Carrow Road memories: My stint as a Carrow Road cleaner

The old South Stand at Carrow Road - I swept every row of it back in 1993

Ever wondered who cleans up after games at Carrow Road? Back in the summer of 1993 I was about to start my last year at school and saw an advert in the EDP placed by a cleaning company to supply part-time cleaners at Carrow Road.
With dreams of free tickets to games, mixing with the players and probably having a say in Mike Walker's team selections, I headed off down to Carrow Road on a mid-August Friday before the first game of the season against Manchester United.
As a I brushed past Chris Sutton (two years older and probably on slightly more than the £2.50 an hour I was coining in) in the car park, my dreams were slowly starting to be realised.
They were soon shattered when I saw the motley crew of a dozen others who had also turned up outside the River End to start work.
Our first job was to take a bucket and sponge and clean all the seats in the South Stand and River End which wasn't too taxing. On the following Monday after each game we all assembled at 7am and swept the terraces for 6-7 hours until they were clean.
The joy of being at the ground on a Friday was immense, there was a real buzz about the place and I got to go all over the stadium and sit in places I'd never sat in before which was great. Duncan Forbes, who was working for the club at the time, used to come over and chat to us, we got free tea and biscuits on our morning break and sometimes a glimpse of some players on the pitch.
Alas, as the summer turned to autumn and then winter, it wasn't so good. A dead pigeon spent most of that autumn towards the back of the River End lower tier and every fortnight I had to sweep rubbish around it.
Fans that tore up huge sections of the Yellow Pages before a game and threw them like confetti when the teams came out were the bane of my life as the Carrow Road wind that swept around the ground every post-matchday Monday made the clean-up job nigh on impossible.
The upper and lower tiers of the Barclay and the upper tier of the River End, which had been purpose built with seats, were easy to clean, the lower River End which had seats placed over the original terrace was harder. The South Stand with its hotch potch of red and blue seats was a nightmare. I must have snagged my trousers on a damaged seat on a weekly basis.
There were the joys of finding a programme and I started to pick up used match tickets and the occasional 20p or 50p. One of my co-workers found a purse one morning which sparked a big debate among us as to whether he would hand it in or trouser the cash inside.
The absolute highlight was the day after Bayern Munich had been at Carrow Road for the big UEFA Cup, which was live on BBC1. It was a Thursday morning, November 4 1993, and I was supposed to be in a sociology lecture.
Rather than sit and listen to the theories of Karl Marx and Auguste Comte, I headed down to Carrow Road and started work on getting that River End terrace spic and span.
Suddenly a camera crew from Anglia TV turned up to film the tempoaray TV studio being taken down and to do some general ground shots for that night's reaction to the match.
I was called over and they asked if they could film me sweeping up. Wary that I should have been at school I directed them to put the camera on the terrace and I swept into it and urged them not to film my face.
The clip made the news that night and, realising that it wouldn't get any better than that, I quit within a few weeks to concentrate on my A-levels!

Book review - Got, Not Got

League ladders, World Cup Willie, Subbuteo, World Cup stamps, Sport Billy, inflatables, fanzines, Corinthian figures - whatever was the football fad that accompanied the era that you got into football, you'll find it all revisited in the wonderful book Got, Not Got.
With an alphabetical layout featuring the biggest 50 or so teams in English and Scottish football, there's a pretty good chance that a piece of memorabilia that means something to you or your team will be photographed and recalled in a superbly designed book that's feels like flicking through a massive 224-page football programme rather than a serious football text.
The book harks back to that golden era far away from Twitter, kick-offs being moved for TV, court cases and obscene wages, when Mark Lawrenson was just a Brighton defender and Gary Lineker worked on his dad's market stall.
The authors are big Leicester City fans and there's plenty of Foxes memorabilia across the pages. Norwich fans will be excited about page 132, half of which is dedicated to City's finest match, the 1993 win against Bayern Munich in the Olympic Stadium.
Before the Premier League and the wall-to-wall coverage of Sky, before mobile phones and tablets gave us goals around the clock, there was a time when the beautiful game was harder to access - a time when it didn't just flow over everyone and fill every corner.
That time when you had to go to a game to follow your team, you had to buy a programme, read a magazine or phone a Clubcall hotline to get your club's news, a time when the game we all love had collectable items that meant something to every young fan and a time when catching a five-minute glimpse of your team on television was a once-a-season event.
It's a great book, every page has a throwback memory for any football fan over 30 and you'll dip in and out of it for months on end as I have done.
Even though a lot of the references and pictures are slightly before my time, I still loved it and, hey, any football book with a picture of Brighton's Steve Foster in his early 80s headbanded glory will do for me!

Bradley, Cav and the Tour of Britain 2012

Bradley Wiggins, third, and the rest of the Sky team approaching Snape
on the first stage of the Tour of Britain

Early start today, leaving Bury St Edmunds at 7.10am to head off to Snape to catch the Tour of Britain 2012.
My new love of cycling, which I must state started before the Tour de France and the Olympics, has taken me far and wide in the last six months, but two weeks after a huge 84 mile ride from Hessett to Aldeburgh and back, I was back on the saddle again today to cheer on two famous Olympians.
Last year, when Mark Cavendish whisked past Nowton Park I was more keen to record the event for posterity rather than watch it for the cycling aspect, but wind on 12 months, I subscribe to two cycling mags, have six cycling jerseys and am considering shaving my legs.
Today's ride was my biggest ever, 96 miles in the hot August sun with my mate Steve, a London-based triathlete.
We were planning to ride to Snape to watch the riders burst through but stopped half a mile short to a small hill climb. Four riders powered through seven minutes ahead of the peloton, which eventually shot past us containing Cav and Bradley Wiggins at the front.
That was it, we headed back to Bury St Edmunds to complete our seven hour ride.
Back in the Tour of Britain world the day ended badly for Cavendish, crashing out just outside the Royal Norfolk Showground with less that a mile to go, having ridden almost as far as the Manx Missile today, I know how I'd have felt to finish my ride injured and on the floor.

Hooray hooray - I've done my first 10k

Myself, left with my dad Colin and brother Andrew after the Reepham 10K

Blisteringly hot August morning, probably the last thing you'd want to do today was go for a run, but today was the day I completed my first 10K.

For someone who has had asthma for 26 years, the thought of running more than a football pitch has normally filled me with dread, but a year and a half after starting work outs with Bury-based bootcamp Liberte Fitness, I took up the challenge of a 10K.

