h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

League Cup 2006 and they must have won the odd football league division X championship on the occasion - they have been promoted every now and then after all?

I'm not saying they're Manchester Utd - it's just I would imagine the 80ish odd teams below them - plus the hundreds of non-league clubs would find their current situation a strange definition of rubbish.

Ah, my bad, they lost the 2006 final. For some reason my memory had them winning it.

Wigan have never been relegated from the top flight. Ever. Not many sides that have been (or rather, are) in the Premiership can say that.

Wigan are overachievers and a football club in the top flight in spite of the local preference for egg chasing. Staying up as long as they have and punching about their weight season after season is really quite some achievement. Pretty much every year I expect them to go down, and so far, they haven't.

On the subject of football in Cornwall, there's an interesting article here that perhaps explains the lack of a league club so far, and lack of prospects for the future.....

http://thetwounfortunates.com/geographies-of-football-will-cornwall-ever-host-a-football-league-club/

Good article

I've followed Truro's progress over the last couple of seasons and wondered how they managed it. Clearly, they won't get much further without a Russian oligarch in charge, not to mention a good accountant.

But why would a Cornish fan want to watch professional football anyway? There's just as much excitement (if not atmosphere) in the non-league, it's cheaper to watch, and there's always a cup run to make you dream.

>>But why would a Cornish fan want to watch professional football anyway?

Watching it is one thing, benefiting from the ££££'s that it attracts is another. For example, promotion to the Premiership is reckoned to be worth around £90million.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/sport/football/premier-league-promotion-prize-is-worth-90-million-6472109.html

Yeah, to the club. But not to the local economy and DEFINITELY not to the fan.

Case in point - when Leeds played away at Port Vale a few years back, we got talking to a landlord in Stoke (Stoke being near to Port Vale, and Stoke City having been promoted to the Premiership). Promotion had damn near killed his business.

Instead of having a guaranteed income on a Saturday afternoon, more and more matches were being played on Monday nights, Sunday lunchtimes and whatnot.

And of course, when travelling masses from the Manc and Mersey clubs came into town, the local police would insist on all the pubs being shut in case the 2008 magically became 1987 and football hooliganism became a national security issue.

But, just because his pub was going under didn't mean he couldn't enjoy the match, did it?

Oh. No. It did. Because ticket prices went through the roof.

The ££££ that promotion to the Premiership attracts is of NO benefit to football fans. Except those that only want to watch some Iberian show-pony on Sky Sports 2 on a Thursday evening.

Apparently Man City are the best value for money in England http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-18115990

Wigan are second best value

I take it Leeds are worst?

a) Isn't Gillingham in Kent?

b) Hull is in Yorkshire, not Lincolnshire.

c) Yes, Leeds are worst. At everything.

B

And Doncaster is also in Yorkshire. And Lincoln and Grimsby are not currently league clubs.

B

Sorry 603, it only ranks Prem teams. Maybe in 2 years time they could be the worst value. From my experience of the Championship Forest are far worse value for money though, their ticket prices take the p*ss.

That's a great article about Cornish football and I think the killer would be the distances: trips to York, Fleetwood or Accrington would mean round-trips of 12-15 hours, if not more. Even Plymouth Argyle would be a 3/4 hour trip for some. For one of the poorest counties in the UK, that's a huge ask for fans.

I'll always remember when I went to meet friends in Worcester for a meet-up. I got texts from them all saying they were just waking up and by that point I'd been travelling for more than two hours and was only just entering Devon. Cornwall is a *long* way away.

Spare a thought for Argyle fans on away trips. I have done both Carlisle and Hartlepool on the flipping coach.

It is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong trip and much as I love Argyle I would never do it again.

FB

Quite right B, sorry I should have engaged the brain before cutting and pasting from whatever wiki article I found that list

Of course Hull is in Humberside (ex-South Yorks!)

I didn't know Doncaster was outside Lincs though (or what it was in to be fair).

Be fair though FB every hour an Argyle fan spends on the bus north takes them forward 10 years

Yak yak yak!

And we are of course that only club in the League who can sing "You Dirty Norther B**tards" to every other team!

Is most amusing when Brighton come to town!

FB

At the risk of sidetracking all this laddish banter, I had an interesting Doncaster-related conversation not so far back on the subject of postcodes, and the fact that Cleethorpes - which is fully 50 miles from Doncaster - has a DN postcode. Cleethorpes, of course, being once again back in good old Lincolnshire, home of Poacher cheese, pork chine, and Polish immigrant farm labourers.

Anyway, I imagine there'd have been a few more remote postcodes in the highlands of Scotland and some offshore islands (the Scillies have a Truro postcode...), but is there another more extreme postcoding example in mainland England?

I've got a few strange inclusions on my sales territory. I have a few places in Cumbria with an LA postcode, places like Millom, Barrow & Kendal.

Tamworth having a CV postcode always seemed a bit odd to me, it being closer to Birmingham and Wolverhampton than Coventry.

The bit of Tamworth I go to has a B postcode