Lord Smeatherington's Blog

Results

David Smeathers — Sun, 22 Aug 2010 19:19:18 +0000

Leeds United v Millwall, 12:30 2-2 result – 3-1
Kettering v Darlington, 15:00 1-4 result – 0-0
Bradford PA v Chasetown, 15:00 3-1 result 2-1
Newcastle v Aston Villa, 13:30 2-3 result 6-0

So I got one result right and no perfect scores. A trend I predict will continue and be consistent through most weeks.

I’m in no mood for proper match reflections after watching newcastle destroy villa so that update may come tomorrow.

Current tally

Correct results: 1
correct scores: 0

Predictions

David Smeathers — Sat, 21 Aug 2010 11:39:34 +0000

Another section I’ll try to keep going, predictions.

Today’s (and tomorrow’s) fixtures of interest;

Leeds United v Millwall, 12:30 2-2
Kettering v Darlington, 15:00 1-4
Bradford PA v Chasetown, 15:00 3-1
Newcastle v Aston Villa, 13:30 2-3

I have a tendency of predicting a lot of goals so there won’t be many results posted here that are ever right.

I’ll add a tally of correct scores and correct results and hopefully by the end of the season I’ll have reached double figures. Not bloody likely though.

An experiment

David Smeathers — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 21:17:00 +0000

An idea occurs. As shocking as that may be, they do come around every so often so I thought I’d at least try to see where this one leads.

It’s week one of the new football season (the proper week one – when the Premiership starts). I’ve currently already watched Bradford Park Avenue vs. Harrogate town (friendly), the Community Shield final, Tottenham vs. Man city, Man Utd vs. Newcastle, Young Boys vs. Tottenham, and Aston Villa vs. Rapid Vienna all the way through, totalling 540 minutes of football in the space of a week. In my opinion that’s nowhere near enough but it leads me to think that I should probably do a lot more writing than just a 220 word match report per fortnight for the Non-League paper.

I’ll be trying to write a bit more about whatever game takes my fancy each week – this will mainly be Aston Villa or Bradford Park Avenue as I generally watch these the most but hopefully there will be some random mentions of Leeds United, Kettering Town and other teams as I so feel. Its my blog, it’s random and disjointed, but there you go.

Tonight was Villa vs. Rapid Vienna. Last season, almost to the day, Villa were eliminated by Vienna to the cue of thousands of equally hilarious “it means nothing to me” quotes from almost everyone I knew, who knew I supported Villa. This time round we fielded a massively weakened side featuring no less than 8 changes to our team that faced West Ham on Saturday. Now Football Manager has gone a way of teaching me that Villa’s youth setup is quite impressive. Obviously this is a tremendous way of judging young talent so I watched on with a growing sense of optimism that this young side was going to seriously impress.

Thankfully, for around 50 minutes worth of the game I wasn’t disappointed. Mark Albrighton and Barry Bannan were particularly impressive, as FM predicted. Bannan opened the scoring on 12 minutes from an Albrighton cross but from then on we failed to really push home our advantage despite being on top for the majority of the first half and were punished by a cross that floated past defenders and attackers alike and settled in our far post. 1-1 was the final score, a positive result for such a young team on such an important night. I’m hoping McDonald gives the likes of Bannan and Albrighton a chance next Thursday for the return leg but we also have to play Dunne, Carew, Petrov and Ireland (if available) as another European-less season wouldn’t be acceptable following two brilliant 6th place finishes.

Another thing I’ll try to pick up on is a few players of the week, and if I can keep this going, should be able to pick a player of the season, based on who I’ve seen.

This week, I have to go for Mark Albrighton and, sickening though it may sound, Paul Scholes who was excellent in the Community Shield and against Newcastle on Monday. He’s shown that despite playing for a disgusting team, an ageing midfielder can still play a dynamic role, play exceptional creative passes AND still be devoid of any tackling ability.

Next week, Bradford PA vs. Chasetown in the Evo Stick league (yes, that is what it is called), Leeds United vs. Leicester City and Villa’s second leg against Vienna. I’m hoping this year’s Europa League “means something to me” as we eliminate Vienna in a blaze of revenge-based glory.