My dad, who is 65, is a fitness fan and regularly fills his recently retired days with hour-long jaunts around the streets of Norwich, so it was always going to be a challenge to beat him and my my brother, 38, in a six-mile stretch around rural Norfolk.

I signed us all up for the Reepham 10K and after a bit of training we were all set.

The weather was glorious - beach weather in fact. Not running weather at all. There was no air and it was too still - we were advised to take water at every stop and there were six of them, one at every mile.

Even after the minimum of training a 10K is still not that hard. Sure there were times when I felt weak and tired and wanted to stop, there were times I did stop, usually at the water stops to cool myself down. There were times I could feel my nipples hurting (they eventually started bleeding - hooray, jogger's nipple!) but it wasn't that exhausting, just boiling, boiling hot.

I was fired up to finish the run in an hour, and I was gutted to have completed the race in 61 minutes and 31 seconds, 12 minutes behind my dad, 10 minutes behind my brother and 251st out of 300.

The rest of the field were club runners, so to beat one six of them did me proud.

The time may be a bit on the slow side, but this sports junkie may have found a new sport to fall in love with.

Book Review: Tailgate to Heaven

Adam Goldstein and myself at Wembley in 2009

Back on a dull, wet and pretty damn miserable October Sunday in 2009 I met NFL super fan Adam Goldstein just outside the entrance to Wembley Park station in London.
I was handing out cards to NFL fans ahead of the third match of the International Series between New England and Tampa Bay plugging my book, Touchdown UK, when I spotted Adam's famous Chicago Bears hat.
We had a quick chat and I got to meet his lovely girlfriend Steph and that was that, he mentioned his book that he was writing about what will one day be his legendary trip around the NFL in the 2008 season and that was it, he had to go off and speak to a Sky TV reporter.
Adam was actually doing a similar trip that following season and that Wembley game was just another match for him.
As I took my seat high up behind one of the sidelines and waited for kick off I saw Adam do likewise just in front of me. I naturally contrasted our journeys to Wembley that day. I'd traveled about 100 miles for the game, Adam had jetted back to the UK for it. It was my fourth NFL game ever, the price I've paid for taking too many trips to American in baseball season, while for Adam he'd equaled my small  number of games in just a few weeks. This was what he did.
Fast forward three years and the book, Tailgate To Heaven, is out.
Adam's amazing and unique trip - I wonder if one day there will be similar homage trips - certainly set the bar high. An 18-week trip, 40 games, 65,000 miles of travelling. Surely it will never be repeated?
The book breaks down the trip on a week by week basis, not only do we get the details of each game, but more importantly the journey between venues and the inside track on the 'sport' of tailgating.

Great book, certainly enjoyed it.

The book really tells how Adam embraces the world of being a fan of different teams and the best part is how Adam develops from being slightly apprehensive about pitching up at different stadiums and trying to fit in with different fans to being a full out master tailgater.
Early on Adam tells the story of attending a Packers/Vikings game and being asked outside Lambeau Field if a cameraman could film his ticket for an opening segment for the TV coverage in exchange for Adam being caught on camera.
"He showed my game-day ticket to the world, while I was somewhere in the background, bobbing up and down like one of those fans."
Fast forward an NFL season and Adam's sharing a jar of Branston Pickle with some hardened Cheeseheads.
"They nervously spread the black gooey goodness onto the cheese and took a small bite. They winced with the vinegar kick. I was surprised at just how much I cared and wanted them to like my addiction."
In a book that started as a dream, a challenge and then a quest, it's the bonding and exchange of cultures that  warms the heart more so than the actual action on the field.
For anyone who has ever taken a trip to an NFL stadium in America or for anyone who wonders what it would be like to throw it all in and jet off around the US for nigh-on six months, this book is for you.
Even if you haven't, you can't help but laugh and smile at Adam's brilliantly written story of how something we'd all probably dismiss as a silly idea, turned into the trip of a lifetime.

Brazil's Olympic dream in ruins in the Wembley sunshine

I've lost count of the number of people I've heard over the last couple of weeks slating the Olympic football tournament - the usual comments are something about not caring less about this aspect of London 2012 and the fact that footballers already have their own World Cup.

Fair enough, but football has been part of the Olympics since 1896, it just doesn't get the same profile in Britain as in other parts of the world as we don't usually take part.

Over in Brazil, the Olympics are obviously a big deal, partly because they host the next football tournament in the Rio games of 2016, but also because they've never won Olympic gold.

Today against Mexico at Wembley, the feeling was they simply had to turn up to right that wrong, but they didn't vouch for the Mexican wave that hit them like a first minute sledgehammer.

By the time Mexico's Oribe Peralta struck a goal after just 30 seconds, most of the 86,000 fans were still settling down to watch the game - it came as such a surprise that plenty of people, myself included, didn't see it.

Brazil's illustrious forward line of Neymar, Oscar, Lendro Damiao and Hulk, who started the final on the bench, hardly threatened Mexico's goal in the first half which was a shame as it was the end at which I was sitting.

The game was there for the taking and that's exactly what Mexico did, Peralta smashing home a header from a corner late on.

Brazil's Rafael squared up to a team mate before being substituted and after Hulk pulled one back in the last minute, Oscar had a golden chance to head the winner, but blazed his header inches wide.

That was it - the final whistle, Mexicans all over the pitch and Brazil's players slumped to the floor.
After watching the lengthy medal ceremony - have you ever seen 69 athletes on a podium? - it was time to say goodbye to Wembley and to my Olympic experience.

As I walked down Wembley way with chanting Mexicans and Brazilian samba drummers I actually felt like it was a pretty unique experience and although two of the tree events I saw were football, I really enjoyed it all.

My Olympic journey from Coventry to Wembley via Eton Dorney only showed me a tiny bit of the Games, but I'm glad I made the effort, it's something I'll always remember.

Carrow Road Memories: Flashback - Carrow Road 25 years ago

England captain Bryan Robson - Carrow Road hasn't changed a bit from
this picture

Things you don't see at Carrow Road on matchdays - dads carrying milk crates for their sons to stand on to get a better view on the terrace, the two old boys carrying the Golden Goal times around the pitch on a board... and young boys with new cameras eager to take photos.

I am sure every kid took a camera to a football match at some time but now, in the age of android phones where everyone has a decent camera, the magic of taking your own footie snaps has clearly gone.

