Movers and shakers tonight?

[recordmeister]

It may well be the lack of a message board such as this back in the day, but I can't remember many people complaining about us being a family club when rix was appointed. But I may well be wrong about that...

[Radley Rambler]

It may well be the lack of a message board such as this back in the day, but I can't remember many people complaining about us being a family club when rix was appointed. But I may well be wrong about that...

Joel - I remember a lot of complaints at the time, as you say I think it was a bit pre-t'internet and so it wasn't as obvious and instant as today's gripes.

[Ancient Colin]

Pre-internet??? It was only 2004! This Board started in 2006, the Mzuri board must have run for at least two years before that, if not substantially more and when was Memorox? Don't know if Terry lurks, but I am sure he'll have the old files. Plus there were other basic boards around then, too. Was there anything in the printed fanzines, too? Someone must have an archive. I have an old copy of an article I wrote for Rageon in 2001 which cites six Oxford websites most of which had at least some sort of primitive forum.

[Kernow Yellow]

Do I go and boo LM or hope others will do it for me?

You are seriously wondering whether the best thing you can do as an OUFC fan at the moment is to attend games with the pre-meditated purpose of giving abuse to one of our players? Or failing that you hope that others will do it 'for you' while you stay away? Despite the fact that he will be given horrible abuse by every set of opposition fans, reminding him constantly of his crime? A crime for which, let us not forget, he has finished the punishment that our democratic society deemed necessary and suitable. And despite the fact that he will be trying as hard as he possibly can to contribute to success for our football club?

What a great OUFC fan you are. Really, have a word with yourself.

[Radley Rambler]

Pre-internet??? It was only 2004! This Board started in 2006, the Mzuri board must have run for at least two years before that, if not substantially more and when was Memorox? Don't know if Terry lurks, but I am sure he'll have the old files. Plus there were other basic boards around then, too. Was there anything in the printed fanzines, too? Someone must have an archive. I have an old copy of an article I wrote for Rageon in 2001 which cites six Oxford websites most of which had at least some sort of primitive forum.

Fair enough oh Ancient one - I'll rephrase that to 'pre-lots of people contributing to Internet fora in an instantaneous fashion and to a substantial degree'. I just remember that there was quite an outcry at the time. In fact, didn't his appointment coincide with OUFC setting up an under-16s Girls football team which gave the headline writers something to write about!

[Dr Bob]

Do I go and boo LM or hope others will do it for me?

You are seriously wondering whether the best thing you can do as an OUFC fan at the moment is to attend games with the pre-meditated purpose of giving abuse to one of our players? Or failing that you hope that others will do it 'for you' while you stay away? Despite the fact that he will be given horrible abuse by every set of opposition fans, reminding him constantly of his crime? A crime for which, let us not forget, he has finished the punishment that our democratic society deemed necessary and suitable. And despite the fact that he will be trying as hard as he possibly can to contribute to success for our football club?

What a great OUFC fan you are. Really, have a word with yourself.

Please read the whole piece - and, if you are capable, try to understand it - before coming out with shit like this.

[slappy]

My final (hopefully) thoughts on this matter, after Luke McCormick's first game for us.

LM has been punished by the due legal process, and has done his time. Presumably his only career is football, and if he can cope with the inevitable booing he will get for the rest of time, then that is his choice.

After the club kept Chapman signed on, I don't think the club can differentiate too much between two terrible preventable accidents. I felt the club dealt with Chapman well by only really referring to the incident perhaps three times, (ie pre-trial, sentence, and return). After that it is all down to football, and Chapman has perhaps featured rather less in the programme / interviews than would be expected for other players. Chapman has also kept his head down off the pitch, with no twitter / public profile telling us what he is up to every day of the week, which perhaps helps too.

Hopefully the club will take a similar approach with LM, having issued the press release (and I guess it may be elaborated at the fans forum), but the past shows that once Lenagan has made his position clear, he will not repeat himself.

A lot seems to be made of &quotthink of the family&quot, but I doubt a single Oxford United fan knows the family, and the family probably have no interest at all in Oxford United.