Trainee year finished.

David Smeathers — Sun, 20 Dec 2009 18:06:53 +0000

Well that’s it. The whole year has somehow managed to flash by in the blink of an eye. Our graduation was just four days ago and with it brought the official end of our year as “trainee” journalists. We’ve had so many highlights it would be utterly pointless to try to pick one out as a favourite. All my “hard work” was rewarded by the fact I came out of the course with a MERIT stamped on the front of my degree certificate, albeit by a measly 0.4%.

My task for the next few weeks will be to survive Christmas and New Year’s parties long enough to come out the other side and be able to hunt properly for a job in January. My efforts pre-2010 have been as unsuccessful as my attempts to learn shorthand in 2009. I have managed to use my once-a-fortnight gig with the Non-League Paper to scrape a bit of money together but it won’t keep me alive long for £40-odd a month.

Thankfully yesterday our futsal season kicked off. The first ever game as Leeds Futsal Club ended in an emphatic, FC Barsa-esque, defeat at the hands of league favourites Sheffield FC. There were some improvements, which will need to magnify ten-fold if we are to go anywhere this season. I made my ‘debut’ for the new side grabbing a valuable assist that made absolutely no difference to the score or the fixture in any way.

I think I will be keeping this blog running despite my original plan of writing it only during my university course. It has served its purpose but for something to do in between reading job rejections, I’ll keep it running.

Happy Enforced Gift Exchange Period!

David Smeathers — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 14:13:09 +0000

Christmas is upon us, although I realise as I write this, it actually started 3 months ago and I’m a bit late on the bandwagon but oh well. Bah! Down with this sort of thing. My December has started in a marvellous fashion as someone reversed their car into mine in Wilkinson’s car park mere hours ago today. This shameless act of violence towards the worlds finest car was quite despicable and has left it with quite the war wound. I am hoping if I take it to the garage they’ll recommend I get a whole new one as it will be impossible to restore to its original perfection.

Now not only is that bad enough I’ve also just had to endure a 20 minute battle installing and plugging in a new mouse. My king-of-the-geeks ergonomic mouse died – most likely through over use – and needed replacing. This new fangled one is a ‘Microsoft Laser Technology’ one that apparently doesn’t have a stupidly bright red light shining out of its arse and made me think the damn thing didn’t work. So after faffing around for ages I eventually got it to connect and work despite the temporary conflict with the keyboard. I hate technology.

In other, more important, news – the project seems to have taken off. UK Futsal News gained 91 Facebook members in 2 days and already has an interview lined up with an England coach for their tour of Libya in a week’s time. All I have to worry about now is filling six more pages of content before January 10th and getting the full eight pages printed and copied enough times to have something to distribute. No mean feat. Should be the most stressful, demoralising thing I’ve gotten myself in for in a while at least.

On Sunday it was the FA Cup 2nd Round tie between the ‘mighty’ Leeds United and ‘minnows’ Kettering Town at Rockingham Road. Going in with no expectations, the Kettering crowd of 2998 people (I think that’s right) could have been forgiven for going absolutely ballistic when Ian Roper headed Kettering in front with half an hour left to play. However, football is a cruel if not ultimately justified game sometimes. Jermaine Beckford equalised with 12 minutes to play meaning I have to trudge all the way across Leeds for a replay in six day’s time. The good thing about that is not only will it go some what towards rescuing our club from our stadium woes but it also means I’ve managed to sneak myself a press pass and am going to the game for free. Staying on the football note, Villa romped into the Carling Cup (or as I like to call it (from now on anyway) England’s Finest Cup Competition)) Semi-Final with a 4-2 win over bottom-of-the-league Portsmouth’s reserves. What an achievement.

Shorthand exam Friday and impending failure. That is all.

Unproductive day #621.

David Smeathers — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 18:31:43 +0000

This week has been of unrivalled productivity. No one else anywhere will have done as little as I have this week. Actually, scrap that, I did produce a page of my new on/off project, the futsal paper, currently titled UK Futsal News. Here is the draft of page 1 so far, not too shabby if I do say so myself.

