All posts by Andy Todd

Andrew

The Joy Of Socks (Andrew)

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Once a week I run at lunchtime from our office in Larbert. I usually prepare my bag the night before so I have my kit, my towel, a change of clothes and my trainers. I was a Boy Scout. Be prepared!

Except, I wasn’t a very good Boy Scout, and a couple of weeks back I forgot the most important item of all. Not my towel, there’s always ways to dry off even if you forget a towel, including but not limited to a roll of toilet paper, which we shall never speak about.

No, the worst item you can forget is a fresh pair of socks. Once you’ve been running you don’t want to wear your socks again. They need to be banished into the darkest deepest parts of your bag so that the smell is smothered until you fish them out later with a pair of tongs to throw them in the washing machine.

But if you have no socks, what do you do? Nothing. You can’t wear loo roll on your feet. Nor can colour in your ankles with a black marker and pretend you’ve actually got socks on.

Instead, you have no choice but to dress like an 18 year old trying to get into a nightclub, ankles flashing on too short trousers.

I had to spend the rest of my day making sure not to leave my desk so that no one could accuse me, a 44 year old man, of being some kind of Hoxton Hipster from 2015.

“Is that your ankles I can see?” Someone would ask.

And I have to explain that I work in social media marketing and as a part time barista and that this was a uniform, not a choice.

So, from now on, to avoid this happening again I now have a pair of emergency socks in my bag. That way if I ever forget to bring a pair I can break out the emergency socks so that I can walk freely again without showing off my ankles.

Andrew

My first Podcast (Andrew)

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When books are converted to films it’s hard to read them again without hearing the voice of the actor that played them. Until then, you will have your own idea of how they sound. Maybe Jack Reacher sound deep and gruff. Or Harry Potter like a chipmunk. Whatever it is, you now hear the voice of Daniel Radcliffe when Harry Potter speaks.

I don’t know what voice you have give me. Am I deep and gruff or do I squeek like a cartoon animal? Either way, if you want to hear what I actually sound like then you’re welcome to listen to the latest Glasgow Triathlon Club podcast where I talk about running every street near my house on a Glasgow A-Z.

You can listen to it hear (and on Apple Podcasts/Spotify etc): Listen here

Andrew, The Sound of Football

The Sound of Football: Brechin (Andrew)

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Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Brechin City

Nickname: The City

Ground: Glebe Park

Stadium Capacity: 3,960 (Seated 1,519)

Song: Two Can Play That Game

Brechin’s unofficial song is the Tractor Song:

“I can’t read,

And I can’t write,

But that doesn’t really matter…

Cause I’m a Brechin City fan,

And I can drive a tractor!“

(Source: terrace chant)

This celebration of a singular talent is appropriate for Brechin and one player, in particular, Bobby Brown (not the R & B singer).

Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs was a spring chicken fresh from the youth team compared to Brechin’s Brown. While Giggs rewrote record books at Manchester United by playing for over 20 years, there are unsung heroes at other clubs who play on year after year to show that footballing life doesn’t stop at 35, 40 or even… 50 years old.

Between 1983 and 1998, Brown played 444 games for Brechin. What’s remarkable is that he should have played many more. He made his debut for Brechin’s first team three years after joining the club. Even then, he only played one game before he was sent back to the reserves. However, he became an almost permanent fixture on the team sheet once he forced his way back into the first team. We say ‘almost’ because, for a brief time, he was involved in a very peculiar ban when the Scottish Football League wouldn’t let him play. After all, Brechin already had a Bobby Brown playing for them.

In the early 90s, Brechin signed a second Bobby Brown (still not the R&B singer), and the Scottish Football League wouldn’t let both Browns play at the same time because they shared the same name. Brechin had to appeal to FIFA, who ruled there was nothing to stop two players with the same name playing. Or as Bobby Brown (the R&B singer) so famously sang ‘Two Can Play That Game’*

In 1994, Brechin held a testimonial for Bobby and the matchday program revealed the secret of his success: “Bobby has been, is, and always will be, a good professional“. It then added that Bobby was “not blessed with a lot of natural ability, but has produced a level of consistency more talented players will never achieve“.

It’s this consistency that meant Brown was still playing football for Broughty Ferry FC, a non-league side, on his 50th birthday. While standards may have slipped in recent times, it was not by much. In 2008-09 he was Broughty Ferry’s Players’ Player of the Year – at forty-nine. In comparison, his fiftieth year saw him make thirty-seven starting appearances for the club.

It’s legends like Bobby that teams should celebrate. Although Brechin has won leagues titles in the lower reaches of Scottish football and bounced back and forth between the third division and the first, players like Bobby provide the club with the heart and soul and bedrock of consistency that fans crave.

*We suspect this story may be a wind-up from a Brechin fan.

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Film Friday, Iain

Film Friday – I Trained Like an Olympic Sprinter for 30 Days (Andrew)

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Film Friday is a weekly recommendation of one video to watch this weekend.

If you want to run faster then you need to run faster, that’s what I’ve been told. You can’t training to run faster by running the same speed you always go. You have to run faster to run faster. Except…. you don’t. Or at least you don’t most of the time.

Watch this video to understand what it actually means to train like an Olympic sprinter and learn how much of that training is training to train and not sprinting faster.

