Lynn owner on management, Stortford fixture and autograph hunting

The form book over the last six games has Darlington in second place and us in third. League leaders Tamworth find themselves in seventh place whilst big spenders Scunthorpe are in 13th.

Some of you may be wondering why Lynn have hit form and what happened at the start of the season? The answer is four words: Adam Lakeland and Sam Walker. 

Sam Walker has added the stability and the voice on the pitch and has backed up Adam off it and the manager himself has sorted out the fitness, the shape of the side and made sure that we take points from games. 

We all like to see great football, but in all my years of watching the game I have never seen a bonus point awarded for style. Adam has worked out what he needed to do, and the players have bought into what he is doing. 

Linnets keeper Paul Jones (Image: Ian Burt)

I must give one mention to Paul Jones, who has been outstanding between the sticks; last Saturday with Lynn 1-0 up away at Blyth and the hosts turning on the pressure he made a tremendous save from a goalbound header and he has made several other saves this season that he had no right to make at all. In essence the team is playing as a team.

Filling in the blank

We were due to play Bishop's Stortford on Tuesday and Rushall Olympic at home today and whilst the Rushall game is most certainly going ahead, the trip to Bishop's Stortford has been switched to next Tuesday as their ground was under water earlier in the week.

Some of you may be surprised that the Stortford fixture has been arranged so hastily, but next week was being kept clear as England C are playing Wales C in Wales. Although there are National League North and South players in the squads, there are none from King’s Lynn or Bishop's Stortford so the league gave dispensation for the match to be played next week. 

In truth there are very few dates left. The league like the final week of the season to be kept free from fixtures if possible and with teams playing on Good Friday and Easter Monday that week is all that is left. 

If there are future postponements after that date, the season is never extended, you simply must play the games in whatever time is left, so it is very conceivable that a team could be made to play Saturday, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday – imagine if they were all away from home?

Autograph hunting

My eldest son, Luka, has gone a little retro. Luka and his friends have been writing to clubs up and down the land (and across Europe) asking for autographs of their favourite players. Luka was pretty particular that we send an A4 hard backed envelope, so any autographs (young boys dream big) were not damaged, which means putting our A4 hard backed envelope into a large A4 jiffy envelope. The postage costs were extraordinary. The first two that we sent out were to Barcelona (I told you that young boys dream big) and Burnley as Luka wanted David Fofana’s autograph - he's on loan from Chelsea.

There was no point sending a stamped addressed envelope to Barcelona as the Spanish postal system would not recognize our King’s head, so instead, he sent a £5 note (although quite what use that would be to Barcelona remains to be seen) and a well-written letter.  Burnley also got £5 but were sent an unstamped hard backed envelope.

Aston Villa, Newcastle, Crystal Palace, Manchester City and Chelsea were also chosen as worthy recipients of Luka’s letters and were all sent stamped addressed A4 hard backed envelopes.

The results of this experiment were most interesting from my perspective. None of the clubs sent back real autographs - they were all printed efforts. Barcelona was the first to respond - they returned the £5 and sent three player postcards with a nice letter. Newcastle sent a very nice A4 sheet with pen pics of every player and printed autographs. Aston Villa sent four postcards in a nice folder. Manchester City sent an Erling Harland postcard (which was the item requested) while Crystal Palace sent a team group postcard and a programme from their home fixture against Chelsea which was received with great vigour as Luka is Chelsea through and through when he is not cheering on King’s Lynn.

Burnley sent back the £5 but did not put a stamp on the envelope that he sent, so I had to pay the Royal Mail £5 anyway to open it and inside was a letter that stated that Burnley gave items to charities but not to small boys; but he could, if he wish, buy something from their online store. 

Chelsea did not bother to respond at all and were by far the biggest disappointment.

Whilst the value of these items is negligible, to Luka they mean everything, and all have been stored neatly away in a box specifically acquired for this purpose.

I remember many years ago a friend bought me a birthday card, sent it to Chelsea and every player signed it – so times have clearly changed at the bridge. 

King’s Lynn always try and respond to every request as to my mind fans are the lifeblood of clubs. Whilst many clubs would rather have high paying corporate season tickets, once they lose the passion in the stadium they lose the very essence of the club. What the club ends up with are people watching the game rather than fans being part of the team.  

Next week, we play champions-elect Tamworth, live on TV at 12.30pm, and after the game, we are buying every adult and concession attending the game half a pint or allowing them to put the cash value of the half pint towards a soft drink or another drink of their choice. Football clubs need to look after their fans as without them the game would not be worth playing.