Does it damage the club's PR and &quotfamily&quot image? Well, it makes the headlines for one weekend, but after that, I think the furore will lessen.

Will fans boycott the club? Some may, but I think most parents will be able to explain to their children what has happened, why it was wrong, and why LM is playing again.

Was the financial aspect significant? Getting a Championship/ League 1 pedigree keeper on the cheap would normally be good news, but sadly finances dictate. The alternative presumably either Billy Turley, a young keeper from the Championship, Wayne Brown who seems to have been relegated to back-up, or the inexperienced Max Crocombe, who in all probability will be off with the All Whites for a month in March.

Interesting to see on Shrimperzone, they also had pretty much the same debate on whether he should play, and what their fans' treatment of him would be. This also caused a commotion in their home stand during the game.

So how was LM treated during the game?
By Southend fans, all I really heard was a round of booing whenever he got the ball.
The Oxford fans basically ignored LM - I didn't notice any cheers for him, nor boos (though the seaside thread suggests there were some boos). When the Southend fans booed him, we responded with chants supporting the team, but I did note &quothe's one of us&quot at one point. I don't think there is much more we can do really, he is here now, so we may as well cheer on the team, even if people aren't happy about one individual player. Also he put in a reasonably good performance in goal, with not a lot to do.

[Kernow Yellow]

Do I go and boo LM or hope others will do it for me?

You are seriously wondering whether the best thing you can do as an OUFC fan at the moment is to attend games with the pre-meditated purpose of giving abuse to one of our players? Or failing that you hope that others will do it 'for you' while you stay away? Despite the fact that he will be given horrible abuse by every set of opposition fans, reminding him constantly of his crime? A crime for which, let us not forget, he has finished the punishment that our democratic society deemed necessary and suitable. And despite the fact that he will be trying as hard as he possibly can to contribute to success for our football club?

What a great OUFC fan you are. Really, have a word with yourself.

Please read the whole piece - and, if you are capable, try to understand it - before coming out with shit like this.

I did read it. I quoted only this section of your post because it is the part I take issue with. I understand people have different opinions on this signing. I understand your reasoning for not liking the decision, even if I do not agree with it (thanks for questioning my 'capability' to do this, though). And yes, I understand that you are 'pondering how to respond', and that this is not what you necessarily intend to do. I do not, however, understand why you consider that a possible response to it is for you to go and boo OUFC players, or worse still, expect someone else to do it 'for you' [your words].

I just don't see how that could possibly help any part of the situation. At all.

[Mooro]

One day, if I had the time, money and resources, I would love to undertake a proper investigation into the drink/drive laws and the real effects of alcohol on people and their driving. By that I don’t mean ‘ooh look the bloke who has had 10 pints isn’t driving as well as the one who hasn’t’ type thing, but a real in depth look at the multitude of secondary factors that affect the blood/alcohol rate and people’s ability to drive (and indeed how closely those two are in fact related – can someone over the limit be in a safer state to drive than another under?)
Things like: quantity of alcohol consumed (of course) concentration of consumption types of drink and effects of mixing time since first drink, time since last drink food consumed before/during/after drinking exercise &amp/or sleep before/after drinking time of day/evening/night cumulative consumption over successive days size/weight/gender/age of drinker and many others.

Most of us have an idea of where the limit sits in terms of when you’ve just finished drinking, but equally I would imagine very few have any real handle on when it becomes safe to drive after having drunk earlier in the day, or more commonly, the previous evening. For all the warnings about risking being caught doing so, in the end people are left having to just guess when it actually becomes safe!

Consider an example of a standard weekend for thousands of young people across the country and familiar to many reading this either now or in the past. A young lad finishes work on a Friday, heads into town with his mates for a session, returning home in the early hours in a taxi. He gets up the next morning, has a coffee and some toast, jumps in the car, picks up his mates and drives to watch an away game a couple of hours up the motorway. A couple of pints before the game and a burger at half time, then it’s back in the car home before a couple of hours in the local next door catching up with his mates about the game, and a bag of chips on the walk home. Next day, it’s up with another coffee and drive over to the local park to play for his pub team. Ninety minutes charging around then a quick celebratory pint in the pub, plus one of a round of drinks from the hat-trick hero and drive home to put his feet up and watch the Sky game at 4pm.
Now, what proportion of that weekend will he technically be over the limit, and how much of that time when he was, will he have been driving? Short of knowing not to drive home Friday night, he probably will have no idea and more importantly no real way of finding out!

