havanatopia

31 minutes ago, Juan Kerr said:

Well according to my work colleagues (I work in Oldbury, W.Mids), Wolverhampton is not in the Black Country! 

Mind you, Oldbury has an 0121 STD code and a Brum postcode, but never call them Brummies.

 

Wolverhampton city centre falls outside of the area traditionally known as the Black Country, although some districts such as Bilston and Heath Town and the Willenhall side of Wolverhampton fall within the Black Country coalfields, leading to confusion as to whether the entire city falls within the region. Therefore, since part of it does, I believe it can be considered inside the Black Country.

5 minutes ago, Septic Peg said:

I have a horrible feeling we are going to be battered today. 

Hoping our boys come through it unscathed.

3-2 to Wolves...

A bunch of contradictions there Pegs!!

FT. Well done City

27 minutes ago, 054123 said:

The most impressive thing is that Forest have turned up and are just playing two banks of 4, relying on the break (and they've had moments) to get anything.

When did teams start to fear playing little old Bristol city so much.

Cheaky rascals playing with just 8. The audacity of it. 

Great first half. Totally dominated.

Show us your gif Packyyyyy

1 minute ago, Midred said:

Waggy 1-0 up against the saggys 

Agent Waggs scored? Good lad

27 minutes ago, EstoniaTallinnRed said:

How did you know that???

Because we do things differently in the UK

19 minutes ago, Midred said:

You wern't meant to share the mega box of chocolates with the children then? 

They do things differently in Tallinn!

Duric not yet under the knife then. Hmmm.

14 minutes ago, finbarr_in_z said:

It certainly doesn't match reality. When I moved to the East Midlands in 1990, it was definitely something in the back of my mind. No internet back then to check reality. Since then all my trips into the city have resulted in disappointment. Just like the football.

If Port Said Red is right i was probably impartial enough not to have used terms such as 'easy on the eye'. I was not painting a Turner in other words. 

2 hours ago, hoxton casual said:

@havanatopia Wasnt Chard the centre if the lace trade? 

Perhaps in these parts but not on a national basis.

Close to Sandown Park near Esher Green in Surrey lies the shortest trunk road in Britain. The A3009 is a mere 170 yards long. As delusions of grandeur go this must be the pinnacle as far as main roads are concerned. The rather aptly named Ebenezer Place, meanwhile, is officially recognised as the shortest road in the world located in Wick, Scotland. The A6011 is less well known for any records but at only 2.1 miles long remains one of the shortest A roads in the UK. 

The A6011 was formerly part of the A52, before that road was moved onto a nearby ring road. The road has three western termini. The A6011 runs along Meadow Lane, Nottingham, from the A60 north of Trent Bridge to a roundabout on the A612. There's also a spur along County Road past Notts County's football ground back to the A60. The mainline turns off Meadow Lane and crosses the Trent over Lady Bay Bridge (where parts of Smiley's People were filmed) and passing the City Ground (the two are the closest pair of grounds in England as many reading this will know). A signalled junction with the A6520 joins us to the former route of the A52. We now pass between Lady Bay and West Bridgford, before becoming dual carriageway. There's a signalled junction to access the National Watersports Centre (at Holme Pierrepont) before the road ends on meeting the A52 at a roundabout in Gamston.

A certain Edgar Purnell Hooley was passing a tar works in 1901 when he noticed a barrel of tar had been spilled and, to reduce the mess, someone had dumped gravel on it. A year later he patented the process and the first road to be tarmacked was the A6011 or, back then, called the Radcliffe Road in West Bridgford. Tarmac was not invented by the Scotsman John Macadam.

Nottingham has given the world a lot of things such as discoveries that led to the Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine or MRI Scanner invented by the recently and sadly departed Sir Peter Mansfield of the University of Nottingham with Paul Lauterbur from the University of Illinois. When Mansfield presented his ideas at a symposium in 1977, he recalls facing a silent audience. Sir Peter wasn't entirely surprised, since his method could theoretically speed up the process of producing images from an hour to a fraction of a second.

