Here We Go Again...

Well, it's almost 10pm the night before the first game of the season and after making approximately 4.8 billion phone calls, I've still only got 10 players. It may be academic anyway, considering the downpour in progress right now. I've also learned that next week's game against the Golden Ball has been cancelled. Ho hum.

Still, I managed to get down to Bootham Park this afternoon before the heavens opened and got some good work in on the square. I gave it a mowing and found the permanent markers that show where the pitches start and finish. Every winter these markers (small lengths of pipe set vertically into the ground) get covered over by soil and grass. Consequently, every spring we have to find them again.

For years finding the markers was like a particularly irritating pagan ritual. Pete Trout would wander about the square saying things like "It's 6ft from here, or is it 4ft?" and "Has anybody seen my phone?", while the rest of us poked the turf furiously with screwdrivers in the forlorn hope we might hit something useful. After about a hundred years of this, I hit upon the ruse of writing down the measurements and drawing up a rudimentary map. This has greatly improved the process, and slightly reduced the frequency of people calling Pete Trout a stupid bugger.

Not content with having an idea once, this year I've refined it yet further by the addition of a tape measure that's actually long enough for the job (100ft). Traditionalists will be reassured to hear that the process still involves large amounts of stabbing the ground and swearing.