Likewise, you can extend this to the case of McCulloch. We know that he drank heavily at a wedding, received news around 1-2am that concerned his girlfriend, slept for a couple of hours then got in his car and had been driving for about an hour before the incident occurred. Reports are that he was around double the legal limit when tested afterwards, the equivalent of having recently consumed say 3-4 pints.
Again, without for a second trying to justify or excuse what he did, when you begin to think about the details, it becomes less clear-cut than many have been taking it. By that I mean, had he jumped into the car straight away he would have been well over the limit, but by taking a couple of hours sleep first, that level would have subsided to some extent, and it would also probably have meant he FELT less ‘drunk’ and probably more ‘with it’ when he took the wheel than someone who had RECENTLY consumed 4 pints.
The follow up questions are partly therefore whether one of these two would actually drive better than the other, even though their alcohol levels were the same but also whether the other factors were in fact equally or more important? His driving was described as erratic and fast, but I wonder whether that was the alcohol or a combination of lack of sleep and/or mental state/anger – in other words was it any worse or better than it would have been had he not drunk as heavily/stayed under the limit the night before but set off in a rage and with no sleep as soon as he heard the news at 2am?

As I say, I only include the McCulloch example as a case study of some of the multiple factors that sit alongside alcohol in driving performance rather than as an apologist for him and his behaviour that night, but I do think that this is an significant area that has seemingly been under researched (or perhaps more under explained) than it should be in the public arena, given the number of drivers who could fall foul of one or more of these secondary factors….

Actually, perhaps I could run a whole series of documentaries, with the second being an examination of how a case such as McCulloch can generate SUCH polarity of opinion among a sector of the population who theoretically should share at least some environmental and/or emotional similarities, given their claimed mutual interest…..

[recordmeister]

[quote=&quotslappy&quot]My final (hopefully) thoughts on this matter, after Luke McCormick's first game for us.

LM has been punished by the due legal process, and has done his time. Presumably his only career is football, and if he can cope with the inevitable booing he will get for the rest of time, then that is his choice.

After the club kept Chapman signed on, I don't think the club can differentiate too much between two terrible preventable accidents. I felt the club dealt with Chapman well by only really referring to the incident perhaps three times, (ie pre-trial, sentence, and return). After that it is all down to football, and Chapman has perhaps featured rather less in the programme / interviews than would be expected for other players. Chapman has also kept his head down off the pitch, with no twitter / public profile telling us what he is up to every day of the week, which perhaps helps too.

Hopefully the club will take a similar approach with LM, having issued the press release (and I guess it may be elaborated at the fans forum), but the past shows that once Lenagan has made his position clear, he will not repeat himself.

A lot seems to be made of &quotthink of the family&quot, but I doubt a single Oxford United fan knows the family, and the family probably have no interest at all in Oxford United.

Does it damage the club's PR and &quotfamily&quot image? Well, it makes the headlines for one weekend, but after that, I think the furore will lessen.

Will fans boycott the club? Some may, but I think most parents will be able to explain to their children what has happened, why it was wrong, and why LM is playing again.

Was the financial aspect significant? Getting a Championship/ League 1 pedigree keeper on the cheap would normally be good news, but sadly finances dictate. The alternative presumably either Billy Turley, a young keeper from the Championship, Wayne Brown who seems to have been relegated to back-up, or the inexperienced Max Crocombe, who in all probability will be off with the All Whites for a month in March.

Interesting to see on Shrimperzone, they also had pretty much [url=http://www.shrimperzone.com/vb/showthre ... r-Saturday]the same debate[/url] on whether he should play, and what their fans' treatment of him would be. This also caused a [url=http://www.shrimperzone.com/vb/showthre ... outh-Upper]commotion[/url] in their home stand during the game.