The first time I did it was on March 5 1988, 25 seasons ago when Norwich took on then second place Manchester United in the old First Division.

The old Barclay Stand scoreboard announced Jesper Olsen's arrival

 United were chasing Liverpool all the way for the title in what would be their best finish under Alex Ferguson. They'd recently added Steve Bruce to their ranks, and Norwich gave a debut to his replacement, Andy Linighan in this game.

Norwich won the game 1-0 with a late Robert Fleck goal, but I was more keen on getting photos of Bryan Robson, who was then the biggest star in English football and was three months away from leading his country to Euro '88 where despite England having a disaster, Robson emerged as probably the only decent player.

I came across these photos the other day and they show Carrow Road back in 1988, one year before the Hillsborough disaster changed the blueprint for the modern English football stadium.

United's Brian McClair in the foreground with the River End in the
distance. The bottom tier was terrace and their was no corner infill

Apart from the huge amount of hair on show in the picture of Robson, the one big difference is the Barclay End - remember that scoreboard that always seemed to have the odd light missing.

Happy days indeed - and despite turning 13 less than two weeks after this game, such was the way technology worked back then that I probably didn't see these photos for another three months as I would have had to use up the film and then send off for it to be developed!

Norwich 1 Ajax 1 - think I've just seen my last friendly

Football is back at Carrow Road!

Norwich are back at Carrow Road but after tonight's big clash against Ajax I think I can safely say I won't be going to any home friendlies anymore.
I'd had a long old day of sport watching - rowing at Eton Dorney in the morning and then a knackering drive up to Norwich for the game against Ajax.
Ten years ago this month I'd missed the centenary celebrations and the game against Ajax as I was at a wedding and having once been turned away from the Amsterdam ArenA when I tried to buy a ticket for an Ajax game because I didn't have my passport, this was a case of unfinished business.
My excitement at watching the game was quickly over as the teams came on the pitch. Maybe it's a sign of getting older that it's easy to find things to moan about, but for some reason the fact City wore their black kit really bugged me.
I don't know why, but I just think, first home game, Ajax as the opponents, I just want to see my team in yellow and green.
So what of the game?
Well Christian Eriksen, who had a decent Euro 2012 campaign ran the show in the first half and apart from the two goals - Anthony Pilkington with a seventh minute free-kick for City, we didn't learn too much about Chris Hughton's City.

Enter the Snod!

James Vaughan, who missed much of last season, was probably the most lively player in the first half and his replacement Wes Hoolahan looked good in the second.
Grant Holt, making his first home appearance since his summer contract dealings, had a good reception and City's only other new face was Robert Snodgrass who came on with 25 minutes to go and didn't do a lot.
Overall though, this was very much a training exercise - the young Ajax side pinged the ball around nicely, City tried to do the same thing but it didn't really have the same effect.
 Despite a decent crowd of 16,000 there wasn't much to get excited about and having witnessed games over the last decade or so against the likes of AZ Alkmaar, Heerenveen, Utrecht and co at Carrow Road, I've come to the conclusion that these kind of pre-season games really are a waste of cash - I don't think I'll bother next time.

Olympic rowing - it's far better on the telly

I finally got to hold an Olympic torch!

Day two of my Olympic three-hander came today with a trip to Eton Dorney in Buckinghamshire to watch some rowing.
I'd originally applied for tickets to rowing for my brother who is a big rowing fan - to the extent that he rows in his garage against dudes from Malaysia and Indonesia on his laptop.
He stuffed up and went on holiday so I took my auntie Vic, who lives nearby.
It's a bit of an effort to get to Eton Dorney, even though she lives near Twickenham - a train, followed by a shuttle bus from Windsor station, followed by a half an hour walk and that was just to the start where those two big blue stands are housed.
Once inside there were massive queues for everything - for coffee, for the water fountain (such is the crazy rule that you can only bring in 100ml of water) and for hot food.
Despite the early start and the grey skies we made our way near the start and watched a couple of hours. Auntie Vic lamented the fact she hadn't bought her Lexican cards with her as she pinned her Union Jack to the fence.
The rowing was pretty exciting, especially as the boats and the entourage of cyclists shoot past but the fact we were so far from the finish and these were only heats was a bit of a damp squib.

Team GB ladies in the eights

Still, good to be part of it, but to be honest, you feel far more involved at times just watching the whole thing on the telly.

Searching for some Olympic 2012 spirit at Coventry's Ricoh Arena

The Olympics 2012 are here and I've already tasted my first bit of Olympic action after making the journey up to Coventry last night to watch New Zealand take on Belarus.

Back when I went into the ballot more than a year ago, I didn't have a clue that I'd be taking in this game, my thinking was that watching a football match in Coventry wouldn't be exactly packed nor expensive and I would be able to guarantee some Olympic action on the cheap.

Fast forward a year and that's exactly what it was - Olympic action on the cheap - not much atmosphere, an exercise in over-management and I left the ground feeling as if I'd just sat through a dull pre-season friendly.

So what of the Olympic football experience?

Well I took my pal Tony, a native Kiwi and in order to inject a bit of passion and fun into the game we arrived in the Warwickshire city with our faces painted, I went for a solitary black fern which Tony expertly sketched on my face, while Tony had done himself up a treat with a hint of the New Zealand flag and that famous fern.

We had to drive into the centre of Coventry and park and then take a bus to the Ricoh Arena which was a bit silly as Coventry City’s ground is surrounded by car parks. I thought it was simply to ensure that cash was spent in the city centre, but I think it was some kind of security measure.

After a beer and a burger we set off for the Ricoh on a bus – I was excited to see just what they’d done with the car park that meant we couldn’t park there. The answer was it was pretty empty save for hundreds of security staff, Games Makers, police and stewards - all for, as we would later find out, 14,000 people.

On the bus Tony got the ultimate compliment for his quality face paints when other fans asked if we had any spare. Once off the bus he soon got asked if the New Zealand players did the Haka before the game. He then got asked it again, and again!

One thing we noticed quickly was the lack of advertising inside the ground – the Ricoh sign on the stadium was covered over, all the advertising was gone and later as the fans left, we’d see that some of the seats which spelt out ‘Ricoh’ in the seats had been removed too.

Before we got inside we had to remove everything from our pockets and put them in clear plastic bags, a bit like being at an airport.

