John Boy Saint

On reading the op the first goal that popped into my head was Chris Bairds absolute snorter from outside the box, v Cardiff I think, to silence the groans when it looked like we had pigged up a free kick. The goalie would have snapped his wrists had he gotten anything on it.

10 points for Man U at home and 35 for Brizzle City, that should see a few woeful performances in the next 2 games to ensure being dropped to the bench thus being in with a shout of a points boost from being in the cup game to get closer to owning a Gnome and a Pencil set before anyone else.

I don't think, in these days of Football mercenaries and Prima donnas, after being blessed with Matt Le Tissier that any of us would have thought we would ever see another talismanic down to earth player, who is adored by so many of us, pull on a Saints number 7 shirt again.

A company I know use to sell one of those funny shower head attachments your Granny always had that just pushed onto the taps then you turned on the hot and cold tap to get the right temperature mix and away you went, traditionally washing your hair over the sink. They had a claim made against them by a bloke who had attached this shower unit to the taps on his bath he then turned on the tap whilst pointing the shower head at his dangly bits and "scalded" them. He then made a claim against the company that it wasn't pointed out on the packaging that he had to mix hot and cold together, and the insurance company coughed up €40k without a fight. You would hope that in the process of being scalded through his own stupidity he would killed off the sperm producing properties of his 2 veg and thus been in the running for a Darwin Award. The insurance company probably weighed up how much it would cost to fight this case and prove this chaps stupidity, then how much to fight the appeal and just made him an offer less than that to go away, just shows how easy it is if you can be bothered............... Then you can imagine the first bloke moaning down the pub that his insurance premium had gone up would be the one with the crispy sausage and singed sprouts lurking in his Calvins. Just on this "Where there's blame, there's a claim" have those slightly older readers noticed how thick the Handbook for your car has become and then actually looked through it for information about something that you can still do yourself on a modern car? The first 200 pages are full of, for want of a better term, ar$e armour against litigation, gems like "don't attempt to exit the car before it has come to a complete halt" are more than likely lurking within those very pages!!

Conference prices!?! I pulled into the car park at Bashley FC about 3-4 years ago as I was on the phone, whilst chatting to the customer I spotted the entry prices on the turnstile wall aghast, they play in a league below the Conference South might have been one below that back then and the prices were about £8 less than the cheapest Adult seat to watch the Saints at St Mary's

Just about sums us back in those days, buying and trying to buy players for bobbins without realising that everyone else was moving on and spending their pennies even if it was piling up the debts by speculating. We just had a chairman out to prove that you could make money from football and thought that by doubling the capacity of the stadium then filling it weekly and running the team as it was at the Dell there would be a lot more cream to skim off. WGS made a lot of ordinary footballers into an effective band of brothers, but he saw maintaining that level or even stepping up was impossible when the Chairman wouldn't spend money on players from fellow Prem teams as he didn't want to boost the coffers of competitors. Agustin Delgado although great in South America was a risk to bring here, Drogba most people with half a football brain could see he was a bit handy when he was a youngster, cough up £2.5m and seeing we were a selling club back then, flog him for twice as much 18months later when he was an established Premiership player. Still all water under the bridge.

Body clock was shot, this was the tried and tested Jetlag cure, fly into Bangkok check into the Novotel next to the airport, shower change, then into the waiting Mercedes people carrier whisked downtown for a meeting with our man there (very amusing German who's lived there 20 years) Whistle stop tour of some sights, then dinner in C&C and a quick trip down the naughty boys street for a few beers beating off the women (tell them you are staying out by the Airport and they just evaporate!!). Bed. Next morning tee time 07:20 it was only when chipping into the 1st green and you hear a motor and look for the lawn mower only to see 4 blokes casually heading to work in one of those typical Thai boats with the long shafts out the back on the canal that crosses the fairway, just as the sun comes out from behind the clouds and the Mercury and humidity rockets, and land crabs stand looking menacingly at you claws open: that you go "hang on this is mental it's 01:30 at home!! Into China in time for dinner including Scorpions and Bee Larvae omelette, Hotel,drink, bed, then down to breakfast for 07:30 never even noticed I had fastforwarded 7hrs the whole week. Regarding Mrs DP's bite we will all be safe as we all got evicted to one block over 2 rows up this season.

