticket, then the bank would have loved it.....

I'm 3,471 miles away I know nuffink......... But the possibility that some wish for of admin to get rid of the incumbents COULD IMHO leave the incumbents pretty damned close to the club....

lol, reading the article as a nasty Journo would looks like Crouchie's off as well then "He was a big reason why I came to the club, but I'll move on and I wish him all the best," said Crouch, who scored against Fulham.

Well, as we aren't allowed to have Sex on the Beach any longer we just have hi-impact aerobic sessions so to speak....... and no our naughty picture filter turns your pics into x's and when we try to go to the web it says "This site is blocked" you filthy infidel scum, (or the local translation of that I believe) The current upgraded chick rates far more than a couple of x's

Now this SOUNDS simple, but think it through carefully. It can also be done the other way around. Liquidate the Football Club Ltd. The owner of the stadium would expect rent to be paid. providing the stadium business has not been put into administration, then NU will STILL have the mortgage which will need paying. And then the club pays the rent to the Stadium company, but the stadium company will have to make a profit, so instead of the current crippling mortgage we get the same outlay plus somebody else's profit.... Now those who have "gallantly" decided to boycott the club into administration, ask yourselves who would be the continued most likely owner of the the stadium..... So you busted the club, gave it a burden it would never pay off and bingo, no change at the top. Oh and who would own all the nice pockets of property for a rainy day in the future such as Stoneham and Jackson's Farm? Not the football club that's for sure. As others have said, be VERY careful with emotive positions and taking a stand, nothing in business is quite as simple as it seems. (Oh and who would also benefit if the club was raped of it's remaining players and the debt paid off) And who would buy a club with no assets, high overheads and not even the youngsters... Well done whoever is working this one through.

Fri - chilled went to Karaoke, had free drinks all night for singing and cos mate's the DJ got monged then aerobics Sat - hung over, shopping & cooking followed by aerobics Sun - stayed in bed until 7pm for more aerobics Mon - need medical attention for my back... 9/10 would have been 10 but got upset by the fact that spuds got a win

OK I'm up for an alternative crisp that is crunchy and harder? Mine is Crushed Black Pepper & Sea Salt Kettle Chips. Tyrells hand cut chips are close but no cigar. Walkers have turned to mass produced mush over the years, and as for Lays (which are a Pepsi brand you find worldwide but not sure about UK) they are cr*p except for the Spicy BBQ flavour ridges you only seem to find in Thailand

Look on the bright side peeps. At least the seats at SMS are bolted to the floor so they probably won't be sold off yet (simply becasue we don't have enough money to pay a couple of labourers to do it) Everything is pointing to the fact that we're dead men walking, if it ain't bolted down and we can get 50 quid for it it'll be gone. High earners on loan and probably we'll pay some of the wages to help. Surprised half the reserves haven't been loaned out yet, I hear it could be that bad. May not need to worry about boycotts soon. Morph & Co, Leon, it's very close to that time to pick up the phone, don't leave it too long there'll be nowhere left to sit down on matchdays

ditto

Still got those 3 from the last FTN around my gaff, so I'll pass on this muttley crew thanks all the same... One point though, a couple of them look awfully young...... (but in case the next one's selection is worse than this 4 & 10 should keep the wolf from the door can always keep them in the Fridge)

well it's really hard to change your football team, so just upgrade the misses then.....

Thinking this through, my vote is none of the above. I think it could be that he believed he could come back and reduce the wages by getting rid of ALL the high earners in the pre-season. I wonder if he felt that simply by telling all those on contracts to "clear off you're not wanted" they would up and find new clubs, leaving him with his (at that time) viable business plan for survival If he'd known we'd continue to pump 2million quid a year into 4 players who have made what about 8 appearances between them so far, I wonder if he would have been quite so gung-ho. Them staying gives the fans rallying points when the youngsters can't hack it, allows us to all start off again on depressing doom and gloom and question decisions. Because they didn't go, the fans believe we were left with a choice and that has accelerated the discontent and probably the attendance fall. Lowe felt he had unfinished business here, he wanted to make it work. I think he may just have over-estimated things somewhat, and THAT could be far more dangerous than ALL the other mistakes put together......

No surprises, when cut and pasted from that link, just another unfortunate case of "the bleedin obvious" When asked directly why John left against his and the Poortvliet's wishes, the head coach said: “The actual reason you all know. We talked at the beginning of the season of the wage bill and that’s still a problem." You could spend another 6 months passing the blame around but in JP's own words he wasn't going to play him every week (yeah right) so he became expensive. The positive point (clutching at straws) is that MAYBE he can bring in a full back now Jan Poortvliet is hoping the next Saints transfers will be players coming in rather than going out after the massive disappointment of Stern John’s departure last week. but it will probably be a midfielder............... harumph

I think we are barking up the wrong tree. Bates is renowned for PM's Bewbs Fun with Numbers So a picture of Gordon Brown's manboobs while holding a calculator should do it photoshop experts?

Just a suggestion to you and Stevo A mate suggests that you may have more fun if you allow your chick to do it Very VERY slowly allegedly

Well done to Hull, it's great fun and good to watch. It also make muppets of the ITK'er types who inhabit our tv screens as pundits. But as others have said, over the years many teams have started well and then hardly earned a point after Christmas. They're on a roll now, enjoy the ride, but a few injuries to the likes of Giovanni and they will be thanking their lucky stars that they had this start. But in their favour, I do like the fact that Phil Brown gives good interviews admitting this and rubbishing the Hull for the CL hype

And interesting that "other" interested investors at the time took a look at the books or the politics and ran screaming to the hills....... Don't you just love that magic phrase "conflict of interest" Why was it only us fans that wondered about whether SISU were just using us to improve their deal at Coventry???? Or does the "White Witch Curse" just turn everyone who walks into an office at SMS decide they want to bet the whole farm on Red every bl*ody time

I wish I was there, even when it seems sh*t we miss it But on the bright side I'll be in Rock Bottom surrounded by p*ssed chicks guzzling their free Vodka. Reckon we should ship DMG over for the night, even HE could score in there.....