After that it was a gentle pat down and into the ground and ready for the game to start. New Zealand fielded a smattering of players with GB connections – Chris Wood, Ryan Nelson and Ipswich Town’s Tommy Smith all started along with Shane Smeltz, who figured at the last World Cup for New Zealand.

Coaching the side was former Norwich midfielder Neil Emblen and he won’t have been happy with the crazy early yellow card for Smith after no more than ten seconds.

The African man in the middle certainly made a rod for his own back with that decision for, as the tackles got tougher and tougher, each of them came with a request for another card.

New Zealand played the better football early on but couldn’t find that killer pass and after a goal just before the half-time break put Belarus 1-0 up, the Kiwis spend the rest of the game trying in vain to get that all-important equaliser.

It didn’t come and despite some late drama and great goalkeeping from the Kiwi shot-stopper, the game finished in 1-0 win for Belarus.

Leaving the round was the next challenge – 14,000 fans had come to the game over a few hours, but now they all had to find a bus back to the town centre.

As we walked past the massed ranks of security, police and Games Makers standing idly outside the ground it felt as if we’d actually been assigned our own individual security guard.

We finally got on a bus and headed back to the town centre.

It was great to go to the Olympics before they actually started, but the match, occasion and event in general will be soon forgotten.

Olympic torch relay 2012 in Bury St Edmunds

Saturday July 7 2012, 4.09pm. The Olympic torch is in Bury St Edmunds

Over-hyped, over-blown and over here.
Well it is now.
The 2012 Olympic torch passed through Bury St Edmunds today with a huge amount of fuss, flag-waving and fanaticism - and it was all over in a matter of minutes.
While there remain millions of Olympic-sceptics in the UK, I for one am all for them and excited about watching the spectacle of the Games take place in this country.
I have tickets for three events which adds to my sense of pride and with my wife Lorraine due to give birth to our first child a couple of months after the games, all things 2012 have an extra resonance.
So what was the torch relay like to watch?
Essentially it's all about the build up, the anticipation and the wonderment. The actual Olympic torch coming through my adopted home town, literally metres from where I live.
My friends Sarah and Tony came over and we had a pre-Olympic torch party and an hour or so before I wandered up to where the route would come past with their three-year-old Daisy and had a look.
Already there were people of all ages waiting for... well the torch. Waiting for someone we didn't really know to carry one of many replica torches for a matter of meters.
It then struck me that we were only really here for the torch and I suppose for the occasion. Trying to tell a three-year-old what was going on presented its own problems.
I told little Daisy what was going to happen, kind of what it was for and that there might be some cheering.
She covered her ears and told me she didn't like noise.
Just before the torch came through as the dodgy Londoners selling all things red, white and blue with one eye on the watching police decided to curtail their enterprises, the atmosphere went up a notch.

Tears for fears: How three-year-old Daisy
reacted to the big torch relay

Coca-Cola staff ran through dishing out frisbee-shaped things to bang, a couple of police on motorbike whizzed through and then all of a sudden the crowds sprung off the pavement and into the roads narrowing the route of the torch bearer.
And then he came past, a rather portly chap in glasses dressed in white surrounded by chunky security guards. The cut of the sporting attire did none of them any favours.
I moved out into the road, crouched down and took some pictures. One of the security guards kept his eye on me until he could see that I wasn't some kind of Lee Harvey Oswald figure, just a sad sports nut.
It was all over in ten seconds with little real commotion. Thousands of people on a street coming to look at a torch and a flame that symbolised something about the Olympics coming to the south east of England in a few weeks.
I turned to see how three-year-old Daisy had celebrated the event. Surely she had stored this momentous moment in her memory bank and would dine out for life on the day she saw the Olympic torch come to town as a wee child.
Not a chance.
She'd burst into tears the minute the torchbearer had come past!

Pirlo's awesome penalty evoked spirit of Panenka, rather than Lineker or Hoolahan

So England are out of Euro 2012, but what about that glorious exit and in particular that stunning penalty by Andrea Pirlo.

It takes guts, bottle and most importantly the ability to deal with the reaction when the keeper saves it to step up and contemplate such a kick, but when it comes off, wow the kudos is never-ending.

It was back in 1976 that Czechoslovakia's Antonin Panenka shot to footballing fame with his cheeky chip against Germany at that summer's Euros - and what a penalty it was.

Thirty-six years later, we saw Pirlo's stunning spot kick that left England keeper Joe Hart stunned and helped dump England out.

But we've seen plenty of duff attempts to copy the Panenka kick - step forward Gary Lineker who had the chance to equal Bobby Charlton's England record of 49 in the summer of 1992 but fluffed his chance....

And then there was our dear Wes Hoolahan who managed to screw up his attempt to stroke the ball past Preston's keeper back in March 2011. I remember the game well, it was the last league game I missed, I was laying in bed feeling ill and the bloke in the crowd's reaction sums up how I felt when I heard what he'd done!

If you're playing football anytime soon and get the chance to take a penalty, do your self a favour. Forget Panenka, Pirlo and even Socrates. Just put your laces through it and hit the target!

London to Brighton Night Ride

Waiting to start the ride on Clapham Common
Pics - Liz Best

Finally I feel like a real cyclist having completed my first organised event - the British Heart Foundation night ride from London's Clapham Common to Brighton.

While the distance of 60 miles didn't prove to be particularly gruelling and more than five hours in the saddle didn't really hurt, it was the landmark event in newly rekindled love of cycling that's been lying dormant for far too long that gave me the real buzz.

I've had periods of cycle mania before but they've usually been tied to different sorts of causes - such as commuting to work, university or on holidays when I've fancied getting about under my own steam.

Having cycled in the USA and Australia before I've certainly never been shy about getting on two wheels but when my pal Stuart Haystead suggested taking part in this London to Brighton event back in January I jumped at the chance.

If 2011 was about rekindling the fitness bug in me, 2012 has been about pushing on and cycling has given me that new focus.

In February Stuart and I, joined by Liz Best and Phil Crowhurst started training for the Brighton ride with a couple of 12-mile rides.

We were joined by other friends Helen, Alison and Eleanor and as the event drew nearer we started upping the miles with 20 and 30 mile rides.

I could feel the cycling bug taking hold and I soon found myself swerving the usual football magazines in favour of cycling periodicals and cruising eBay for old cycling jerseys rather than football ones.

