It's clearly going to be a crazy season at Carrow Road

Finally I’ve ended my awful jinx of seeing Norwich City not win this season thanks to a 4-3 win over Leicester that put The Canaries third in the Championship.
You’d think I’d be chirpy as the club emblem right now, but I can’t say I’ve ever enjoyed a seven goal game so little as tonight’s Carrow Road clash.
And, given the fact we’re now in our highest spot in something like five years, you’d think I’d be positively buzzing.
But I’m not – I’m really worried that Norwich are in for a mid-table finish as I just don’t think this squad is good enough to mount even a play-off push.
I know we’ve just gone third in the table, and I know it all looks rosy on paper, but take away the smoke and mirrors and you’re left with a team with many problems in a division where nobody looks that great.
There are an awful lot of teams bunched up in the top half of the table and tonight was a brilliant night results wise for Norwich – everyone else who mattered seemed to slip up, which adds to the argument that we’re very lucky to be where we are.
Let’s start with the positives. We scored three top, top quality goals, while Leicester’s three goals were all really, really poor. I don’t think even the most hardened Foxes fan will disagree with that. Adam Drury scored the pick of the bunch, his fourth for the club, and probably the best moment at Carrow Road since Lee Croft scored against Ipswich almost two years ago.
Andrew Crofts and Korey Smith ran the midfield – both players get better and better and Smith in particular looks like an awesome prospect.
Leon Barnett looks a great addition. I like him alot.
Now the negatives.
John Ruddy pulled off a couple of decent saves in the second half, but conceding a goal like that so early in the game won’t get us very far.
The defence was so poor in the first half, nobody wanted the ball, it was just long ball after long ball hoofed in the air and aimed at Grant Holt. That’s not going to be very effective against better teams.
Russell Martin and Elliott Ward don’t look up to the job, every time either goes near the ball I wince. As for sub Steven Smith, I will quite happily say now I hope he doesn’t ever play for the club again.
He doesn’t seem to be a natural footballer – every time he had the ball he got rid of it straight away.
Up front Hoolahan scored a great goal, but didn’t really do enough. Holt didn’t really come close to scoring and Simeon Jackson, quick as he is, just doesn’t seem to get in goalscoring positions.
What was so bad overall for me was the first half showing. We were dire. Fair enough we turned it round after the break, but this was against Leicester. Leicester who got hammered 6-1 last Friday.
Never has defending a 4-2 lead against the bottom side in the league been so tough.
We should have had the game sewn up at 3-1, but until the final whistle blew, Leicester, who conceded four goals, were still in with a shout of getting something from the game.
I’d love to write a gushing report saying we are world beaters and it’s only a matter of time until we’re back in the Premier League, but any intelligent football fan knows we flattered ourselves tonight.
As David Brent once said: “If he landed in a barrel of tits, he’d come out sucking his thumb.”
I think tonight we’ve got a pair of 36DDs all to ourselves, but next time we fall in to that barrel, I don’t think we’ll be quite as lucky.

May the best man win

It's not often I go to a Norwich home game with a fan of the away club, but fittingly, in the my first appearance at Carrow Road as a married man, my best man Tom was in the away end.

Tom was there back in 1984 when I first went to see City at home against Everton with my primiary school, and again was there later that season when we were both ball boys against Sunderland.

So it was highly appropriate that Tom, wearing the special Hull shirt I gave him as a wedding gift, came round to my mum and dad's house with girlfriend Sara to chow down on toasted sandwiches, like he would have done in the late 1980s.

Tom was convinced Hull would run out 3-1 winners, I told him it would be a 1-0 home win, although on the way down I told him I hadn't seen Norwich win this season.

The weather was, to say the least, shocking and nothing of interest happened in the first half, although Tom sent a text midway through the second half suggesting The Tigers would nick the win.

To be fair, both sides had no cutting edge about them and the game was really there for the taking.

Fair play to Hull, they wanted it more and performed the perfect smash and grab raid. Jimmy Bullard pulled all the strings and Tom Cairney, who scored a stoppage time free-kick caught they eye.

After the game Tom was full of smiles and regardless of the result, it was great to go to the game together.

On this, my first home game as a married man, it was fair to say the best man won.

