Red Eye

Where's Mr Kurt?
Not seen or heard a peep for yonks.

Originally Posted by bcred

Where's Mr Kurt?
Not seen or heard a peep for yonks.

used to love his stuff in RI... but i've not bought it since i stopped going to OT... which was a long time ago...

what's RI [the forum and the mag] like these days? not that i care all that much.

dunno mate,I sub to RN but living where I do I rarely see any of the printed mags. I've known RK since the early nineties,but I've lost touch.

left RI and was replaced by 2 others.

mag is shit now

writes a weekly column in the irish examiner, good articles with occasional bit of united gossip thrown in, described the recent quatari stuff to be surprisingly well sourced info, no mention of same since however.

Originally Posted by waynes ear's

left RI and was replaced by 2 others.

Or did he?

Originally Posted by carlosartorial

Or did he?

oh christ what with this Welly and ABAF it's like going back in time....

Originally Posted by redhegemony

oh christ what with this Welly and ABAF it's like going back in time....

It's be nice if redplanet were to reappear from the ether....

Originally Posted by dunk

It's be nice if redplanet were to reappear from the ether....

He still posts where he's always posted, just not as frequently.

Originally Posted by carlosartorial

Or did he?

ears might not be familiar with watergate
or are they just used on the sanc, and not in the mag? as i don't read either anymore

Originally Posted by hopkins

ears might not be familiar with watergate
or are they just used on the sanc, and not in the mag? as i don't read either anymore

Both

Originally Posted by carlosartorial

He still posts where he's always posted, just not as frequently.

£#%&! sake, just asked that in the other thread!

Originally Posted by carlosartorial

He still posts where he's always posted, just not as frequently.

Really? Under an assumed name?

I only ever remember him from RI and The Sanc, but I have long since stopped frequenting those parts and I recall he had been missing for a good while by the time I abandoned them.

He used to bring the daily zest! (and weirdness)

Originally Posted by dunk

Under an assumed name?

Nope.

Originally Posted by carlosartorial

Nope.

Shame I no longer have an account, or any desire to visit over there these days.

Known Richard for years. Lost touch

My fave living writer (in any genre!)

Originally Posted by rebelcountyred

writes a weekly column in the irish examiner, good articles with occasional bit of united gossip thrown in, described the recent quatari stuff to be surprisingly well sourced info, no mention of same since however.

Love to see them reposted the odd time...

Rooney stamps his name on an era
By Richard Kurt
Wednesday, February 16, 2011




.

The Doomlords were still out in force at Old Trafford as late as the 77th minute. After all, a game that had been bossed by City for the first 40 minutes was, once again, appearing to get away from us; Rooney had been low-key and ineffective all afternoon; memories of the 2008 embarrassment were creeping into the frame of vision.

In less than two seconds, as though a solar explosion had intervened, all was brilliant light once more.

2011 isn’t going to be 1968 after all; Rooney is not "finished" as so many pressmen have been implying; and City, yet again, are left to stew in their own eternal bitterness.

We oldies like to lecture the youngsters when they come racing in with some tale of The Latest Thing, that they’ve seen nothing. We always have some superior example from the ‘70s or ‘60s to throw back at them, and almost all of the time we are right. They don’t call them the good old days for nothing, you know, sonny. (You can never tire of calling someone in his 30s ‘sonny’.)

However, even we have had to surrender to the Spud Faced Nipper this time. I’d still like to cite Hughesy v Sheff Wed in 1994, Cantona v Arsenal 1996 and Buchan v Everton in 1978 for the Old Trafford Goal Honour Roll but, hand on heart, I couldn’t say Wayne’s fell short, even in that hallowed company.

He turned most of the 75,000 watching grown-ups into delighted children who could do nothing but gasp in awe as though seeing Santa’s sleigh land on their roof. It’s been a season largely bereft of such moments, admittedly – but this was one of those that reminds you why you watch this rather ludicrous activity week after week.

Where else can you see art, athleticism, intelligence, courage and imagination so brilliantly fused and encapsulated in one split-second gesture? If this is to be the moment that Rooney finally comes alive in 2010/11, then Arsenal are going to have their work cut out in keeping up until May.

Valencia is back in training too, so Fergie will soon be able to argue, in his time-honoured fashion, that it’ll "be like signing two new players". Moreover, the superb coming-of-age display by Chris Smalling has, in a stroke, potentially removed the Ferdinand factor from the equation; if Chris can be relied upon to dovetail as well as he did with Vidic for the rest of the

season, then Rio’s increasingly wearisome injuries will no longer trouble us as much as they did when only Jonny Evans was available to replace him. All that said, no-one is getting carried away – this is not February 2010, for example, when we were getting seriously confident about doubles and title records just weeks before that deadly Munich moment.

