ArseneWenger
Every Day’s a cup final for Mark Halsey….!
Thursday, April 22nd, 2010 | BWFC Goals, BWFC News, BWFC People, Football Association, Ivan Campo, Jay-Jay Okocha, Nicolas Anelka, Owen Coyle, Phil Gartside, Premier League, Premiership referees, Sam Allardyce, Youri Djorkaeff | 11 Comments
The support from football fans and ordinary people in the street has been inspirational
Click the link to listen to Mark Halsey’s Exclusive interview.
http://www.zshare.net/audio/751463426e948768/
Despite hailing from Hertfordshire, Mark Halsey has firmly established himself as one of Bolton’s favourite adopted sons. After spending 12 years playing non-league football for Cambridge City and Hertford Town he began his refereeing career in 1989 and a decade later refereed the famous 1999 Football League One Play-off Final between Gillingham and Manchester City at Wembley. The same year he was promoted to Premier League status and shortly after the FIFA List of referees. He quickly established himself as one of the most popular referees in the League.
Mark was kind enough to take time out of his schedule to speak Exclusively to Manny Road & bwfcforum’s Andi Walton. He started by asking him about his current health:
MH: Yeah I’m feeling very good, I seem to be getting stronger with every game I do and it’s a bonus for me because I never thought I’d be back refereeing again, so every day is a cup final and it’s really great to be back and the reception I’ve received from the two games I’ve done at Rotherham and Port Vale and Oldham and Bristol Rovers, the fans have been absolutely fantastic and it’s been very emotional and overwhelming for me.
AW: It must have been the furthest thing from your mind getting out on the football pitch when you were in the midst of your treatment but now you’ve got to that stage, it must be a real thrill.
MH: For me to come back and, you know, I suppose…for what I’ve gone through with all my chemotherapy and my radiotherapy…I mean if you saw me at Christmas, I was nowhere near the Mark Halsey of old, you know, but I’ve worked hard and a lot of people have helped me and it’s been great. The support I’ve received from people around the country – just ordinary football fans and ordinary people in the street. They’ve been inspirational to me and they’ve got to really pat themselves on the back for the way they’ve helped me and it’s down to them that I’m back where I am now.
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Another season, another lesson in how to patronise northern football fans
Friday, August 14th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Gary Megson, Kevin Davies, Sam Allardyce | 4 Comments
It's like looking in a mirror (Pic: Terry Wha, some rights reserved)
It's like looking in a mirror (Pic: Terry Wha, some rights reserved)
By ‘eck, The Guardian thinks we all wear flat caps and work down mines…
Regular readers from last season will know Manny Road is not a huge fan of match previews. I attempted to hijack the ridiculous notion that stats and facts based on past events have any bearing on upcoming matches with the regular ‘… things you didn’t need to know about Bolton Wanderers v Team X‘ series.
Manny Road won’t be doing that this season, partly because I think I made my point, but mainly because I’ve got better things to do on a Saturday morning (like sleeping off hangovers, for example) than trawling through endless, tedious football fan sites reading anodyne facts about how many times Kevin Davies has used his enormous backside to win a free-kick.You can read this nonsense for yourselves over at NewsNow.
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Bolton Wanderers Hall of Shame #8: Gary Megson – or is it me?
Thursday, February 5th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Gary Megson | 10 Comments
Is Gary Megson the villain, or is it fans like me?
Here’s what I said about Gary Megson on the Unofficial Bolton Wanderers Podcast this week (click on the link below to download the MP3 file or alternatively the transcript is at the bottom of this post.)…
Manny Road on the Unofficial Bolton Wanderers Podcast
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How to lose friends and alienate people, by Gary Megson
Thursday, January 29th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Danny Shittu, Gary Megson, Grzegorz Rasiak | 4 Comments
Another fine PR mess from the Bolton boss
Gary Megson is a nice man, don’t you think? He never slags off his opponents like that nasty Mr Benitez does. And he never discredits other teams, like that horrible Mr Wenger.
Instead, that nice Mr Megson can often be heard singing the praises of his fellow Premier League managers and their teams, usually a day or two before those managers and their teams take three points off Bolton Wanderers.
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Arsenal 1-0 Bolton Wanderers: What the papers say
Monday, January 12th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Gary Megson, Kevin Davies, Phil Gartside | No Comments
Image via Wikipedia
How the press reported the Wanderers defeat at the Emirates Stadium
- The Observer suggested Bolton’s rearguard action was feeble in comparison to the robust performances against Arsenal of yesteryear, even suggesting that despite the Arsenal’s players’ and fans’ melodramtic reaction every time Kevin Davies made a tackle, it was actually Bolton who came off worse for wear in the physical battle… just ask Johan Elmander. There was little sympathy for Gary Megson’s limited selection options, though, with the reporter implying our depleted bench was a non-to-subtle message to Phil Gartside to blow the cobwebs from his cheque book.