Cycling and my first love of football share similarities for me - I love the old cycling shirts and history of the sport that it has in Europe - and I love the fact too that countries such as Holland, Belgium and Italy where I have spent most time watching continental football over the years are the heartlands of the European road cycling community.

Some of the 4,500 other cyclists who took part

But there is also a big difference.
As a season ticket holder at Norwich City I feel tied to my club in good ways and bad - I get the sense of warmth that I am part of something, yet in the same way I get no reward from the club, just more and more propaganda from the Carrow Road PR department and the chance to spend money in watching players dressed in yellow and green.

Cycling represents freedom, certainly from paying money every fortnight to watch millionaires slugging it out on the football field.

There's a huge cycling community out there that you can casually freewheel into and even a rookie road cyclist can feel the love - they really seem to look out for you - the training rides have advanced from knowing nods to fellow cyclists to offers of help if you're stuck on the side of the road. It seems they really care.

Most importantly though, as someone who drives 300 miles a week just to get to work and back, cycling is the antithesis to the modern age. Bikes may have changed remarkably over the last 30 years, but that sense of getting on a bike and using your own power to get you someplace else remains. Some feel that sense of unburdening in a car, I feel it more than ever on a bike.

I soon invested in something to keep me more motivated as the cycling bug took hold - a new Boardman road bike, the first new wheels I'd bought since the days when Mark Cavendish was still yet to see his tenth birthday and wow, I felt like a real cyclist.

A 60 mile ride with my pals proved I could do the London to Brighton distance, a 70 mile one proved I could do more. I was ready for the big event.

With my three cycling chums and my brother Andrew too we headed down to London -  destination Clapham Common.

Stuart, Phil, Liz and myself before we set off

While most of London’s streets were full of people relaxing on a Saturday night, the five of us were about to go to work. We made our way to the common and spied a handful of other cyclists. Within a few minutes we were among thousands of them.

A total of 4,500 to be precise, all pointing their bikes towards Brighton but all needing to funnel through a small starting point that meant an hour delay before the first full revolution of my wheels..

The weather was great but even in the wee small hours after a a baking hot May day, it’s pretty cold standing on an open common at 1am.

Eventually though we were away, crossing the starting line with a word of good luck from a member of the BHF crew.

The first few miles were carnage – a bit like the D-Day scene from Saving Private Ryan.

Rear lights flicked off the backs of bikes, water bottles were lost in the road and within a mile of the start, someone had incredibly picked up a puncture.

Refueling on Jaffa Cakes with ten miles to go

Brighton seemed a long way away. I made the mistake of stopping to pick someone’s bottle up and soon realised it was better to keep going. It was their tough cheese.

Urban London merged into the suburbs through Tooting and Merton where alcohol-fuelled youngsters decided to shout abuse and encouragement in equal measure.

Suddenly though, we were ten miles in, swerved the first rest stop and were on the dark open roads as we entered the Surrey countryside.

The terrain changed remarkably, small hills to climb, big ones to come down. 
One of the steepest hills saw the worst sight of the ride, a rider flat on their stomach halfway down a seriously steep hill. I remembered the water bottle incident and kept peddling. At the bottom of the hill our group reconvened and vowed that safety was the most important part of the ride.

We pushed on and two hours into the ride it was starting to get light.

We tried to ride together but inevitably spend periods of the ride on our own – but we always waited at the stops and met up.

At thirty miles in it was already light and the last part of the ride was far better than the first. The riders seemed to space out and although there was always someone no more than the tinkling of a bell away, there was plenty of space on the roads.

When we stopped at a roundabout with 10 miles to go, the sheer size of the numbers on the road started to reveal itself – there were hundreds of cyclists piling into that rest stop as I stocked up on free jelly babies, water, pretzels and Jaffa Cakes.

Lambert's time has come to move on

The Sun seem to think it's a done deal that Lambert will be leaving City

Twelve months ago I wrote in a blog that Norwich would stay up, but manager Paul Lambert would leave and, with Aston Villa closing in on the City boss, it's time for him to move on.
What can Lambert really achieve at Norwich City now? He's taken us from the depths of League One to a secure position in the Premier League, where we actually finished well above Aston Villa last season.
Lambert's never going to have the cash to splash at Carrow Road and he's young enough to want to move on and climb the managerial ladder.
We need someone ten years older with previous top flight experience to add more stability to the club. All the new boss needs to achieve is a third successive year in the Premier League, more big money TV cash and slowly but surely adding top quality players to the club.

Ten years since Cardiff, Daryl Sutch and defeat to Birmingham

The atmosphere was amazing as the teams came out in Cardiff

What were you doing ten years ago today? Ten years ago right now? Chances are you were watching Norwich take on Birmingham in the 2002 Play-Off final in Cardiff.
Right about now I was actually on the phone to my mate Chris, who, holidaying in Egypt and decided to give me a call.

City fans made their way to the castle in Cardiff
before the game

I answered it and he spoke.
"Hello mate, how you doing? Is it the Play-Off final today?"
"Er, yeah, it is. I'm there and Daryl Sutch is about to take a penalty. If he misses, we've lost."
"Oh, right, I better hang on for a minute..."
"He's running up and..."
"Yeah?"
"He's put it wide. Bollocks."
"Oh well, look, I'll call you back a bit later. Bye."
That was the climax to an amazing day, not only had I spend half the night queuing up for a match ticket but, after hearing horror stories about it taking ages to get to Cardiff, I insisted my then girlfriend Tammy and mate Keiron left at a ridiculously early hour and we were already in Wales well before midday, some three and a half hours before kick off.
The journey down suddenly became very special at the Severn Bridge. Traffic was cleverly arranged so the Birmingham fans went to the other side of the stadium while the City congregation had the bridge crossing all to themselves.
Waiting at the toll booths was surreal - everyone was a Norwich fan, flags and scarves were waving from cars, horns were blasting and the atmosphere was electric.
My arms are getting covered in goose pimples right now writing this - there was something incredible about being so far from Norfolk and yet being surrounded by hundreds of cars all there for the same reason.

Pre-match outside the Millennium Stadium

After a few drinks in the grounds of the castle and slagging off some Birmingham fans from across the river, the game kicked off.
It was an incredibly tense and I don't remember much about it, apart from the fact I felt pretty sick for most of the game due to the amount of pressure. The stadium roof was shut and I remember it was baking hot and amazingly loud.
I think it was Ron Atkinson (remember him?) who said it was the loudest atmosphere he'd ever heard at a football match and he wasn't wrong.
City famously scored a few seconds after normal time had ended 0-0 with Iwan Roberts nodding home Alex Notman's cross.

