uRRRs blog Of body language and Barcelona...

Posted: August 29th 2008
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I love football messageboards!

Actually, I don’t...I hate them. They’re addictive, dangerously addictive. I’ve written of my personal addiction before, a feature entitled ‘Messageboard Cold Turkey’  for Rangers fanzine ‘A Kick Up The Rs’ which I’ll post up here when I get my act together.

Indeed I’ve decided another spell of cold turkey is needed. The main reason for this isn’t the insane rumours, the tiresome conjecture or the sixth form humour that are the staple of messageboards. That’s why we go there.

All messageboards go in circles in terms of regular contributors. Sometimes, there’s a bunch of regulars you feel are on your wavelength, fellow fans you love to banter with. It’s like finding a group of like-minded fans in the corner of the pub you never knew existed. Some view such groups as cliques...but they’re the lifeblood of all good boards.

Inevitably these groups often splinter...or just move on...and the board is populated by new players (er...contributors...actually come to think of it, the transition process is a bit like that of the team).

And at the moment, I’m just not down with the regulars on the Rs boards I most frequent (and yes, they are plural, I’m a serial abuser). Well there’s one I feel pretty comfortable on, but it simply doesn’t have the site traffic required to make it first port of call. The one that is my first port of call currently has a load of regular posters who’re clearly...well, to put it bluntly, younger than me.

However, I’m currently in the middle of a short run of games I can’t attend, and thus the cold turkey is on hold, as the messageboard reports entitled ‘just back’, ‘reflections on last night’. ‘today’s game’ etc etc are must reads as an antidote to the increasingly Pravda-esque official site.

So for a couple of weeks I’ll stick with it...and like a moth to a light, will get drawn to threads I know I’d be better avoiding. Two such debates have stood out this week in the wake of our Carling Cup trouncing of Carlisle.

1. Daniel Parejo’s body language. It seems our ‘Fabregas in waiting’ Real Madrid loanee looked a tad pissed off on Tuesday. Well put it this way, he didn’t go apeshit when we scored...even after his sublime assist on our third. This has had the board psychologists out in force. He’s not happy...he’s jealous of Argentine loanee Ledesma (who plays with a Ronaldinho-esque smile never far from his face)...he didn’t take to being barked at by returning captain Martin Rowlands...he feels he’s having to slum it at QPR...
2. Barca player swap. Apparently one poster ‘heard a rumour’ that the “Catalan giants”  are after an unnamed QPR player...whom the experts have calculated must be the aforementioned hat trick hero...and a swap with Eidur Gudjohnsen is on the cards...

Why do I read this stuff? WHY, WHY, WHY? I’m not even going to comment on these stories here, as that only helps justify their existence, whilst simultaneously reinforcing my own weakness.

I did manage to resist contributing to either thread, that’s an encouraging start to my withdrawal programme. Cold turkey has got me on the run...