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11 things you (don’t) need to know about Arsenal v Bolton Wanderers
Saturday, January 10th, 2009 | BWFC News, BWFC People, Gary Cahill, Gary Megson, Gavin McCann, Kevin Davies, Kevin Nolan, Nicky Hunt | 2 Comments
- Image via Wikipedia
Your guide to all the pointless pre-match predictions and previews
1. Despite the fact that we haven’t troubled the big four all season, and that we’ve lost our last five meetings with Arsenal, Bolton Wanderers still appear hold a certain amount of fear for Arsenal fans, particularly Kevin Davies’ tackles and our set pieces (clearly they haven’t seen Gavin McCann taking a corner).
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The Burning Question: Can Bolton make it in to Europe this season?
Sunday, December 21st, 2008 | BWFC People, Gary Megson | 3 Comments
Are Gary Megson’s team an outside bet for a Uefa Cup place?
It was unthinkable a few weeks ago, but after winning five of their last eight games (and only losing to teams you would expect to finish above them anyway: Chelsea, Liverpool, Aston Villa), Bolton are now up to 9th in the Premier League table.
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The Burning Question: Do referees favour the big four?
Sunday, December 7th, 2008 | BWFC People, Gary Cahill, Jlloyd Samuel | 3 Comments
Are match officials biased towards Manchester United, Chelsea, Liverpool and Arsenal?
Bolton Wanderers have now lost all four matches against the big four teams in the Premier League this season.
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Bolton Wanderers Hall of Shame #3: The Online Gooner
Friday, September 26th, 2008 | BWFC People, Danny Shittu, Kevin Davies | No Comments
Some Arsenal fans have very short memories…
Bolton Wanderers haven’t always played ugly football. Once upon a time, in the days when I first started following the club, we played brilliant, exhilarating, attacking football.
Then we got in to the Premier League and continued trying to play brilliant attacking football. Our reward? Two relegations, the second of which nearly led to financial ruin.
So we learnt to play a different way because it was the only way to survive, and it worked… we’ve now been in the Premier League for eight uninterrupted seasons, something that was unthinkable 15 years ago.
At some point in the future this will all change again, because that’s what happens in football. Mark my words: in the future the beautiful game will return to Bolton Wanderers, whether it’s in this league or another one.
When it does, it’s likely we’ll come up against teams whose only chance of beating us will be by bullying us and trying to put us off our game.
When that happens I hope we don’t take the moral high ground with those clubs. I hope that instead of whinging about ‘not getting enough protection from referees’, we remember that once upon a time we used to do exactly the same thing.
Unfortunately, Arsenal fans have been sitting on their ‘we play proper football’ moral high ground for so long that they’ve forgotten they once played crap football too, and that everyone hated them for it because it brought them success.
More importantly, they’ve forgotten that one day Arsene Wenger will no longer be their manager, and that sooner or later they will play negative football again.
Gael Clichy gets ready for his next match against Bolton Wanderers. Picture from mimiyaw, some rights reserved.
In an article headlined ‘Bolton F****** Wanderers’ (an exclusive! no less), Arsenal fanzine The Online Gooner rips in to Bolton Wanderers for ‘kicking Arsenal off the park.’ It’s worth reading all the way through for a laugh (the opening jibe about Danny Shittu must have taken him ages think up), but here are the highlights of author Mark Halfpenny’s gripes:
1. The north of England is chilly (the game was played in glorious sunshine).
2. Kevin Davies‘ tackle on Gael Clichy (who got a bruised shin and is expected to be back in the Arsenal line-up again this Saturday) was just as bad as Martin Taylor’s last season on Eduardo (who suffered a broken leg that has kept him out for months).
3. Setanta’s summariser Craig Burley defended Davies’ tackle because all TV pundits hate Arsenal (Burley also defended Emmanuel Eboue’s offside goal because Arsenal ‘deserved to score’).
4. Fifa, Uefa and the FA (hell, why not get the United Nations involved too?) should crack down on Bolton for their renowned foul play (they never bothered to crack down on Dennis Bergkamp).
5. If the so-called 39th game ever took place, people in New York and Bangkok would not want to watch Bolton Wanderers (oh no, how will I sleep tonight knowing that some Malaysian bloke who’s never been to Bolton in his life doesn’t want to buy a Wanderers shirt? How embarrassing!)
I can only assume that when ‘proper football’ is a thing of the past once more at Arsenal, Mark Halfpenny and every other Arsenal fan who has slated ‘Bolton F****** Wanderers’ style of play over the last few years will be burning their red shirts, tearing up their season tickets and vowing never to attend an Arsenal match ever again (not that that will matter of course, with all their fans in Shanghai to make up the numbers).
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