Work's sent me to Brisbane for four days as I'm helping design a new sports site and the sport editorial team are based up here. I've been sent up to talk them through the new ideas and design, take their feedback on board then tell them what we've got planned anyway...
Got here yesterday and the first lad I sit down with is a journo who's got the Villa team photo as his screensaver. We're blethering about the Premiership and Villa's shocker against Stoke. I'm about to mention that Tony Pulis learnt the craft of managing a team and achieving success despite no money in a certain corner of the garden of England (also that Big Mama "he's more a creator than a scorer" also learnt the craft down Priestfield), when the lad asks me who I follow.
Pick this out: I tell him that whilst I grew up in Edinburgh and like Hearts, I moved to Kent when I was a lad and am also a big Gills fan... and then the bloke next to him let's out a cheer and holds up his tea mug, a Gillingham FC mug with "Up The Gills" on it.
He's an Aussie but was travelling and working in the UK for a while. He got mates with a teacher from Leatherhead who grew up in Gillingham and went to the Gills so went along to Priestfield to watch a game with him. Now this is the weird thing that makes people followers for life: It was the 10th of December 2005, a home match against Port Vale and he tells me about the cracking game that the Blues won three nil, with missed penalties, sendings off and "Matty Jarvis getting a brace to seal the victory".
I'm standing their stunned, half because there's an Aussie journo in Brisbane who's been to Priestfield and I end up meeting him, and half because he had the luck (misfortune?! Haha) to go to a cracker of a game and got locked in to supporting Kent's finest.
Harj, Dan and Mick: You went to Brisbane eh? It was a while ago but if there's anywhere particulalry memorable you remember going do let us know. I'm up here on my todd with expenses to be spent.
4 comments:
that's sorta beautiful and tragic at the same time. Can you get to any big sporting events whilst you're there, seeing as it would technically be research?
The Suncorp stadium is about a 4/5 minute walk away from my hotel (I walked past it on the way into town last night, it's a cracking looking venue, near the XXXX Brewery an'all) but there's nothing on at the moment - the Brisbane Broncos kick off their NRL season with a Queensland derby against the Cowboys there next Friday (13th) and there's a Super 14 union match there the night after, but nowt doing this week.
there's bugger all in Brisbane, we went to the man-made beach as they haven't got a real one, saw Phantom Menace at the Cinema and went out with some dodgey scouse bloke from our hostel and took loads of weird pills... there was a kebab shop called abrakebabra (funny the things you remember!)
Hiya Dan, apologies for not getting back to you - you were right about Brisbane, I think we'd have struggled to have a decent night out even if we were all up there, it seemed tres boring. Unlike your boarding holiday, which looked like it was a tons-of-fresh-snow sensation!
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