I always thought it was such a shame that the goal came at the opposite end to where the 30,000+ City fans were sitting. Birmingham soon equalised and probably should have won the game  - they hit the post after getting back on level terms.

I was in the Carrow Road queue for around eight hours to get this ticket!

I could hardly stand up as the game edged towards penalties, not so much because of the fact that I didn't want to see us lose, but more for the fact that it had been a good season, we'd had spectacular semi-final games against Wolves, I'd had to queue up for ages to get a ticket, drive across the country and that was all about to come to an end.
Of course promotion would have been amazing but something told me it wasn't going to be our time as the penalties started.
And then my phone rang...

Giants did it again, but what a bizarre winning touchdown from Ahmad Bradshaw to beat the Patriots

Ahmad Bradshaw scores his bizarre winning touchdown in Super Bowl XLVI.
Pic: Sports Illustrated

Massive sense of deja vu today after the New York Giants one their second Super Bowl in five years by beating New England Patriots in pretty much a carbon copy of their 2008 win in Arizona.
While the game was gripping, it was hardly a scoring spectacular, more a battle of mind games between the two head coaches and the two star quarterbacks Tom Brady and Eli Manning.
Mario Manningham's late game catch down the sidelines was the David Tyree moment of the game, but what about that winning score? The mind games battle peaked in the last couple of minutes with the Giants trying to run down the clock in a bid not to give Brady's Patriots back the ball but the plan looked like it had backfired.
When Ahmad Bradshaw picked up the ball and ran towards the endzone, the Patriots defense stopped and allowed him through, with the intention of stopping on the one yard line.
I'd love to know what Bradshaw was thinking at that point - what would you do? Score potentially the winning Super Bowl touchdown or take one for the team, run down the clock and set up a possible winning field goal.
Bradshaw somehow decided to do a bit of both. He stopped, went to sit down and then, perhaps accidentally scored. The reaction of his fellow players was a "What have you done?" kind of bizarre.
On the sideline, Bradshaw shrugged his shoulders, not knowing that he'd actually decided the game.
It made a not-that-memorable game memorable for the winning touchdown that nobody wanted to score.

Classic away trips - Blackpool v Norwich FA Cup fourth round, 2007

Blackpool and Norwich clash during the FA Cup clash at Bloomfield Road
on January 27 2007 

Five years ago today I made probably my strangest away trip to watch Norwich when they took on Blackpool in the FA Cup fourth round.
Having watched Peter Grant's side hammer Tamworth live on BBC in early January I eagerly awaited the fourth round draw - remember City were having a miserable season and had parted company with Nigel Worthington just three months earlier.
The fourth round draw paired City with a trip to League One Blackpool and within an hour I had already booked two Ryan Air flights from Stansted to Blackpool.
Being January, the flights were advertised at only a penny each way, and after tax worked out at something like £13 each. My FA Cup-tinted glasses quickly fogged over my vision as an image of a packed plane taking off from Stansted full of City fans entered my mind.
I contemplated buying more of these cheap flights to then sell on eBay as I was sure was being something of a pioneer by flying up to the game, rather than driving or taking the coach.
My decision not to buy loads of return tickets to Blackpool was vindicated when myself and my then girlfriend (thankfully now my wife) arrived at Stansted at 6am on the morning of January 27.
There was clearly not going to be any major rush to board the plane as the departure terminal at Stansted revealed no more than 10 other City fans.
We boarded at 7.25am bound for Blackpool.
To say it was a short uneventful flight was an understatement. Thirty minutes later we arrived with an announcement that we were now at "Blackpool International Airport" and the time was now "7.55am". It all seemed a tad bizarre seeing as we had hardly crossed any major international time zones!
Arriving in Blackpool before 8am on a Saturday in January is a tad grim. We took a bus to the town centre and by 8.20am we were kicking our heels in the town centre, which proved to be a theme for the weekend.
An hour or so later we popped into the grimmest greasy spoon ever and had the most appalling fried breakfast - everything apart from the toast was deep fried - the eggs, the mushrooms, you name it. It was horrific.
We meandered on to our guesthouse around midday - the chintzy Hotel Bambi, just a five minute walk from Bloomfield Road. I took the chance for a nap in front the lunchtime kick off with a two foot cuddly Bambi on the bed for company.
By half two we decided to head to the game and there were still 20 minutes to go before the game started when we already standing on the terrace. It was freezing and already getting dark. I bought one of those half and half scarves for the first time ever and wore it during the game, standing on the temporary terrace the length of the whole ground. Bloomfield Road only had two sides, the rest of the ground was still being built.
I don't recall much about the game. City played in white and green and took the lead through Darren Huckerby just before the break. Wes Hoolahan was booked for falling over in the box and Lee Croft played well.
Blackpool's Ian Evatt equalised towards the end and debutant Chris Brown was sent off in the last ten minutes and the game finished 1-1.
The thousand or so City fans made all the noise, but just as surreal as the surroundings were, it was over far too soon. By ten past five we were back at the Bambi with a warm drink,
That night involved plenty of pub time and loads of food but worse of all, the return flight to Stansted wasn't until 7.45pm the following day.
After a long drawn out Sunday of wandering around Blackpool on a cold January Sunday we couldn't wait to get back to East Anglia.
The return journey was pretty uneventful but we had a shocking landing. The plane came into land and just as it was about to touch down shot back into the air. We think the pilot had misjudged the entrance as it shot back in the air at a crazy angle.
It seemed an appropriate end for a bizarre weekend and incredible that it was five years ago. City won the replay 3-2 with a Chris Martin brace - but the game against Blackpool was the last time City have played in the fourth round on a Saturday - until tomorrow's game against West Brom that is.

Norwich 0 Chelsea 0 - Ten Things We Now Know

Norwich have come on leaps and bounds since Stamford Bridge in August
1. It's always hard to find 10 interesting points to make about a game that's been watched live on TV around the world, and even more so when a game ends 0-0, but first and foremost, what a huge transformation from when we faced Chelsea in August.
We probably played better at Stamford Bridge, but so much has changed in five months with Lambert's team, not in terms of personnel, but mainly in terms of confidence.
It's amazing to think Chris Martin started that game back in August and now finds himself on loan at Crystal Palace. Manager Paul Lambert has instilled something in the side that means a team like Chelsea can turn up at Carrow Road and City can fairly comfortably take a point off them.

