A KNIGHTS TALE (The Pantomime)
The ruler of the kingdom of Charlton, King Murray turned to his advisor Varney and said “It is a good deed we do our kingdom casting away the Scary Eyed dragon from our castle of the Valley”. “Indeed my liege, but is it not to the satisfaction of the Orange one’s Palace kingdom”
The king pondered for a minute, “probably but his paper column has become mundane and needed freshening” “I’m sure this will help liven it up to make a better humorous read for our subjects”.
Well done sire hadn’t thought of that, but what are we to do now that we are bottom of the Premiership with no one to lead our team of fairies and zombies?
We must promote from our backroom in order to keep the secret of the Da Vinci code of transfer dealings safe, as always within the confines of the Valley, lest our subjects and the media find out. “Yes” replied the advisor, “we do not want a repeat of the worst kept secret, when the scary eyed dragon was taken from the Orange one’s kingdom. It was announced from the Sky’s before we could tell our subjects, thus enabling the messenger from the Orange one to intervene.
“Of course I remember it” said the King, the Messenger cried ‘Scary Eyed you should be up north” “Oh No I shouldn’t” “Oh Yes you should” “Ooohh No I shouldn’t. What fun, what exciting times we have been having since Sir Galahad Curbs went to the crusades.
“My liege all of our Serfs departed to the land of Whammers” informed advisor Varney. The King was perplexed only for a second “didn’t the court jester return to the castle of the Valley recently”. “Indeed sire he has been watching over the team from the shadows of the Scary Eyed dragon. Then he shall be our new head coach announced the King. “He is not a knight Sire” exclaimed the Advisor. “Then I shall knight him” replied the King. “Sire has he managed before”? He has managed 5 and 60 plebs if not more I’m sure, accountants, secretary’, post boys and tea ladies, in fact he is renowned for his achievements at the court of F.A..
The court jester was beckoned to the King. “What credentials do you bring from your time away Jester” asked the King. “I wrote the coaching book of FA and have amassed many badges Sire”.
My liege do you want me to sing a song? Not now jester, tell me what is your name? It’s Les Reed sire. The king not quite hearing repeated Lou Reed ay well, arise Sir Lou Reed defender of the FA coaching manual.
The deed was done. Sir Lou took his to team to Reading and returned to inform the King and his loyal subjects our defeat was due to a lack of fitness. On remembering he had been involved in the teams training from the shadows he remedied this anomaly in his next conference. Everton came to the castle of the Valley, less their potent goal scorers and a wondrous last 20 minutes of football retrieved a defeat in to a draw. Sir Lou exclaimed our team are beginning to believe they can get the pumpkin down and play and we can we can all go to the relegation ball. The loyal subjects were further impressed with his next pearl of wisdom. We just need to keep doing the good things and stop doing the bad.
With 20 mins of nice football behind them Sir Lou was sure that his fairies would excel within the Sheffield wall and decided to play all those available. Unbeknown to him though behind the Bramall Lane barricades were lurking horrible nasty Orcs in stripy shirts waiting to kick anything that moved and if it didn’t move they would kick it to make it move. How could they treat us in this way when we have come to be so nice? What shall I tell the King and his subjects he thought? I know I’ll just tell them they beat us because they were better than us. After all surely our subjects would only have wanted us to use our nicey nice approach and have to understand we were against a mighty newly promoted team from the heights of the Championship. Had we battled for a draw or more they would think Sir Galahad had returned.
Don’t worry loyal subjects everything is still rosy in the Valley garden, if Mary can be contrary in hers so can we. Sir Lou and his team chatted after this upsetting trip and assured everyone all is ok we have all had a good conversation about it which is a positive.
Only 3 days passed and Sir Lou’s former pupil Sir Hughes arrives reminiscing of the Valley knight’s teachings of coaching FA. The injury hit armies of Blackburn appear, but seemingly disinterested. Sir Lou feeling a change might do the trick encompassed some of his own nastiest and dropped some of his fairies. This will flummox the subjects who interfere with their wanting of 4-5-1 or 4-4-2, I will go for a diamond and after huffing and puffing for 90 mins El Cid ….. err sorry El Kak strode up and scored past the badly placed barricade. The subjects rejoiced in this moment of happiness whilst many chose to ignore the possibility of Blackburn joining the people of Charlton at the relegation ball.
Enjoying his moment of glory with new found admiration from the followers of the Valley Sir Lou announced that he had consulted many knights from the order of knight’s templar, including Sir Alex
Sir Lou rembered that Sir Alex told him the way to play against the Spuds is to play open attacking football and if they score 4 you score 5. Unfortunately Sir Lou not realising his team lacked a Giggs; Rooney Ronaldo etc thought no problem we can do that. After all didn’t his senior zombies say that they prefer playing against football teams rather than the nasties.
After the game Sir Lou looked perplexed then consoled himself well I seem to remember Sir Alex mentioning 5 can’t quite think what the other bit was now, still got half of it right and we did entertain everybody I am sure I saw people in white jumping with joy, errr well not to worry I will make another announcement to re energise the Valley following.
Sir Lou declared to the people of the kingdom of Charlton “"I did think in the first 20-25 minutes etc…. “ If only footy was only 20 mins in duration. Well it is in never never land!.
“We can take a positive out of this and that is the team and I had a heart-to-heart really constructive chat and now we know where we have to go from here”. As loyal subjects we are all gratified to hear this piece of encouraging news and, BEHIND YOU what said the King and his court BEHIND YOU .. what! RELEGATION IT’S BEHIND YOU.
So one thing is for sure the pantomime season is now in full swing its 5 star.
For all the sakes of the people in the kingdom of Charlton lets hope this pantomime season ends before the traditional back end of January and with a happy ending.
With the passing of more spineless performances since written all is looking doomed.
Back to the training ground after another nice chat following each debacle.
In to battle, the Queen , England & St George and the Addicks cried Sir Lou over a nice cup of tea.
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