Sene's a Gooner!

We've known for years that 'Chelsea fan' Luis Sandoval is a not-so-secret Spurs fan.  But not since Sol Campbell swapped north London sides has a scandal this big broken.  The Accies Blog can reveal that Joe Sene is an Arsenal follower!  Why else would he follow young Gunners midfielder Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain on Twitter?!

Maybe it's because he prefers to watch European football on Tuesday or Wednesday evenings, leaving Thursdays free for Accies action?  Will Luke Fallon follow Joe to the Emirates?  Only time will tell!

Tonight's match cancelled due to frozen pitch

Apologies on behalf of the weather.

Double Delight

The full list of who won what at this year’s annual awards dinner has now been added to the Roll Of Honour somewhere down on the right-hand side of the blog.  This photo was taken by the lovely fella who won both of the night's big prizes: Player Of The Year (as chosen by the team captain and vice-captain) and Players' Player Of The Year (as voted for by anyone who played in and/or saw at least two-thirds of our matches in 2012).  The happy winner sat staring in wonderment at his pair of plaques, but there can be no doubt that he's a worthy winner!

How not to take a free-kick

Watch this all the way to the end.  Remarkable.

Well this is definitely a first

Popped the Sweden vs England game on to check the score.  There's a fella playing for England right now whose big brother played for the Accies 10 years ago.

Small world, ain’t it?

Possibly the least interesting Accies blog post of all time

I don't often have cause - OK, I never have cause - to peruse the stats of visits to the Accies blog.  But when I do, I'm always baffled as to our two most viewed posts since the blog began back in December 2008.

Why would a random match report by Elbows, albeit with video, attract more than 400 page views?  And I know the news that my little brother was finally recovering from a bad injury was great, but 2nd most popular post?  Wow.

I'll go away now.  I predict that this post will not get anywhere near as many page views, and rightly so...!

Reminds me a lot of that goal I scored against Mott McDonald a couple of weeks ago

Ish.

One for us to practise?

I still like a nice team photo

Didn't quite get my wish for a 20-man squad photo on Saturday, but at least the 14-man squad plus unused substitute Luis were on hand to pose for this fine pic. Take a trip down memory lane by clicking here to see the 2003 and 2010 team photos, and clicking here for last year's equivalent.  Still smiling after all these years!

Anglo-Dutch trophy winning Accies in action

As well as taking part in our successful defence of the Anglo-Dutch trophy, I also managed to squeeze off a quick few frames showing some of the action...

I would NEVER normally link to a Daily Heil web page, but…

This one stars former Accies hero (and current Accies associate member) Charlie Purvey, so I've made an exception!

The drought is over.

30 September 2004-19 October 2012.

RIP, the drought.

Never mind the nine-goal thriller, here are my two favourite photos from Rotterdam 2012: 2 of 2

In due course I fully expect this post to be the most viewed in the short history of this blog.  Your name is Dave.  You've lost a bet, fair and square.  Your team has lost 1-0 to its rival team, and so you must pay your penance.  You must don the shirt of the rival team, Crystal Palace FC.  But first, you feel compelled to defile the shirt in a grotesque manner.  The shirt that was bought for its owner by his thoughtful eldest daughter.  The shirt that will never be the same again.  And nor will anyone who witnesses this photo.  Yikes.

Never mind the nine-goal thriller, here are my two favourite photos from Rotterdam 2012: 1 of 2

What do you do when you're deeply worried about being interfered with by your teammates in the night?  Where do you go?  If you're Tiny Steve Spurdens, you move your bed into a shower cubicle, lock the door and sleep soundly… The weirdo.

Statattack: Summer Special!

My stats usually fall into disrepair over the summer, possibly because of holidays - can't think of any other decent excuse so that must be it.  But a recent text from Dave Rudd wondering how close he is to making his 200th 11-a-side appearance, spurred me into action.  That, and the fact that I was meant to be writing an important letter (remember letters?!) and I was desperate to find something else less daunting to do instead.

So...

Apologies will follow to the Accies who've recently passed personal milestones, but first an apology to the whole club!  Our recent nine-goal thriller vs Sporting Brixton Old Boys was the club's 1,000th recorded match across all forms of the game (5-a-sides, 8-a-sides etc etc etc).  A momentous occasion which I recall I knew was approaching but then, as usual, forgot to mention on the day.  Would've been nice to raise a glass to a millennium of matches!  Oh well.

Thursday's match against Crystal Palace & Dulwich Super Veterans, meanwhile, was our 350th 11-a-side tie.  It was also our 200th draw across all forms of the game – although, and this is where anyone with any sense will stop reading – do bear in mind that any drawn matches in intra-club games (Streatham North End vs Dinamo Bar Pitch, for example) count as TWO drawn games for the club overall in my stats.  Exciting, eh?

Crystal Palace & Dulwich Super Veterans' equalising goal on Thursday also means the club is still 2 games away from our 100th ever 11-a-side victory.  We've won 98 11-a-sides, so all being well, by the time I get back from my forthcoming fortnight's holiday, we'll have reached a century of wins.