Morison has to get stuck if he's to really win the fans over.
2.Chelsea away was the first away match I went to this season and as such they've now featured in two of these post-match analysis bits. So there's plenty of oppportunity to track City's progress since August. Back then I wrote of Steve Morison: "He's strong and physical, but I just can't see him scoring and I don't have the same faith when he's on the ball as I do with Holty."
Morison's impressed at times since then but against Chelsea at Carrow Road I thought he was far from at his best. Sometimes the communication between him and Holt breaks down and usually it's Morison who is at fault. Sometimes he just doesn't seem to want to chase lost opportunities, although it was telling that everytime Petr Cech had the ball on the deck, Morison steamed in towards him. It's a tactic that Holt and Simeon Jackson seem to use a lot and I think if we saw more of Morison getting really stuck in he'd win a lot more favour. For me he reminds me of Dimitar Berbatov, in that he's never going to run around like a headless chicken, which some people, myself included, could interpret for laziness.

Chelsea's stars once again failed to impress.
3. Back in August I wrote: "Chelsea were really poor. In particular Drogba, Torres, Lampard and Terry were shockingly average and substitutes Juan Mata and Romelu Lukaku did more to impress in their brief time on the pitch." Well, not much has changed it seems, although Mata is now a first choice starter and certainly the most creative player in their side. Mata's a little like David Silva and Luka Modric for me. The big teams seem to have this kind of small player in their sides, a tad like our Wes. But as for the big names, they once again failed to show up.

Love him or hate him, you can't take your eyes off of David Luiz
4. Chelsea went four years without a home league defeat in the mid-to-late 2000s and that was largely down to a solid defence. Cech looks far from full of confidence when the ball comes back to him and the four in front of him have been error-prone all season.
It was a shame we didn't get to see Gary Cahill in action but we did get to see a first at Carrow Road -  a player appearing in blue tights!
I though David Luiz was excellent and didn't put a foot wrong against Norwich. He sometimes struggles against better teams, but I rate him. It's certainly never dull when he's in the Chelsea side, even though, as Gary Neville famously said, he defends like a 10-year-old playing on his PlayStation.

I'm starting to get annoyed by my fellow fans.
5. There were predictable boos when John Terry came out and the predictable chanting of "One racist captain" and "John Terry, you know what you did". I cringed throughout.
Fellow fans are getting to me at the moment in my Jarrold Stand seat, from the stupid Terry chanting to the continual slagging off of the referee to the continual slagging off of any decision that involves Grant Holt not winning a free-kick when he's rolling around on the floor.
Far be it for me to appear like a snob or a football anorak but it doesn't half amaze me when people turn to their mates and say "Who?" when a substitute comes on. When that sub is Florent Malouda, who has 73 French caps and has played in a World Cup final, I sometimes wonder just how little knowledge other football fans have.

Maybe we need to cross the ball in the box more.
6. Ashley Cole and Jose Bosingwa had fairly quiet games on Saturday and that was all down to the lack of width we found. Andrew Surman and Anthony Pilkington saw plenty of the ball early on but didn't really try and play the ball out wide. It struck me just how rarely City cross the ball in the box, they tend to work it back to the edge of the box rather than fizz balls in at head height from out wide in open play, which when you consider the aerial options up front we have and the fact we've scored so many headed goals is surprising.

Zak Whitbread was simply awesome.
7. The sponsors got it right, Zak Whitbread was the man of the match and he was just superb from start to finish. Some awesome headed clearances and he had the measure of Fernando Torres all afternoon.

First clean sheet of the season actually felt like a win.
8. Way-hey, my Fantasy Football goalkeeper John Ruddy picked up his first clean sheet of the season and that was the main reason for the loud cheers from all around Carrow Road as the game finished. Ruddy was never really troubled by Chelsea's long-range shooting, but a save in each half really impressed me.
His second half save from Mata at the near post on the hour was crucial, but save of the match had to be the fingertip save from Torres' toe poke in the first half.
I had the perfect view of that shot and it was definitely going in.

Torres just needs to start shooting on sight.
9. Fernando Torres missed possibly his second worst sitter in a Chelsea shirt when he flicked the ball past John Ruddy's left hand post and into the cinders in front of the N&P Stand.
That miss will grab the headlines but it's part of a confusing balance for Torres - on one hand he has a really poor return on the pitch, on the other, he's continually praised by his manager and fellow players for the shift he puts in. They usually cite his all round team play and I watched him closely on Saturday.
For me, he tried to do too much, a bit like Barcelona when they try and walk the ball into the net. The old Torres at Atletico Madrid would shoot on sight and that was what made Liverpool fork out all that cash for him in the summer of 2007.
On Saturday when he picked the ball up he first tried to beat a man to create space and usually ended up losing the ball. His instinct doesn't seem to be to head for goal anymore, rather to find space and set up a team mate. That's fine by most players' standards, but when you're a £50m striker and you've only scored three goals all season, you should be looking to shoot on sight from anywhere around the box.

So if Torres is so poor, why don't we see more of Romelu Lukaku?
10. I am a tad biased having seen him play for Anderlecht a couple of times on trips to Brussels, but big powerful Lukaku did more in 15 minutes than Torres did. His bullish run down the right which ended with a shot into the side netting showed his eye for goal. I hope Chelsea don't loan him out in January, he's good enough to be starting week in, week out.

John Terry, racism and Norwich City

Chelsea skipper John Terry

So, are you going to boo John Terry when Chelsea come to Norwich this Saturday?
Before you answer 'yes' or 'sure will' to that, have a think whether the reason you feel duty bound to heckle the England skipper is simply because you think he is a racist.
Following the game between Chelsea and QPR at the end of October, comments allegedly made by Terry to Anton Ferdinand were reported to the powers that be and the result is that he'll face CPS criminal charges in February. As fate would have it, the two teams clash in the FA Cup next week.
The build up to a possible showdown between Terry and Ferdinand will build and build in the media next week. Before that, Carrow Road is in the strange position of hosting Terry's last game before that big Loftus Road fourth round clash.
Should he play next week, he's likely to be in for one hell of an afternoon from the home crowd, just like he was when he played at Tottenham after is was announced that criminal charges would be brought.
Back then Tottenham sent out a warning to fans that any derogatory chants would be punished and Metropolitan Police officers wore headcams to detect perpetrators.
But up in Norfolk there have been no warnings. How will the Norfolk crowd respond to Terry before the game starts and how have the club dealt with racism in the past?