Nottingham also gave us Ibuprofen discovered by Dr. Stewart Adams in 1961; Turning on the taps is a fairly everyday thing, but the technology has its origins in Nottingham. Arnold-born Thomas Hawksley was an engineer for the Nottingham Waterworks Company and developed the first high-pressure water supply at Trent Bridge; Okay, in health terms this shouldn't be in here. But Player's began as a small shop in Beast Market Hill in 1860 and went on to become one of Nottingham’s best-known brands. John Player was the first tobacconist to offer pre-packaged tobacco. Before this, smokers would have to buy it loose by weight; It is pretty hard to imagine a time without traffic lights, but after seeing thousands killed on the roads, in 1866 Nottingham High School pupil John Peake Knight set about trying to solve the problem. His system had a revolving gas-powered lantern with a red and a green light with the first one placed near the House of Commons in London; Lace made by machine has played an important role in the industrial life of Nottingham since the 1760s when net was first made on the stocking frame. By the early 1900's Nottingham was the lace capital of the world with one third of the entire population earning their living in the trade, two thirds of them women. The trade may be a shadow of its former self but lace is woven into the fabric of the city; Yes, the Sally or Salvation Army was founded in the East End of London, but it was the brainchild of Sneinton man William Booth. As well as whipping out the instruments to play Christmas songs, the Salvation Army is also one of the biggest distributors of humanitarian aid in the world; HP Source from 1895; The Video Cassette Recorder from 1963 and more bizarely the Flying Bedstead from 1953 which, remarkably, was a precursor to the Hawker Harrier Jump Jet prematurely retired by the Government and looked liked this..

Arguably far more important than all of those things is Nottingham's 'Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem' an 1189 pub purporting to be the oldest in England, not the UK. Perhaps when we visit the City Ground next year a fan or three can pay the place a visit pre or post match and report back to us all.

AND.. TO FOOTBALL.......

....That other passion for all of us on this forum are a few other firsts for Nottingham. We of course know all about County being the oldest club but Forest hold a few interesting statistics of their own. 

Over the Trent from Nottingham based County, in West Bridgford, Nottingham Forest were the first team to wear shin pads and introduce goal nets and crossbars, and a whistle for the referee most of which was down to one man;

Forest chairman Sam Weller Widdowson, who previously played for the team and indeed cricket for Nottinghamshire, introduced the novel idea of defending. He played a 2-3-5 formation, with the 3 in the midfield known as half backs, being largely defensive, rather than a 1-2-7 which most teams used. Earlier in his career Widdowson was credited with those shin pads, having cut them down from cricket pads and tying them to the outside of his football stockings. Initially ridiculed they soon caught on and are, to this day, regulation. When Widdowson later became a referee he officiated the first ever match that used goal nets. Widdowson is perhaps one of the most underrated and uncelebrated innovators of the game. He played once for England in an international against Scotland in 1880 with England going down to a 9 goal thriller 5-4. 

Born in April 1851, sixth of 10 children, Widdowson was named after Sam Weller from The Pickwick Papers, his father’s favourite Dickens character. He was 14 when Forest were formed in 1865, 15 when he became a regular member of the side and 22 when he was made captain in 1873, promptly introducing a new formation that was to become the default in English football at least until Herbert Chapman came up with the WM system in the 1920s. This involved, according to the Evening Post, “one goalkeeper, two backs, three half-backs and five forwards, with himself as sole leader of the attack. In this line-up the second centre forward dropped back to the centre of the half-back line to act as a purveyor of passes down the middle of the field to the attackers.” A 'purveyor' of passes; what an exquisite use of the word in describing a footballer at work on the field of play.

And Widdowson was to be involved in more novelties: in 1878 the FA used a match between his Forest side and Sheffield’s Norfolk FC to trial for the first time an alternative to the referee’s white flag, which officials used to wave when displeased, and then asked for his thoughts on the experiment. Following his positive feedback, the whistle was formally introduced.

