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Part 2: Player and VIP entrance and function rooms.
Marius, his wife and us about to be shown around (sorry for the poor P900 VGA quality in the 1st pic here):
An EXACT replica of the Premier League floating trophy, after they finished Premiership champs in '95. The crown at the top is solid gold. Cost £50 000 (approx R700 000) to make.
Row upon row of cabinets filled with momentos from other clubs that they have played against, miscellaneous trophies etc etc (P900 again...):
_________________
He who laughs last...thinks slowest.
T39m,
T610,T630,P900,Nokia7600 & N73
[ This Message was edited by: amawanqa on 2007-08-24 22:15 ]
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Posted: 2007-08-24 22:01:46
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On Monday, when we returned to the stadium and the others were in the official Blackburn Rovers shop, I was taking pics of the stadium outside.
After a while of taking N73 pics, a different guy in a suit (Blackburn Rovers blazer and tie)approached me. We got talking. I didn't realise at the time what his role was. When he heard about us being from SA etc, he just said to wait there and he'd be back in 5 minutes; he was going to organise us access into the restricted areas and show us quite a bit that goes on behind the scenes in an English Premiership club!
More about the dude later.
Part 3: The Pitch.
N73:
P900:
£1000 (approx R14000) fine if a member of the public goes onto the pitch without any permission...
That didn't stop us nicking a bit of the grass..
BTW, any idea how much money is spent in a year on fertiliser for a Premiership football pitch? A cool £100 000 (approx R1 400 000).
_________________
He who laughs last...thinks slowest.
T39m,
T610,T630,P900,Nokia7600 & N73
[ This Message was edited by: amawanqa on 2007-08-24 21:49 ]
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Posted: 2007-08-24 22:20:57
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@ama - Nice pics !
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Posted: 2007-08-25 01:02:55
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Thanks Jojo.
We were very privileged to see what we all saw next. This is where the players come out onto the pitch. As you can see, there's a lot of cleaning in progress after match day.
Oops...
..and to the changing rooms:
One of the tactics boards..and a hairdryer for the players, those all-important press conferences LOL..
Cameras along the roof framework link to a centralised computer, which then calculates the opponents' pattern of play, passing strategies etc and then projected onto this interactive whiteboard in the changing room!
@ da brixsta,
Check out their strategies against your team:
Red obviously Arsenal, blue for Blackburn:
Apparently, all the opposing team changing rooms are never to the same spec, and go for any psychological edge possible, for example at Middlesbrough's stadium, the opposition team's changing room is painted in dark purple and green colours to try and 'nausiate'/distract the players in there..
So what do they do after a match?
_________________
He who laughs last...thinks slowest.
T39m,
T610,T630,P900,Nokia7600 & N73
[ This Message was edited by: amawanqa on 2007-08-25 03:01 ]
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Posted: 2007-08-25 03:18:29
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@ Kryptik,
Check what this club does for their local community.
First a little background info. Every Premiership club has a responsibility to assist the local community with various programmes. They also have 'Learning Zones' run by teachers etc, helping pupils from surrounding schools with both academic and sporting programmes too.
West Ham United took some of our Gifted and Talented pupils recently, giving them free extra challenging academic activities at the stadium's own learning zone. They collect the pupils once a week from school in a minibus.
During the holidays, football trials clubs are held at various high schools around the area, where the local football club will have a few talent scouts in attendance.
Now funny enough, the richest Premiership clubs apparently invest the least in their local community, whereas Blackburn head the charts for investing in the local community...40% of their total profits! Charlton and Fulham are apprarently runners-up.
Rovers have their own on-site school. Pupils/students that have been identified as potential football stars of the future attend school in the stadium's dedicated classrooms. However, the ruling is that they can only continue with the football training IF their academic results are up to scratch too. So they really have to pull their weight and not feel that they can just 'ride' on their footballing skills. Well done, Rovers!
So what else do they do?
Kids who are frequently bunking will be referred to the club, who have specialist staff to identify root causes for the truanting and run programmes to get them motivated, as well as feed back their findings as to why there are issues, to both the school and the local education authority. If there's major improvement, they have an opportunity to meet the players.
For juveniles that may have ASBO's (anti-social behaviour order), again the club will run workshops for them, running courses on how to become referees etc...but on Friday nights and on weekends that there's away matches..when these kids would be most likely to cause mischief.
Again, apart from the skills they leave with, they can also meet the players IF there's enough of a turnaround in their behaviour etc.
So what about the kids that do attend, do behave etc? Well fortunately the club has got similar incentives for those kids who do warrant meeting the players and having other privileges, which I was relieved to hear.
But that's not all (Oh hell Wanqa, you sound like a Glomail advert now LOL).
They also run workshops for single moms aged between 16 and 24, helping them to regain some sense of self esteem, how to do CV's, conduct themselves at job interviews, etc etc.
They also run socials for pensioners in the local old age homes, and so on.
What an eye-opener it was.
One of the classrooms:
_________________
He who laughs last...thinks slowest.
T39m,
T610,T630,P900,Nokia7600 & N73
[ This Message was edited by: amawanqa on 2007-08-25 04:24 ]
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Posted: 2007-08-25 03:58:50
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@ama - I think I saw mrs. ama's
PIC in your ecent UPLOADS mate
Lovely indeed !
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Posted: 2007-08-25 04:14:43
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Previous season's strip going so damn cheap in the official shop...so many specials!
Goalkeeper's shirt:
OK, that's it for now. I apologise to anyone who had to suffer while waiting for all these images to load, as well as to those who aren't into sport/ English Premiership football, even though the whole visit/ Wanqa Documentary was covered by cellphones.
Oh well, it's keeping the thread ticking over too, I guess.
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Posted: 2007-08-25 04:19:17
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Well spotted Jojo.
I've got additional pics from our time in Scotland etc. for the non-
thread, which I'll try post there later on Saturday.
Anyway, it's nearly 3:30pm. Time to catch some
G'night, matey. Hope you're having a great SUNDAE.
_________________
He who laughs last...thinks slowest.
T39m,
T610,T630,P900,Nokia7600 & N73
[ This Message was edited by: amawanqa on 2007-08-25 03:27 ]
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Posted: 2007-08-25 04:25:42
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On 2007-08-25 04:25:42, amawanqa wrote:
Anyway, it's nearly 3:30pm. Time to catch some
@dad - Why
in the afternoon - 3:30 PM you say
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Posted: 2007-08-25 04:34:12
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That's brilliant Wanqa, those clubs certainly deserve a pat on the back! The lengths to which they go are quite extraordinary, considering that they could've probably gotten away with the bare minimum had they so chosen. Nice pix there btw boet
So the neighbour's daughter is now sporting a Nokia 6085. Not a shabby piece of hardware... Set up an email address for her earlier, then installed some apps, including Gmail and Opera Mini. May as well point her in the proper direction now before Mxit et al claim another scalp
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Posted: 2007-08-25 05:05:00
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