Labels that stick
Google the name John Terry and the next word that suggestively comes up in the search engine box is 'racist'. A combination of his less than glorious off the field history and the fact that football fans don't need much ammunition to give a player both barrels, means he's already been convinced of being a racist by the average fan.
That's the same average fan who thinks Frank Lampard is 'fat' and Graeme Le Saux was 'gay'.

Tottenham's Gareth Bale had the last laugh after
he was abused by the Snakepit at Carrow Road

At Norwich we've given top Premier League players a bit of a special welcome on occasions this season - Gareth Bale was embarrassingly taunted by the educated minds of the Snakepit for 'looking like a chimp' and Connor Wickham was reminded of his previous club in no uncertain terms.
The abuse for Wickham was predictable, the abuse of Bale was maybe just banter. But change the word 'chimp' for 'ape' and direct it at a black player and it's not so funny.
But booing Terry before Saturday's game, such as when his name is read out, could be a case of, pardon the pun, the pot calling the kettle black.
I'd argue that the average Snakepit knucklehead who'll brand Terry a 'w****r' or boo his every touch on Saturday, is or has probably actually been a racist in their own life at some point.

Welcome to Norwich - A White City
The average Norwich fan comes from Norfolk and anyone over the age of 30 has probably had relatively little exposure to black people in the past.
I'm 36 and went to school in the Norfolk countryside in the early 80s. The first black kid I came across was when I was 11 and at my high school, The Hewett, here were maybe five black kids out of 1,500.
Norwich was, to quote the BNP, the 'last white city in England' and that was something that was commonly said when I was at school.
I remember in the late 1980s a robbery at a jewellers in London Street, Norwich. It was carried out by three black men and, such was the shortage of similar-skinned police staff to play the role of the criminals in the reconstruction that white police officers were issued with black boot polish to darken their faces.
This was Norwich less than 25 years ago.
Football wise, when I was born in 1975 a black player still hadn't played for England and I remember around 1982 reading Match magazine and them having an article on Watford's coloured attackers Luther Blissett and John Barnes - the headline to the piece was 'Black Magic'.
That wouldn't happen now, but Norwich were among the first teams to have black players in the late 1970s with the Fashanu brothers, who were actually adopted by a family near Attleborough where I grew up.

Monkeys and bananas
At Carrow Road the first black player I recall seeing apart from Dale Gordon and Louie Donowa was Sunderland's Howard Gayle and I clearly remember hearing monkey chants coming from Canaries fans directed at him.
A couple of years later when Ruel Fox burst onto the scene at Carrow Road, visiting fans would make the 'ooh ooh' noise when he touched the ball and the quick-thinking Barclay would cover it over with a louder "Ru-el, Ru-el".

Shocking: John Barnes kicks away a banana, thrown at him
by an Everton fan in the late 1980s

This was around the same time of the infamous picture of Barnes kicking that banana away in a match at Goodison Park.
In the late 1980s, a racist chant was seen by many as just a bit of fun and of course it was in no way punishable. I remember going through the Barclay turnstile circa 1989 with an unopened can of Coke that was taken off me straight away by a policeman as it was a potential missile. That was not on inside Carrow Road, but making a monkey chant was.
Fast forward 20-odd years and those rules have both been turned on their heads.
Thankfully at Norwich we've generally been free of racist incidents. When Adrian Forbes started playing for Norwich in the same position as Fox, the City fans would chant 'Ru-el, Ru-el' at him in partial homage to Fox, but also because he was, well, also black.

Monkey chants: Ruel Fox was one
City player who had them from visiting
fans

That's not exactly racist, and it was never proven that the spat between Pape Diop and the QPR fans at the end of December 1999 was either when the Senegal man allegedly launched a gobful of spittle at the Rangers fans for some reason or other and never played for the club again.
Perhaps the most alarming incident I've witnessed in supporting Norwich for more than 25 years was just over a year after Diop's swift Carrow Road exit and it came at Hillsborough in the FA Cup clash between City and Sheffield Wednesday in January 2001.
The Owls fielded former City striker Efan Ekoku in their starting line up and, with the game merely a few minutes old, a City fan stood up in front of me and addressed Ekoku, who was standing close to the City fans with the words: "Efan you c**n c**t."
He was thrown out immediately by a couple of South Yorkshire Coppers and rightly so. Since then as, Britain moved into the more politically correct 2000s, incidents like that are rare off the pitch.


The situation now
Norwich has never been a more multi-cultural city than it is now but the attitude of some City fans still borders on the Neanderthal. Last summer, when City signed James Vaughan from Everton, Norwich fan Luke O'Donoughoe was banned from Carrow Road for life after posting Twitter comments about Vaughan.
O'Donoughoe triggered a huge outcry from fellow Twitter users, including media pundit Mark Bright, following a post on May 27 in which he is said to have used the racist word 'n****r'.
At the time club chief executive David McNally said no form of racism is tolerated. He added: 'It's a shame as we are a family club. We were made aware of an alleged racist comment via Twitter and we had to investigate. We have a zero tolerance approach."
This season, though, with the Terry case, the Luis Suarez/ Patrice Evra incident and that of Oldham's on-loan City midfielder Tom Adeyami at Anfield, racism has reared it's ugly head around football.
The majority of City's fans have no racist spleen to vent on the average Saturday at Carrow Road and thankfully we've moved on several generations from the dark days of the late 1980s.
I hope nobody decides to boo Terry on Saturday just because of his reputation. Terry said after City played Chelsea in August that he didn't enjoy playing against Grant Holt and that battle is sure to commence once the game starts. But there's no reason to boo Terry before the game.
I don't particularly like Terry and I'm not trying to defend him, but remember David McNally's words: "City are a family club and have a zero approach to racism."
Norwich are a fantastic club and most of our fans are the sort any club would love to have – just this week we’ve been praised through the roof for an impeccably observed tribute to West Brom’s Jeff Astle at the Hawthorns last Saturday.
By all means get on his case if he does something on the pitch, but let's keep things in perspective. Terry will be dealt with by the authorities and will be punished if there are grounds to do so.
So let's not drag our great club back to the grim days of the 1980s with idiotic booing or derogatory chanting on Saturday. We, as a club, are better than that.