Honeymoon in Doncaster

New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody talk about Pop Musik!
Well sort of.
After an American themed wedding and the start of my honeymoon in London and Paris it was naturally off to...Doncaster!
It was coincidence really that meant I was at the Keepmoat Stadium last night as we’d booked four days camping in a forest close to Stamford Bridge – not Chelsea’s ground but the famous battleground just east of York.
That camping trip was all booked before the June fixture list came out and with Norwich playing 40 miles down the road it would have been rude not to inject a little On The Ball City into the honeymoon.
I had tried to take my new wife Lorraine to Paris St Germain on Saturday night, but what with it being our last night in the French capital, I was persuaded to take her for a romantic meal in a cobbled Parisienne street.
The Yorkshire campsite is certainly the most unusual place I’ve been to after a football match – it’s about an hour north of Doncaster in the middle of nowhere, down a long track off the road and then a five minute walk by torchlight through the woods into a permanent tent complete with sofa, kitchen, bathroom and proper bed.
Enough of the luxury and back to the game.
Doncaster’s Keepmoat Stadium is one of those awful modern grounds, lacking in style, substance, atmosphere and character. It reminded me of a smaller version of Southampton’s St Mary’s Stadium.
It’s on an industrial estate, surrounded by car parks, I popped my car in the visitors car park which had the same kind of surface as the moon and paid £5 for the privilege.
For a Tuesday night game there were a good 1,500 Norwich fans in, around one sixth of the measly crowd of around 9,000.
It’s just typical that Norwich come to these grounds in midweek and get turned over. I was trying to explain this to Lorraine in the car and made the prediction that “we will probably get dicked 3-0”.And how accurate that was.
Doncaster took the lead early on through James Coppinger, a player who I have known about for some time, he’s one of the most underrated players in the Championship and unfortunately for The Canaries, we found him on top form last night.
City hardly mustered a shot in the first half and when we went 2-0 down, the game hung in the balance. I say this because Norwich always seem to play better when they’re behind and after dominating for much of the second half got back in the game with a Russell Martin header from about two yards out.
Game on then, and a 2-2 draw looked the most likely outcome, but to be honest, I couldn’t really see City scoring.
The picture on the right I took of City skipper Grant Holt really sums up the whole night.
Coppinger’s third with ten minutes left was the nail in the coffin.
So the first defeat on the road and after a good run of four games, a second loss.
Due to two weddings already this season, one my own, I’ve seen three of Norwich’s six games. They’ve not won any of the three I’ve seen and guess what?
They’ve won all the other three!

Why I'm worried the Jets could ruin my season

Great to have the NFL back this week and I can’t wait to catch my beloved Patriots in action next Sunday on TV when they take on the New York Jets – but I am worried the Jets could ruin my autumn.
Let me explain.
In January 2008, a fortnight before the Super Bowl, I found myself in the US, the last stop on a three-month round the world trip.
What a way to finish – three weeks in the States, driving around LA, Vegas and Arizona. As well as eating some amazing food, travelling around the best country in the world and catching up with some family, I decided to write a book about American football.
Maybe it was the excitement of planning a new book but I started to fall in love with the history of the sport
I’d just visited my uncle, another Nick, in Tucson who told me he’d recently met Joe Namath and had managed to pick up his autograph.
I’d recently picked up some biographies of some of the NFL legends myself – Namath, Walter Payton and Jonny Unitas which formed my reading material on my trip. I came back to England and paid big bucks for a beautiful trade card with swatches of shirts worn by Unitas, Namath and Bart Starr and then paid a fairly large sum for a massive black and white photo of Namath just after the famous Super Bowl III win in 1969.
The stunning photo of Namath, certainly the most famous player to wear the white and green on the New York Jets, arrived in March 2008, just a few weeks after Tom Brady and co had capitulated in Super Bowl XLII and blown their hopes of going 19 and 0.
The Namath photo remained in the large brown envelope over the summer of 2008. I had planned to get it framed, but it ended up under my bed.
Then, as the NFL season started that September, it started to act like some kind of curse. First the Jets signed Brett Favre, while in New England’s first game against Kansas City, Tom Brady ended his season with a knee injury. The Patriots didn’t even win their division that season!
The Namath picture spent was still under my bed last season as the Patriots won the division but bowed out against Baltimore in the Wild Card play-offs as Brady had a nightmare.
The Jets, meanwhile, found their form under rookie Mark Sanchez, winning in Cincinnati and San Diego and making it to the AFC Championship game.
So what does this all mean?
Well since buying that Namath picture, the Jets have suddenly become a big rival to New England’s divisional hopes.
This summer, the Jets, who lets remember are technically the second best team in the AFC, have added experienced campaigners Jason Taylor, LaDanian Tomlinson and Antonio Cromartie to an impressive Sanchez and a powerful offense including Jerricho Cotchery, Braylon Edwards and from October, Santonio Holmes.
For a Patriots fan who has seen his side stall since the glorious winter of 2007, it doesn’t look that good. Sure Brady, Randy Moss and Wes Welker are still around, but I’m worried that the Jets and even the Dolphins could scupper the Pats’ chances of even getting out of the AFC East this season.
You’ve heard of the Curse of the Bambino – the often cited reason the Boston Red Sox failed to win the World Series due to trading Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees in 1920 right?
I wonder if my Patriots are suffering from the Curse of the Nambino. Ever since that Namath picture showed up, the Pats have sucked while the Jets have cruised to a new level.
As a Patriots fan, I do question why I ever wanted to actually own a signed photo of a New York Jet anyway but more immediately, eight days until the two teams meet next Sunday, I just wonder if that picture should pay a trip to the shredder.
Or at least end up back on eBay.