So how was LM treated during the game?
By Southend fans, all I really heard was a round of booing whenever he got the ball.
The Oxford fans basically ignored LM - I didn't notice any cheers for him, nor boos (though the seaside thread suggests there were some boos). When the Southend fans booed him, we responded with chants supporting the team, but I did note &quothe's one of us&quot at one point. I don't think there is much more we can do really, he is here now, so we may as well cheer on the team, even if people aren't happy about one individual player. Also he put in a reasonably good performance in goal, with not a lot to do.[/quote]

Excellent post.

[Isaac]

Mooro - I think you're getting at my point that people attempt to justify Chapman's texting while driving error by saying &quoteveryone does it, momentary lapse, bad luck&quot etc etc, when in fact accidental drink driving is more prevalent than people realise.

From what I understand, I think generally the human body processes alcohol at about 1 unit per hour (during waking hours, it slows during sleep). Obviously this will be different for everyone, and the amount of alcohol in your blood is influenced by body size, food consumption etc but it's probably good enough for some basic calculations.

So lets say you have a bottle and a half of wine one evening (15 units), starting at 8pm, finishing around midnight. Chances are by the time you go to bed you have about 12 units left. By 7am the next morning you have at least 5 units, probably over the limit. 8am, you might be ok, you might not.

You can imagine the young guy in your example is probably over the limit repeatedly during the course of that weekend.

[Isaac]

Sorry, another comment - there are plenty of professions you are not allowed to do if you have a conviction, as far as I can see there's no legal reason why football clubs can't write it into contracts to prevent convicted criminals (or at least recently convicted criminals) playing for their clubs. However, no football club will do it as it would mean potentially losing a valuable footballer for nothing. So unless all clubs do it there would be a competitive advantage in not doing it.

[ty cobb]

Personally I don't think it's up to the club or the fans to make judgements on whether someone should be allowed to play football for a living. The law and the FA have not banned him for life from being employed in his profession for making a stupid mistake so why should we have the power to do that?

I may agree with most of what you say Ty, but please PLEASE don't boil my blood by passing this off as a 'silly mistake', as that implies it is something that could happen to anyone.

Personally speaking I think it's a privilege to drive a car, but also a huge responsibility. I know how alcohol affects me, and the risk for me just isn't worth it. So I don't.

I think he made not a mistake but a gravely irresponsible, narcissistic, criminal decision. I live in a country where the vast majority think they have a God-given right to have a few drinks then drive themselves home, and the stock argument for one bogan persuading another to give him a lift home thus scrimping on a taxi is - &quotit's alright mate, you won't get caught&quot. Not, you will note, &quotit's alright mate, you may not have an accident and hurt yourself, me or someone else&quot.

I certainly concur that his crime is also his punishment, and hope that he will take it upon himself to make some good in the world now. This is by no means a personal tirade (and I hope you won't treat it as such) but just a request not to trivialise this issue, as particularly those of us who have been personally affected can find the drink-driving epidemic very hard to stomach.

I said a stupid mistake, and a mistake is defined by the OED as &quotan act or judgement that is misguided or wrong&quot together with the word stupid &quotlacking intelligence or common sense&quot I think is a fair desccription of what he did, he made a judgement (to drive after 2 hours sleep after a night drinking) which was wrong and lacked any common sense or intelligence. From what I know about the case he found out his partner was cheating on him (a wedding is always a nice place to find out) so clearly wasn't in a sensible calm frame of mind when making that judgement. My point is that he didn't set out to kill anyone that night, was it irresponsible, yes of course - criminal, yes it was as was proven in a court, but narcissistic (&quothaving or showing an excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one’s physical appearance&quot) I don't see the link.

I also take it you live in the States as having spent a bit of time there recently I was amazed just how hammered people would get before driving home, as the U's views article points out a number of footballers (let alone members of the public) have been caught drink driving, some such as Tony Adams went on to play many times for England, so whilst it can't happen to anyone as most people aren't stupid enough to drink drive, as with Chappers and texting whilst driving, it has the potential to happen to a higher number of people than we would expect as there are quite a few stupid people amongst us.

