The Shed

An early (6pm) kick off for the shed this week. Meant that the fans were unable to stay in the pubs for long (watching the merseyside derby).
Final score was 1-1, but a terribly nervous affair against the Mach 3s. It was far from being a clean shave for the Shed.
Most of the pressure came from Shed, with Simpson getting shots on target, and off target. In fact most outfield players tested the oppos goal keeper, but mainly firing straight at him, or once in a while at the posts. (Hunt managed to keep the ball within the field of play, or rather, he didn't send any into orbit...)
Despite this pressure the Machs went a goal ahead through possibly the worst finish anyone had ever witnessed. Ths shot was scuffed, and would have been easily blocked by Hussey. But in scuffing the ball, it turned into a bounced lob that left Hussey in no mans land.
Salvation for Shed came from a Simpson effort in the 2nd half (shooting away from the home fans).
A disappointing dropped point. This means that all the remaining games are vital to win the premiership.

Lib Dem regional conference

Hectic day at the regional conference...
Selly Oak & Edgbaston were technically the "hosting" local party as the conference was at the University of Birmingham. So tried to make it onto conference to help signpost. But foiled by central trains!
The agenda was a fluid arrangement, and Simon Hughes, party president, popped in to conference while in transit between Yardley, Hodge Hill and Shrewsbury.
In the meantime I had to dash away and print off 2.5k of leaflets as our Riso couldn't handle the quantity of black on the leaflet in question. All the while I kept my camera in one hand to capture any moments or speeches.
Finally, I missed out on lunch as I was running a training/drop-in session on EARS (the Lib Dems voting intentions database, used to record canvas information).

Managed to lie in today. Although not for long, as there were 100+ survey returns to analyse, and another leaflet to write.

Can't wait until the Easter weekend......

End of Office Academical's season

The final league table will record that we came second to Shackleton A. And to be fair, they were the better side in our penultimate match, which we lost 2-0, our only loss of the season.

This meant that the final game had to be won, and that Shackleton lost their game.
We went about the business in the usual fashion, welcoming AK Simpson back from his Italian and Spanish trials (or honeymoon...). Simpson did the business in the first 8 secs with a rapid score.
We were then able to keep MAD FC on the back foot, but were only able to get one more goal before half time.
The second half was more nervous, and we were unfortunate to concede. The defence went on a mission, and left Blunt exposed between the posts. Although at the time he was far from being between, or even infront of the posts!
The academicals held on for the rest of the 2nd half and managed to record our a won 8, lost 1 record, with a goal difference in the high 30s.

Little did we know that Shack's opponents hadn't turned up, and they were awarded a walk over. If we'd known that then the last game didn't matter.

Harrogate

To Harrogate for the Lib Dem spring conference.
Alex Folkes and I were taking photos on behalf of the party, covering the main speeches on the conference podium, and CK's photo ops.
Apparently my arse/back of head were all over the Saturday 6pm BBC news...This was while CK was doing a really hectic walkabout in Harrogate town centre. There was an attempt to disrupt it from a handful of Leeds Labour students with their "Soft on Yobs" banners. Unfortunately it backfired a little when one of their crew were pulled out by the local police and warned with a public order offence.
Got some good take from the photo op, and hopefully will get a frontpage spread in LibDem News.

Also, had my photo taken for the manifesto (large group shot with CK at front), during the setup I was subbing for CK, although taller, and less ginger :)

Finally, on Sunday, bumped into someone from the the Corby local party! I hope to be their PPC at the General Election, its the area I grew up in and still visit regularly. The only problem is that I haven't been formally selected yet, but there are already several rumours about my candidature, all have an element of truth in them (living in the WMidlands), but other bits quite wide of the mark (its not my dad standing!) But most of the rumours appear to be circulating around the local tories...

Shed

Archetypal travelling fan: 4.5hrs travelling for 26mins of football. Went straight from New St, down to Bournbrook pitches to watch the Shed. First few minutes didn't look too good, until their fans started laying into them a bit.
Shed are turning into a bit of an "Arsenal", grinding out yet another 1-0 win (3 of the last 4 games have been won by this scoreline). Chris Hunt the scorer.

Office Academicals

We played a bit of an unknown quantity today, most of the league teams we've played at least once before, if not more often (Golden Codgers and MAD FC...).
Anyway, we beat Old Skool 8-1, with a hatrick each from Binder and Bowen. I got subbed on for Karl after hitting his third goal. He was not a happy chappy!
Next week is Shackleton A, their record is w6 d1 l0, to the OAs won 7. So all to play for.