OMG!!!

The football season has returned… a whole 10 minutes after the World Cup finished! So my resident ‘confounded optimist‘ is already buying into the pre-season hype of the local team being favourites to win the Championship again, and return to the Premier League (that they flunked so badly last time). The household is already resounding to the soundtrack of cliches and nonsense about the beautiful game returning to fill the void of a whole three weeks of nothing more than post-tournement pre-season tournements specially arranged for the tournement-deprived.

Look, no eyes!If, like me, you are catastrophically underwhelmed by another nine months of over-exagerated hyperbole dressed up as serious punditry delivered by people without a serious thought holding their ears apart, then I have a solution. No, give the Dignitas membership a miss! This season I am allowing the in-house ‘verbosity funnel‘ the chance to list home results, with maybe the occasional stat about the position in the league (for a laugh) and a completely uninteresting photo from the game. As for the endless drivel about the game of two halves… I am taking personal responsibility to provide succinct summaries of each home game in 10 words or less. After all, what more can you say about 22 men kicking balls?

Until we speak again, Pundit Juno is going to be placing every useful pre-season word uttered by ‘them who shalt be ignored‘ end-to-end, just to see if more than two words can actually be strung together! Meeeooow…

Bluebirds 3 Blue Moon 2

I kind of forgot to comment last week when my local team went to my old haunt in East London and lost, but today I was amazed by the sight of a jubilant Cardiff City fan coming down the road:

Jubilant Cardiff City Fan

Seems that being the richest team in the world doesn’t count for much when you come up against a bunch of Bluebirds who haven’t had a home match in the top league to shout about for 51 years. And so it came to pass, that the collection of multi-millionaires (aka Manchester City) were the first to come to town for a stroll in the park against the newly promoted (Champions, may I add) minnows of Cardiff City.

City v Man City [1]And there was me thinking they were big men… it seems like Cardiff had a sneaky tactic of bringing in a supporter large enough to scoop up most of the Manchester City team.

After a tense first half, with Cardiff keeping their illustrious visitors to 0-0, the half-time buzz was all about daring to dream, whilst trying to suppress the thoughts of what the men from everywhere except Manchester could do (well at least we had one from Cardiff!).

City v Man City [2]The whistle blows for the second half… its all Manchester City. They take an early lead, but it only spurs on the locals to even greater noise, getting behind their team, transmitting the belief as only football can… a bunch of overweight folks sat on their arses telling a bunch of fit blokes how to play (strange how these humans think when they get passionate).

Without any help from a Hollywood make-over merchant the miraculous happens, the dreams are answered, Martin Scorsese need look no further for the plot of his next film. An equaliser, Cardiff take the lead, then go further into the lead.

Fraizer Campbell scores the third goal for Cardiff

The Cardiff fans are in dreamland, expecting the fourth and fifth to arrive like London buses. Then the officials add on 6 minutes of injury time… the old traditional Fergie-time has transferred across Manchester. Time for Manchester City to pull back a second; could they find a further finish to bring the local hopes and dreams crashing down? Kiss my furry rump could they. The final whistle blows… its time for many a Cardiff person to pinch themselves. Yes, it really did happen, the world is a changed place from what it was at the 4.00p.m. kick-off… and normal football cliches will resume on all sports channels and in pubs across the land. Just don’t interrupt a Cardiff fan at the moment with silly questions about ‘Bluebirds’ playing in red and black:

Bluebirds I have been Juno, your intrepid sports reporter, see you again the other side of disbelief!