“No man did more than this famous all-rounder to bring careful thought and inventive genius to the game,” wrote the Nottingham Evening Post in 1950. “But then everything Sam Weller Widdowson did in sport had the hallmark of class, and the brilliance of a genius.” Nottingham Forest did not see such genius again perhaps until its most successful manager of all time came along, Brian Clough and I wrote a fair few paragraphs of this dour yet erudite man in a previous Match Day.

Mark Warburton presides over the 2017 Forest team which are yet to draw a match this season. Will Forest fancy their chances at Ashton Gate today? We expect a victory but 'there are no easy games' as we all know which we often repeat to ourselves like a mantra, but it is very true especially in this Championship division.

Enjoy the match today.

1 minute ago, richwwtk said:

Unless this is a pisstake, I presume you've never been to Gillingham away?

Fully prepared for a whoosh though

Either that or Wagstaff has fallen way down the football pyramid.

2 hours ago, cityal said:

 Indeed it does - I will try and improve the graphics and repost over the weekend when I have some time 

I am thinking now of some other infographics and charts I could make once in a while - what i would need though is factual data sources to generate them. I guess there are a few books and stuff with some of this data - however I am hesitant to type something like "Bristol Rovers official History" into a browser for fear of getting profiled as a gashead by Google, Amazon etc and linked with titles like "Boob Cricket: Rules and Regualtions", "The Dummies guide to being a racist"  and "Horse punching for beginners" 

On a serious note if anyone knows of any reliable away attendance datasets I could look at debunking the whole "travelling away in massive numbers, its what we do"  bullshit

Don't give all your secrets away Cityal - you might find you get hooked on this stuff and have enough material to write a book on it. I find there is surprisingly little comprehensive and accurate and up to date material out there.

13 hours ago, ZiderEyed said:

I think the only places I would still consider sag only are Horfield and Eastville. The rest is so City dominated its scary.

Lets not forget the barren landscape of old industrial Avonmouth; looking at Red Raw's posting of that brilliant map below we can safely say that those chemical complexes of Avonmouth are Gas lands. Literally and figuratively. They do like living up to their name it seems. 

I notice there is a Zinc Road, The Esso Terminal, a Household waste centre and even Portable Toilets Ltd off St Andrews Road so now we know. Not a single City season ticket holder in that wasteland; its all Gas.

5 hours ago, RedRaw said:

I’ll never tire at digging this visual out from the stadium planning docs of 2009......shows location of season ticket holders around Bristol. Quite clearly we are everywhere including massive numbers in the so say gas areas! Taking into account our season ticket numbers have gone up by about 40% since then, I’d confidently say the city is ours. 

 

Bert Tann... In parts you had me going there until you said 'Embassy in St Helier' ; you lost your credibility then me babber. Amusing read though .

Here we go.. The whole team will be reeled out....

Stuart Sinbad

I really think this discussion about tents could actually be the precursor to the Gas playing in the desert of Jordan. With their quality, strength in depth and clearly talented manager they could even win the title of Jordan's Premier League. After all Al Faisaly seem to win it every year. They must be desperate for somebody else to win it. Go get em Rovers.

And since all the teams in their 12 team Premier league are called Al something we should really christian Rovers from this day forth as Al-Gas. Full of hot air indeed.

Well might as well be me then

As I said.. Dont know what all the fuss was about.

A new dawn...

For the Gas.. Befitting of the 600th page as we look out across the expanse of their new franchised location in Jordan. The new Wadi Rovers.

1 minute ago, cityexile said:

Children, caring about such a thing...

I fully admit I am a softie for flowers.

By coincidence that had crossed my mind as something to mention haha.

We apologise for the interruption to this broadcast. Normal boring discussion will be resumed shortly. For now sit back and enjoy something completely different.

How beautifully soothing. No sign of gas leaks here.

Its a good question in all Carey fairness.