I could never imagine Ingerland doing that in a million years!!

Oh dear!! What a shame! But if you have not or will not go to Bangkok then you will have a bit of a giggle at all the condom stuff. (Phil the golf was killing time before an early afternoon flight to Guangzhou China).

I will second that, you must sit outside in the courtyard. They do a Fish poached in a Garlic consommé absolutely divine. No doubt Phil has played Muang-Kaew Golf Course Which is a very nice spot despite a motorway splitting it in half.

What a shame Souness had lost his when he got to us............ You could have had a Hatrick!

We had a raft of players in our more recent past who most of us had never heard of, yet the spin when they signed and were introduced to us by the club was that Saints had been in a tussle with a few clubs both here and abroad, that we had heard of, to nail them down. From memory that chap nicknamed the Torpedo was massively bigged up yet sank without a trace. Tommy was bigged up in the same way, probably in an effort to divert the fact that we had cashed in any onwards rights we had to the future of Bale. He was talked up by the media department as a blinding spot of business, probably also to deflect attention away from the very dark clouds looming on the near horizon, and to qualify this "great" bit of trade handed him a 5 year contract: you certainly don't get them unless the player is considered as pure dynamite. We will never know what went on behind closed doors, unfortunately Tommy became the negative focus and reminder of a dark period in our history. Any frothing at the mouth is more directed at the deal makers for Saints who took on a player who not only failed in the lower divisions, but also at non league too when sent out on loan, someone must have had doubts: but as has been mentioned already - Ali Dia!

Maybe he has decided to get his career back on track and been busting his guts in training and shown that he might have something to offer to the first team. Japan have made it to Brazil maybe he is eager to make it onto the plane along with Yoshida as it will probably be hs last chance for a World Cup final.

Levy must have been splitting his sides when the ink dried on that deal, when he heard we had given him a 5 year contract he was probably rolling about on he floor. He was a great example of the way we use to acquire second choice players and big em up as the next great thing, Tommy was "sold" to us fans as the golden answer to our goalkeeping for the next few years, but he became the leading beacon of disappointing players in the dark old days.

Mark Wright was a lodger with the Lady over the road from my Gran & Grandads in Dale Valley Road. My Gran said there was a Saints player living over the road "a nice polite young chap called Mark", I thought why was a Saints player lodging in a Semi in Shirley she must be wrong until one day he came out of the house and got into his Capri drove off then came back 10 minutes later and let himself in.

Those are the best ones, especially as I have friends slightly older than me who can't remember anything from not long after the final whistle till the following Thursday

Aviva

My Granny had saved all the pre and post match specials from the Echo in pristine condition, all safely tucked away with me now.

Excellent work Tokyo, and BBB highlighted an error in my own workings out. But then having had a birthday in the last month I forgot to add a year, in the days of black & white you started school at 5 and I left at 15 when my CSEs were finished in June and as my birthday is in August I became the last of the kids with a push bike when my mates all had Mopeds Went to college............ Christ knows why as I dropped out of that.

If 9 is right then I didn't widdle 10 school years of maths up the wall afterall, and it stayed in for another 33 years!!! if it's wrong then loading the chalk holder of the roller board in maths with those paper twist fun snaps so that they all went off when Mr Robinson pulled the board down showed that my time was far better spent in physics!!

For those of you who don't see Groupon online offers etc. I had the deal linked below turn up today which if I read it right sees you get a night away and access to the Cash Bar hospitality for £199 per person and more Prawn Sandwich deal from £275. http://getaways.groupon.co.uk/26100077?nlp=&CID=UK_CRM_1_0_0_248&a=2463#

Seems that due to an unfortunate pasting of an incorrect photo (and unless I read the wrong article) this thread has gained a Daily Mail'esque title. It would be interesting to see what those without Saints tinted specs would value Shaw, Chambers, and Ward-Prowse at for the purposes of sensibly discussing teams spending on English players in a newspaper article.

Errrr-ummmmm...................... Nope, sorry it's gone....! Suzanna Reid on Strictly?.................. Mmmmm

You haven't seen what he has in his "trousers"!!! For the record neither have I, but it was the first thing that popped into my head!......................... No not that: the comment.

And where might one find a Purveyor of Licuorice as that sounds like it will move most things.