So far in 2012 our success rate is pretty similar to last year's decent record, but one stat leapt out at me: we're harder to beat so far this calendar year.  Overall last year we lost 42.86% of our 11-a-side matches; this year so far we've lost 34.62% of our games.  That statistical difference is partly due to the fact that we've already drawn more games this year (6) than we drew in the whole of 2011 (5).

Moving to personal milestones, there have been a couple of big movers in the all-time 11-a-side scorers list so far this year.  The top 3 in that list remain Sam, Simon and Perre, and those 3 are currently the front-runners in a close race for this year's golden boot.  But Joe Sene's remarkable recent goalscoring run – scoring two goals in three successive games – has seen him leap from 9th to 5th in the list, leapfrogging Bobby Rauchenberg, Steve Spurdens and Gary White.  In addition, Neill Robertshaw's 5 goals this year have seen him break into the top 10, and Paul Archer's 7 goals in 2012 see him just outside that top 10 – it's surely only a matter of time before he breaks into that top 10.

Now the apologies: I failed to mention a few weeks ago that Simon Mesner became only the 6th club member to play 200 11-a-sides for the Accies.  Simon's now on 204 appearances.  Good work, Mes!  Dave Rudd, who prompted this statattack, is on 198 11-a-side appearances, and Joe Sene is on 196.  Luke Fallon and Andy Thornes are both on 190, so by the end of 2012 there should be 10 members of the "200 Club".

Apologies and congrats also to Lee Clifford and Tremayne Macdonald, who both recently played their 100th 11-a-side game for Effra Academicals.  Greg Rainey is on 97 appearances, so will shortly hit his century.  And Paul Archer is on 49, one away from a half-century, having made his Accies debut less than two years ago.

That's more than enough of stat – I mean that...

When Ronnie buys a car, this is what we're going to do…

The Cantoria branch of the Chelsea FC Supporter's Club celebrates their Champions League victory

As prompted by Dade Jr in the post below, here are the 'before' and 'after' shots of former Accies Gaffer Ian Holmes on Saturday night.  With only a minority of his friends also cheering for Chelsea on the night, the Final was fairly painful viewing for the Gaffer, although I enjoyed successfully predicting that Drogba would score a headed goal from the corner, and seemingly the entire watching world knew that Ivica Olic was going to miss his penalty in the shootout.  Anyway, here's Ian as Didier Drogba’s spot-kick run-up was in progress:

And here he is after Drogba had put it in the back of the net (have you ever seen a more relieved man?):

Cue cava all round!

John Terry - Movie Career...

Congratulations to all of the Accies' Chelsea fans - from memory, Neill Robertshaw, Luis Sandoval and Ian Holmes!

Hopefully we will soon have two cracking pics of Ian Holmes before and after Drogba's penalty...

Good Luck

In Spain guys!

On 16 March 1872…

…this week's oppo won the first ever FA Cup final.  Fact.

There have been some excellent reasons for not attending Accies games over the years…

…but "awaiting delivery of a gazebo" is my favourite ever.  Good work, Tremayne.

Score a goal like this for the Accies tomorrow night, I'll pay your club subs for a year!

Simply mind boggling!

One of the many reasons I like our boss Thorny is that so far, he's never done this to any of his players…

Warming up nicely for Euro 2012

Nice to see my son's school keeping up a proud traditional of English football:

"our football team took part in the local schools’ tournament on Thursday afternoon and played very well, reaching the semi-finals only to lose on penalties"


No word yet on whether the semi-final opponents were German.

Tonight's match vs Wessex Rangers is OFF

The match has been cancelled due to a waterlogged pitch.  I will endeavour to arrange another date for a game against Wessex Rangers.

Speaking of Brazilians…

Not sure how the race for the Most Goal Assists In A Calendar Year award is going, but here's some food for thought:

I'm not happy with my Brazilian football name :-(

Just call me Raldo

http://www.midfielddynamo.com/fancythat/yourbrazilian.htm

Click on here to find your Brazilian football name

Video galore!

Catch some old Accies action with three games from last year and all the games from March and one from April this year on my youtube site.

Enjoy.

Barbie Moore?

Blatant foul throw 5 seconds in. BLATANT.

Left? Right? Left!

Might I draw your attention to paragraph 6?

Unmissable!

CALLING ALL ACCIES!!!!!!

Saturday 24th March 2012

THE HOPE PUBLIC HOUSE
49 NORWOOD HIGH STREET

WEST NORWOOD

SE27

'ACCIES SPRING FAMILY SOCIAL!'

BBQ - FACE PAINTING (Kids) - Wii GAMES - LIVE FOOTBALL - LATE NITE DISCO and of course BEER!!!!!!!!!

Bring the family and enjoy the fun, tell all your friends, the first Accies 'event' of the year is not to be missed.

(Several players in the local area, may be available to put players and families up for the night if required, so ask around and let's have a good one)

For further info, contact Neill.