I wanted to respond to your post as I didn't want you to think I was trying to defend him or play down what he has done. It is awful, if I was one of the parents I could probably never forgive him, for me he didn't serve long enough in jail, but if the &quotsystem&quot has decided he has done his time I don't think it is right for members of the public to decide it is not long enough and he needs to be punished more by not being able to make a living at what he does best in life. Lets be honest, footballers are not role models anymore - most of the England team are nasty pieces of work who I would never want my children to look up to, so using that as an argument carries no weight for me.

[BigCrompy]

Personally I don't think it's up to the club or the fans to make judgements on whether someone should be allowed to play football for a living. The law and the FA have not banned him for life from being employed in his profession for making a stupid mistake so why should we have the power to do that?

I may agree with most of what you say Ty, but please PLEASE don't boil my blood by passing this off as a 'silly mistake', as that implies it is something that could happen to anyone.

Personally speaking I think it's a privilege to drive a car, but also a huge responsibility. I know how alcohol affects me, and the risk for me just isn't worth it. So I don't.

I think he made not a mistake but a gravely irresponsible, narcissistic, criminal decision. I live in a country where the vast majority think they have a God-given right to have a few drinks then drive themselves home, and the stock argument for one bogan persuading another to give him a lift home thus scrimping on a taxi is - &quotit's alright mate, you won't get caught&quot. Not, you will note, &quotit's alright mate, you may not have an accident and hurt yourself, me or someone else&quot.

I certainly concur that his crime is also his punishment, and hope that he will take it upon himself to make some good in the world now. This is by no means a personal tirade (and I hope you won't treat it as such) but just a request not to trivialise this issue, as particularly those of us who have been personally affected can find the drink-driving epidemic very hard to stomach.

I wanted to respond to your post as I didn't want you to think I was trying to defend him or play down what he has done. It is awful, if I was one of the parents I could probably never forgive him, for me he didn't serve long enough in jail, but if the &quotsystem&quot has decided he has done his time I don't think it is right for members of the public to decide it is not long enough and he needs to be punished more by not being able to make a living at what he does best in life. Lets be honest, footballers are not role models anymore - most of the England team are nasty pieces of work who I would never want my children to look up to, so using that as an argument carries no weight for me.

I absolutely appreciate your opinion is valid, is the opinion of a devil's advocate and/or for the defence, and I also took pains to point out this was not a personal tirade (against you!)

Of course I know you were not condoning his grievious irresponsibility and as it happens, I am still not sure what I think about this signing I'm personally still chewing the fat.

I live in Australia, and the attitude to drink driving it utterly heinous here, really ingrained and terrifying. The extent to which people think it is a big joke, that they are immune to, that doesn't apply to them - defies belief at times. Hence, you found me on my moral high-horse!

I applaud and appreciate your opinion too.

But, just to add to the debate - I would also offer a contrary viewpoint when you say 'footballers are not role models'. That's the trouble - they very much are. Dreadful role models in many cases to boot. It is surely not the subject that determines whether they are held in high esteem by the impressionable child, but the child themselves? Whilst it is perfectly wishful that one could teach their children to make their role model a nurse, an academic, another philanthropist - I would expect much success. The child will choose the sportsman or the popstar every time, however fallen they may be. Which is why they is an over-bearing responsibility on the celebrity in the public eye to behave.

Very interesting debate!

[Radley Rambler]

Sorry, another comment - there are plenty of professions you are not allowed to do if you have a conviction, as far as I can see there's no legal reason why football clubs can't write it into contracts to prevent convicted criminals (or at least recently convicted criminals) playing for their clubs. However, no football club will do it as it would mean potentially losing a valuable footballer for nothing. So unless all clubs do it there would be a competitive advantage in not doing it.

Is the above correct? I can absolutely concur that there are certain professions which convicted criminals would be barred from doing for obvious reasons e.g. police officer, lawyer - but can a football club really legally and conciously prevent a previously convicted criminal coming to play for their club? This may actually be a bad example because a football club by its nature can 'choose' employees on a less open basis than other employers e.g. a retailer.

So may I broaden my question and see if anyone can tell me whether employers can legally prevent convicted criminals from entering their employ if they are the best candidate for a position (barring obvious examples such as I provide above)?