Invision Power Board: Catching Up - Invision Power Board

I've given up on my Cambridge First Blog. The technology was stupidly clunky and posting became almost impossible. I wrote this months ago, so it's hardly fresh out of the oven...


I don’t think I’ve experienced such a football-free fortnight as I have just done for many years. I spent the two weeks immediately before Christmas on the east coast of the United States, thus missing just two games, a 2-2 draw and a nice little 2-0 win against the Supermariners of Swindon. Thanks to our tireless webmaster, the highlights were soon up on the official site and I was able to enjoy the sight of both our main strikers knocking one in each apiece. But that was that. Nothing else, not a ball kicked in anger passed my eyes.

Admittedly, the US Britkick Soccer Ball League had reached its conclusion in November, so domestically there was nothing on offer. But for all the talk I keep hearing about soccer (and in the US context there’s no point in talking about football because that only means the grid iron game) being fabulously popular, I could find precious little evidence of this on my travels. Televised winter sports, for your average Joe, is football, ice hockey, basketball and, believe it or not, wrestling/cage fighting/mixed martial arts. I’m sure soccer is around on one of their hundreds of channels but in my fortnight of dedicated TV watching, I saw not one second dedicated to the Premier League or any of the other European competitions.

Being a journalist with fanatical forensic skills, I asked a couple of lads I met about their views on soccer. Beckham and Skeletor? They barely registered on their sporting Richter scale. Favourite US teams? None. Favourite English teams? Maybe Man United. Sigh. Did they know any English players? Nah. The sports’ pages carried the football results and that was that.

When I returned to England, I’d not missed much football and certainly very little Lilywhite action. And where there is a vacuum, something has to fill it. In this case it was some lively debate about where City will be playing next season. Ever since 2006, the same conversation takes place: Can City squeeze out one more season at Milton Road? Can a deal be struck? And since the answer has always been Yes, there has developed an underlying belief among the faithful that somehow a deal will always be brokered, come what may.

And so it came to pass that on the very last day of the year, a statement from the board was issued saying that planning permission to develop the ground will soon appear but that a further year at Milton Road might be possible. If not, then it’s off to Newmarket to prepare the Jockeys’ ground for our arrival. This is no trivial operation either in terms of planning or finance but the board assure us that it’s entirely possible to get planning permissions in place and building works completed.

So in short: City are looking to extend their stay at Milton Road and are putting all the right plans in place to move to Newmarket. And there in the shell of a nut you have the challenges that face the average Lilywhite director. Get an extra year at Milton Road – which presumably comes at a financial cost – and bring short-term cheer to the supporters or set about moving down the road, something that is unlikely to put a spring in the step of many loyal Lilywhites. Staying put is a nice short-term option but in some respects feels like being kept alive on a ventilator. There’s an unreality to the situation, a drawing out of the inevitable. It’s hard to plan for the future when you know the axe will eventually fall, yet at the same time, the comfort and familiarity of Milton Road is too much to resist.

Like in all things, I hold a view. I’d like to be energised and excited by the board’s long term plan: we’re here for a year, Newmarket for two and then we’re off to…And we’ll need to raise this much money and you can help by…

I’d hate to try to direct CCFC right now – it appears to be a minefield of tricky legalities and unknowns that would try and test the skills and patience anyone, let alone people doing the job for the love of it. But direction and engagement is what the fans need and I suspect that will be easier to achieve while we’re around Milton Road over the next four months than it will be when we’re off on our travels.