On feeling like a fraud

Ah Wembley, and the magical appearance of the 25,000 Brentford fans last seen when casting around for a business plan to build Lionel Road.

As a website with it’s fair share of away trips to the Hartlepools, Yeovils and Rotherhams of this world, a website that kept going as attendances plummeted as the ends of Downes, Rosenior, Fitzgerald and Butcher loomed, and a website that has been frozen solid watching defeats at Peterborough more times than it cares to mention, it’s odd to feel like a complete fraud approaching our most exciting game since Swansea at home… er… six years ago?

Like, we suspect, many of the 25,000 some of Beesy have fallen out of regular attendance this season – in the writer’s case the tail-end Andy Scott dross, family commitments and newly extended travel times have seen to that. So this writer heads to what may well be an exciting game at the new Wembley feeling very slightly like a fraud.

There are two options here: either ignore it and resume the usual Ealing drinking expedition, or embrace it and rock up in a Barbour jacket with a picnic hamper, rattle and a copy of the Sunday Times. Perhaps the time has come to point at the pitch and ask which one is Owusu.

Johnstone’s Paint Trophy… a potted history

The Johnstone’s Paint Trophy has a long and mostly illustrious history. Starting in 1907 it originally started as a Fencing competition for Victorian Ophans from all over England. The structure of the tournament was set early… orphans, being notoriously short of money and therefore unable travel even on the pre-Beeching Railway system, were grouped into regional and area rounds. The final saw north meeting south champion orphans in a field just outside Coventry.

Unfortunately this didn’t take off, mostly in part to the Victorian period ending in 1901. Secondly the public’s tolerance of orphans stabbing each other with swords was woefully overestimated even in the cruel, cruel past.

However unperturbed from these tentative steps the Johnstones Paint Trophy has run the full gamut of sports starting with Stoat Chasing (1909-27); Log Rolling (1928-39); Rugby League (1945-1969) and latterly Las Vegas Foxy Boxing (1970-2005).

It wasn’t until 2007 and the death of the UK’s van manufacturing industry that the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy found a permanent home in the heart of the lower league football calendar by taking over the LDV Trophy nee Auto Windscreen Trophy nee Freight Rover Trophy.

Here is an array of paint stats:
• The Johnstone’s Paint Trophy itself is known as the Gilded Paint Can. It is, well… a gilded paint can with diamond studded handle. Jimmy-ing open the top with a screwdriver will release paint in the winning teams colours. How does it know who will win? It is the mystery of the [gilded] can.
• Johnstone’s have been providing excellence in paint from 1890. Prior to this the company was content with being slightly above average in paint.
• In keeping with its Victorian origins the only colour available for its first 50 years was black. This changed in 1932 with the introduction of “White”.
• Johnstone’s Paint sell 15,000 different colours of paint. At least one member of Beesy has a background in art and frankly doubts there are that many colours in the world.
• The first Johnstone’s Paint Trophy was won by Doncaster.
• Carlisle is making their second visit in two years. Their lost to Southampton last year.
• According to the official Johnstone’s Paint Trophy website “The 2010 Football League Supporters’ Survey states that Johnstone’s Paint is only second to Coca-Cola in brand awareness”.

Ladies and gentlemen… The Johnstone’s Paint Trophy!

Make it Beesy’s Big Johnstone’s Paint Trophy “Special” (MIBBJPT”S”)

Hello.

You may remember this website from such seasons as the turbulent 2003/04 season (the demise of Downes) and the exciting but disappointing years 2004-06.

Now there has been false dawns since then. Scroll down and you will most likely the remnants of one. However and strictly for a one week only thing Beesy is back.

Why? Well, Beesy LOVES the Painted Vans Trophy. It was always our favourite tournament (in the absence of the Anglo-Italian cup) mainly thanks to its excellent name and ever changing structure (South Eastern group stage? Really?). It is a somewhat bitter irony that the one year Brentford have done well in it is the year we’ve showed general indifference.

That said we were one (two) few to be bored rigid at Stevenage. Stevenage is a terrible terrible place.

Anyway here’s a list of things we’ve been doing instead of writing about Brentford:

1. Manly things like hunting and drinking and shit.
2. Coming second on the pro-celebrity hotrod circuit. We’ll beat you next year Chico
3. Living in the midlands (if you can call living in the midlands living)
4. Designing a new style hat
5. Learning to cry.

Glossary

In order to assist our readers, please make a note for your records of Beesy’s official terms of reference for tournaments and competitions:

FIFA Soccer Jam
Michel Platini’s Anyone But England Symposium
My goodness how awfully clever of them cup of nations

Amstel Cup
European Vans Trophy

Mr Big’s Big League of Unimaginable Bigness
Coca-Cola Purgatory
The Coca-Cola League of the Damned
The Coca-Cola Abyss

The Bert Millichip Memorial Pendant
Milk Cup
Europe’s Premier Club Competition Named After An Obscure Paint Brand