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Book Review: Up – My Life’s Journey to Everest by Ben Fogle (Andrew)

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The first ‘adventure book’ I read was Ben Fogle and James Cracknell’s ‘The Crossing’. Their story of how they rowed across the Atlantic – and a book which inspired the format of book TwinBikeRun – which you can buy here! – as chapters jump between the viewpoints of both of them. A format which leads to two perspectives on events. And a format which would have greatly benefitted ‘Up: My Life’s Journey To Everest’ as while I don’t quite agree with this one star Amazon review:

“Fairly well written but disappointed to discover Mr Fogle is such a selfish man. Will not be buying anything else he writes.”

It does have a point. If you want to read about Ben Fogle and only Ben Fogle then this book is the one for you even though his attempt to climb Everest was a joint challenge with former Olympic cyclist, Victoria Pendleton, she barely gets a mention. Even though hers is arguably the better story – she had no experience of climbing, no history of adventure and the challenges she faced and the decisions she made were far harder than any Ben Fogle faced. His toughest challenge was paying his Sherpa a summit bonus and to head back down the mountain before they’d reached the top so that Fogle could take their equipment when his own failed.

While the book is called “My Life’s Journey” and not “our journey” and it doesn’t pretend to be anything other than his story, it did feel like another voice was missing and only part of the journey was told.

You can buy it here

Film Friday, Iain

Film Friday – What the Blimey is Bicycle Football? (Andrew)

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Film Friday is a weekly recommendation of one video to watch this weekend.

Mental.

Mental that anyone thought to combine bikes with football.

Mental that anyone plays football with bikes.

If you cannot even imagine how playing football on a bike is even possible then you have to watch this video.

Andrew

You Can’t Give It Away (Andrew)

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“Can I ask you a question?”

No, I’m not Brad Pitt. I know I look like him but I can assure you that while we might share the same chiseled features and unmistakable look of almighty handsome-ness, I am not him.

Is what I didn’t say because no one has ever asked me that. But I can but hope.

“Yes,” I said.

“What do you think of that t-shirt?” And he pointed at a neon pink t-shirt hanging on a rail at the back of the shop.

I was in a running shop to buy a t-shirt. In fact, I was now at the till having picked up a t-shirt and brought it to the till to pay for it. I had seen the pink t-shirt while browsing but hadn’t tried it on because it was a colour that can only be described with words like “shocking”, “blinding” or “confident in my sexuality”.

I’m not sure what to say so I try and think of something neutral. I say: “I prefer t-shirts with a pattern.”

It’s only when I say it that I realise I’ve handed him a simple blue t-shirt. I now look like a man who says I don’t like running while standing in a running shop buying running gear and talking about running.

The assistant doesn’t notice, instead they ask: “Would you buy it?”

Would I heck. I’d sooner run naked than wear a top that can be seen from the moon. You couldn’t give away a t-shirt like this. They should cut their losses now and just burn it. But I can’t say that. I say: “I’ve already paid for this one.” And I hold up the blue one.

But the assistant won’t take my evasion for an answer. “I know it’s divisive. We just want to know what people think of it?”

And I look at it again and I realise that while I wouldn’t buy it, I would actually wear it as I have a t-shirt which is exactly the same colour – and I worn it many times while out running. The only difference between my t-shirt and this one is that I received my one for free after a race.

And that’s when I realised that you could give it away because runners will accept anything if it’s free. I have race t-shirst I would never have considered buying. Insipid colours. Garish patterns. T-shirts which look like they’d been designed by a dog running through a paint pot. As long as it’s free, runners will keep it, wear it and not give it a second thought.

But ask us to buy it and no thanks!

Andrew, The Sound of Football

The Sound of Football: Bradford City (Andrew)

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Every fortnight we cover the best and worst football songs from every club in the UK from our book ‘The Sound Of Football: Every Club, Every Song’. You can buy it here

Bradford City

Nickname: The Bantams

Ground: Coral Windows Stadium

Stadium Capacity: 25,136

Song: Let’s Get Ready For Wembley

In 2013 Bradford City became the first ever team from the fourth tier of English football to reach a major domestic Wembley cup final – the Football League Cup. On the pitch Bradford lost 5 – 0 to Swansea but off the pitch the Bantams scored with the unofficial song ‘Let’s Get Ready For Wembley’ based on the Ant and Dec classic ‘Let’s Get Ready To Rumble’.

The song was created by Bantam’s Banter, the unofficial Bradford City podcast, which Tom Fletcher and Dom Newton-Collinge record live from the Valley Parade press box. This was the first independent podcast to reach number one in the iTunes charts. The otherwise excellent song and video for ‘Let Get Ready For Wembley’ has one crime against the English language: Wembley is rhymed with tremble-y.

Ant and Dec would be proud – as would York City (see York City for a similar abuse of the English language).

Bradford City’s the only professional football club in England to wear claret and amber. Although Motherwell have the same colours in Scotland it’s thought it ‘borrowed’ them from Bradford. The origin of Bradford City’s colours is less well known but it’s assumed it adopted the same colours of the West Yorkshire Regiment that it first used as changing rooms for the club.

In 1985, 56 spectators died and many more were seriously injured when a fire engulfed a stand at the Valley Parade ground. It was the worst fire disaster in the history of English football. A special recording of the Liverpool FC anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was recorded to raise money for victims of the fire. It featured Gerry Marsden and Paul McCartney and was recorded under the name “The Crowd”.

Buy the Sound of Football from Amazon.