UK Futsal News. Coming soon.

This project is likely to tail off in mid-December when I become bored enough to stop working on it.
Aside from that, I’ve been pretty useless. The only event of note happened on Friday where sensibly I celebrated an Irish 24th birthday by dancing around like a moron in Leeds’ o2 academy. It was, from what I can remember a good night, I’m just thankful I was nowhere near Karl’s shenanigans after he disappeared at 8.30pm.
Today I was listening to Richard Bacon’s 5-Live program which was talking about “Dear Me”, a book of letters written by famous people to themselves aged 16. This is a brilliant concept for a book, although I won’t read it as reading melts your mind. It did however, lead me to start wondering what I would say to myself at age 16, or even for that matter, whether I could even remember that far back to what I was actually like. (It was only 8 years ago!) I’d probably rather meet myself back then and give myself a good hard slap but that wasn’t the concept here. So I reckon what’d I’d tell myself is that educationally, things work out better than you’d ever think although the world of employment is something you should target rather than shy away from. I wouldn’t change anything in my personality other than for god’s sake, have some confidence. Please. That’s about all I can muster right now after thinking about it for 10 minutes, I’m sure other people’s ideas were far better, funnier and more interesting than mine, but that’s probably why they’re famous.
This week, or last – I forget, I got paid to journalise for the first time. The tidy sum of £45 for going to two football matches landed in the form of a cheque in my mailbox. Obviously with this impressive monetary reward I can continue to do very little with myself until some proper work comes up. I can’t see it happening soon. Fingers are still crossed that a massive contract offer from Kettering Town to write for them appears sometime soon. I can only dream.

Ve all love ze people here in Leeds

David Smeathers — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 14:23:59 +0000

Somehow, the past week has been quite good, despite not having a lot to do. I’m fairly certain that most of it never happened. This is because it started with the FA Cup draw where Kettering drew Leeds at home. It was both surreal and fantastic and I don’t think it’ll properly sink in what a good tie it is until I’m stood in the terraces celebrating Anthony Elding’s hat-trick.

Kettering vs. Leeds

The rest of the week, as I said, involved a lot of sitting around not really achieving anything. I’ve actually got better qualifications in procrastination than anything else which is probably why it went by so fast. Friday saw the return of some of the printies from their work experience placements so we descended upon the German market in Leeds city centre. It was my first time in the beer tent in the middle and also the first time I’d ever heard a traditional German band singing “We all love the people here in Leeds” to the tune of Yellow Submarine. Hopefully it won’t be the last.

This guy was brilliant

Unfortunately there was no Bradford Park Avenue game this week so instead I had to make do with England vs. Brazil. Which was terrible. I was also punished by the news that Kettering manager Mark Cooper has decided to leave for pastures new at Peterborough, what with them being a championship side and us being small, he had to leave when the chance offered itself. Now we’ve appointed a goalkeeper-player-manager which I doubt will work and more importantly, will probably be found out in our FA Cup game against Leeds.

This week I have the fun of NCTJ resits which my revision for has taken a back seat to winning the conference title on FM2010. That is, in my eyes, an adequate substitute and also the exact reason why I’d having to resit.

Word from inside.

David Smeathers — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 21:09:26 +0000

I am writing this from the comfort of the Yorkshire Post Offices as I currently can’t really be bothered to do anything productive. I would say of all of my news placements I have had in the past this has probably been the most productive and successful despite also being amongst the easiest.
Yesterday and today I have spent several hours of the working day trawling my way through around a year and a half of Charlie Brooker’s ‘Comment is Free’ articles on the Guardian’s website that I was yet to read (I’m still only 68 of 152 articles through the archive). It’s a brilliant way to pass the time as it looks as though you’re researching stories on the Guardian’s site when you’re actually skiving and having a bit of a laugh. Although it looks a little odd when you’re supposed to be looking for, or writing news, but you’re giggling uncontrollably.

Brooker.