Arsenal’s next nine games constitute wall-to-wall easy-peasydom – even allowing for the Gooners’ legendary flakiness. Meanwhile, we still have to travel to the Emirates and face Chelsea twice, and fit in continuing FA Cup commitments too (assuming the equivalent of the asteroid doesn’t hit us on Saturday.)

Ah, yes, Crawley; the second set of annoying small-time chumps we will be having to let into O.T. within a week. There’s not a Red alive who enjoys these occasions, which are the price you pay for pre-eminence.

You can’t even indulge in a bit of fair-minded sympathy for the underdog, given the way Crawley have built themselves up, and the nature of their ownership. This is not a happy-go-lucky non-League fairytale such as that seen with FC United.

Besides, our minds will already be on Marseille, from whose old port I shall report ‘live’ next week. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going to rewind Saturday’s tape for the 287th time…"


Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/s...#ixzz1Eu0EkLaP

City clash the biggest derby of most of our lives
By Richard Kurt
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
AMONGST what you may indulge me to term the ‘United fan commentariat’, one infamous figure stands out: the legendary ‘Mr Spleen’.

Respected and feared in equal portion, this old Seventies School bruiser punches like a dream in both fanzinese and online quippery — but he also has good football bones in him. Like a barometer, he senses storms ahead.

At midday on Saturday, after he’d polished off his Fray Bentos Special Reserve and Real Ale lunch, he declared to all us colleagues that defeat awaited at Molineux, once he’d perused the weather forecast, the state of the pitch, and a record book that stated we were just 90 minutes from a new benchmark. It was doomlordery in excelsis and he was, of course, as correct as he usually is in such matters. (He once confidently told me during the hairiest second-half bit of Moscow ‘08 that the game would finish 1-1 and we’d win on penalties, when any sane man would have predicted a minimum 3-1 Chelsea victory. I really ought to let him do the Euromillions for me.)

Spleen — not his real name, d’uh — would, like me, remember the last truly significant time Wolves kicked us in the teeth, when an unfeasibly hair-do’d George Berry scored the only goal at Old Trafford to inflict our sole home defeat of the 79/80 season — when we’d lose the title race to Liverpool by two points.

How times change: Berry was a real oddity in that era, one of only half a dozen black lads playing in the First Division, and I’m fairly sure every player on the pitch that day was from the British Isles. Some things rest eternal, however; the shock defeat inspired widespread doom and grief amongst Reds, and we never really rediscovered any self-belief that season until we beat Liverpool at Easter to restart the title challenge in earnest.

So today there’s generalised hair-wrenching and teeth-gnashing, much of which is centred upon the true cause of the defeat — and of the numerous near-defeats that have preceded it on our travels this term — namely the midfield.

I’d say a good 80% of Reds would agree with the proposition that we never want to see Carrick and Fletcher as the central duo again, and that (as I suggested last week) midfield was the one area where we would have welcomed a purchase in the window.

I’d sign up to the fans’ prescription too, though I’d still argue as I did last week that, given the advantageous position we are in, and the other resources we have available to us in the squad, there ought to be enough fuel in these tanks to clinch the 19th, if properly deployed. A gigantic ‘if’, of course, especially in light of the unprecedented admissions made by Fergie this season that, on more than one occasion, he has committed bad mistakes in both selection and tactics.

Still, be grateful for this: at least City now won’t have the opportunity to spend the next six months boasting about shattering the Crap Invincibles’ record. Saturday’s still remains the biggest derby of most of our lives, of course. You have to go back to March 1968 for an equivalent, when City counter punched superbly to win 3-1 at the then-champions’ home, a position from which they would clinch their title on the final day at our expense.

That derby truly felt like the beginning of the end for us, which they’d emphasise 16 months later by putting four goals past us at Maine Road to herald a decade of Manchester supremacy.

Oh, and one last omen? Just a couple of weeks before that ‘68 derby, United had finally surrendered a home unbeaten run record that had stretched to 37 games. I think I’ve outdone even Mr Spleen for Doomlordery.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Wednesday, February 09, 2011


Read more: http://www.irishexaminer.com/sport/s...#ixzz1Eu4AmN1z

Cheers for posting. Didn't know the column in the examiner was still going. When it was called 'terrace talk' it used to be possible to access them but the search facility on that site is a disaster area.