Anyway, I can’t remember, without my trusty little blog-archive staring me in the face, when I last updated my blog so I’ll start my inspiring work-experience related story from the Bradford Telegraph and Argus. It’s about as far back as my memory goes.
I had been slightly dreading the last two weeks as my past experience of newsdesks when you’re a trainee led me to believe I’d be doing absolutely bugger all for 10 solid days. So maintaining my upbeat outlook, I went in expecting the worst. Thankfully it has been nowhere near as bad as I’d feared at both papers. The T&A sent me to Crown and coroners courts in the first two days and sent me out on some pretty decent picture stories. The YEP has been just as good. No court, but plenty to do and reasonable sized articles too.
Saturday was also my first assignment as a reporter for the Non-League Paper (which I will refer to myself as, despite only being a weekend match reporter for a team ranked about 1000 places below anything of interest). I saw Bradford Park Avenue destroy Durham City’s team of scamps 7-1 in one of the most one sided games I’ve seen outside Football Manager’s 2D engine. Imagine 98% possession, 50 shots on goal and still finding the time to somehow concede and that was Bradford’s performance. You do feel a bit for Durham who have now conceeded 77 goals in 16 games after their promotion last season. Screwed over because of their artificial home pitch, they are now in ruins. Left to field a youth-reserve side for the rest of the season, it will be interesting to see how many they are able to concede in a season of 40 games. At the current rate they’d ship 192. And a half. Probably a record at any rate.
I’ll be keeping my eyes peeled in case I can splurge a heart-warming tale of footballing woe and get myself paid. – Note to readers – please don’t steal my idea.
Tomorrow is the last day, amazingly, of my 5 week work placement ‘ordeal’. With only 1 exam to come I’m taking quick-steps towards unemployment. Fun times.

– Just thought I’d add that I absolutely despise public transport. Waiting half an hour in the pissing rain for the one bus that goes in the direction I want it to is never any fun, especially when one drives past telling you its full only to drop someone off and then pull out. Also, I still don’t like people. That is all.

Look at what I’ve reduced myself to.

David Smeathers — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 22:19:44 +0000

Englands newest and finest paper.

I’m quite pathetic. I apologise.

No thanks, Metro.

David Smeathers — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:55:01 +0000

It’s not often I update this blog twice in two days but today I feel I need to vent a lot of frustration I managed to build up in the last 24 hours.

I started at the Metro newspaper, fresh with the promise of a full work experience program promised to give me the full sense of each part of the national paper. How unbelievably false that hope was.

Instead of embarking on journalistic work experience, I seemed to be starting on a admin-based work experience placement. Learning how best to perform all the menial, tedious, repetitive tasks that no-one in their right mind would ever want to do for the various department editors.

My day consisted of two tasks. Firstly – markup. This involved me looking through three newspapers and writing on them in red pen the source of each and every news story. Secondly – printing. The Metro, being a national, had somehow managed to have about three weeks worth of newspapers missing and they needed to print out each page of each of the missing papers – one by one. I must have printed out about 500 plus individual A3 pages of archived Metros – dying a little inside after each one.

The promise of the remainder of the week suggests I faced more of the same, if not, far worse. The layout of the Metro system means work experience ‘Bitches’, as I will now refer to, run around after the various department editors, sorting their mail and doing other mindless admin tasks to save the oh-so-hard-working bosses a bit of effort.

Here’s a short list of things I’d rather do than do another day at the Metro:
1) Set myself on fire.
2) Pull my toenails off, one by one, and eat them all.
3) Fire myself out of a cannon into a brick wall.
4) Drink a bottle of petrol.
5) Drink a bottle of bleach.
6) Snort a bottle of bleach.
7) Starve myself to death very slowly.
8.) Type a list of horrific things to do to myself, rather than think about going back.

Keep your soul in tact, avoid the Metro offices at all costs.

I think you get the picture. My stay in London may be over faster than I had anticipated. Unless I can secure a second week with last week’s hosts, The Non-League paper, I will be having a week off. I suppose that’s win-win for me. I am however now 100% more angry than I’ve been in quite some time.