31 August 2005 - 21 August 2010

Nicked from Fat Buddha in a previous incarnation he is now Fat Man in the Bathtub (see sidebar) - nothing changes down at Blues.

I Don't Know What It Is


So off we trotted, about 26000 of us, down to St Andrews for the first home game of the season. There's nothing quite like the first game, all the past misery is forgotten and we proceed to the ground jaunty of step, light of heart, cheery of countenance, convinced that this is the year we make the great leap forward. What a triumph of hope over experience; we are all fools. Man, we are so full of hope and optimism, just like children and every year, eventually, we realise that all our hope and optimism is futile; to have your hopes dashed so early though, it's bloody cruel.

According to Nishiren Buddhism there are ten life states that we all live through, moment by moment, and you will be very aware of the buggers if you support the Blues.

1. Hell

- Misery and suffering. Fear, grief and destructive rages or depression. A feeling of being imprisoned by one's circumstances. Some fans might experience these emotions over the course of a season, we Blues fans experience them game by game.....day by day in fact, whether there is a game on or not. Our whole history is characterised by misery and suffering, any fool knows that and we are most definitely trapped, imprisoned in Bluenosehood, with no escape. By the end of Saturdays game, I had become quite depressed, depressed at our inability to create a clear cut chance, grief struck over our basic lack of awareness, enraged at the referees refusal to give us a penalty, deserved or not, and fearful for what is coming next.

2. Hunger

- Being dominated by desires or cravings, both physical and mental. Clearly, we crave success, we crave moving on to the mythical next step, we are desirous of becoming the next Bolton or Charlton, we crave a goal, a point, a bloody performance.

3. Animality

- Instinctive behaviour, lacking in reason. Fear of those who seem stronger and bullying of those who seem weaker. The 'law of the jungle'. Well, of course we lack reason: James is useless, Barton a thug, Mills a brainless moron, Cole past it, Vassel a useless ex viler and has been: instinctively, we know we are going to beat this shower of shit. Every decision the ref gives against us is unreasonable, unfair, they get away with stuff, we don't; everybody hates us.

4. Anger

- Feeling superior to others and wanting to show it. Aggressiveness. Feeling in conflict with others. The world of self-centredness and ego. As above, we know we are better than them, our team is better, out fans are better, our pies are better. We chant and clap as the team comes out, we try to intimidate, we shout and we gesture and the more the game goes against us , the more outraged we become at the injustice of it all.

5.Humanity, or Tranquility

- Constant inactivity, laziness, passivity. This refers to that post half time torpor and is characteristic of the players as much as the fans. They don't run out together, as a team; they do not look purposeful....... they stroll on like rag tag and bobtail, you could be forgiven for thinking that they are the ballboys. Similarly, the passion goes out of the crowd and we all fall asleep.

6. Rapture, or Heaven

- Short term gratification when one's desires have been achieved . Can quickly revert to hell, or hunger. Obviously, a goal is scored and we are in raptures, or Gray puts a cross in, or Pennant does something remarkable, or Taylor gives the ball to someone in a blue shirt. Very short term, especially down at St Andrews; we quickly find ourselves back in hell.

7. Learning

+ Learning about life and oneself from others and from existing knowledge. We learn about ourselves and we learn about Buddhism every day as Blues fans. We learn that life is suffering and we learn about impermanence. We learn that we keep the ball only for the briefest moments, we learn that for every yin, there is a yang, we learn that we are destined to suffer, through many many lifetimes.

8. Realisation

+ The wisdom or insight where we gain an understanding of an aspect of life from our own observations and experiences. We realise, from our earliest days, that we have condemned ourselves to a life of frustration, we understand this, so we look upon our many miseries almost as friends. We understand that although there is almost always disappointment, there is always another game, another small death to look forward to. On Saturday I realised, after about 75 minutes that the game was up and so was able to relax, and wait for it all to end.

9.Bodhisattva

The word consists of bodhi (enlightenment) and sattva (beings) and means someone who seeks enlightenment, for themselves and others.We all seek enlightenment, we all look for an answer, we all ponder upon how we can gain more of a cutting edge, how we can learn to not keep giving the ball away and we are all only to happy to share our wisdom, through blogs, message boards, phone ins, petitions, and loudly from the stands. Through all our suffering, man, we are enlightened.

10. Buddha

An ordinary person awakened to the true nature of life, and experiencing absolute happiness and freedom within the realities of daily life. Indestructible joy, unlimited wisdom, courage, compassion, creativity and life force. The sad fact is, no Blues fan will ever achieve this happy state.

Actually, I am not despondent. We started well and even Gray seemed determined to take his man on and beat him. Forsell and Pandiani looked they could strike up a mutually beneficial relationship and we seemed committed to getting men forward. So much for the first seven minutes! Cole looked very sharp and caused our defenders loads of trouble,as did Vassell, but at half time I was still confident we would win as we had their defence floundering loads of times.

It all went tits up in the second half and it is hard to understand why. Gray reverted to his usual hesitant, almost fearful self and lacked the confidence to attack Mills. Taylor kept hoofing the ball back to the other buggers; it all became disjointed, uncoordinated and bloody painful to watch. Even so there were occasions when we played the ball, rather than hoofed it and again, briefly, looked the part, not very often, or for very long though.

Our defence struggled against the pacy Man City strikers and I am beginning to wonder about Upson. He seems to have really bulked up and he now resembles a brick shithouse, which is all well and good but he appears to have lost a bit of fluidity and grace in his movement. Our midfield (such as it was) seemed to lack awareness and were completely outharried by their opponents, what got me was that they always seemed surprised to have an opponent niggling away at them as soon as they got the ball; they wanted time and space, but the Mancs weren't having any of it and we could not cope with their tenacity.

It was a decent game actually, quite open and I like the cut of the collective Manchester jib. The result was depressing but we showed in patches that we can play a bit. The performance was poor, but not disastrous and can easily be put right. Jarosik might make a difference, who knows and if Dunn can maintain fitness when he returns we will have some creative thrust, which is direly lacking at the moment Pennant excepted.

Middlesbrough tomorrow, and I am not confident. If we insist upon giving the ball to them, they will murder us. I saw a thing on Mourinho the other day where he said the one thing he insists on above all else is keeping the ball and it's a strategy that seems to work pretty well for his team. We have decent ball players throughout the team, we could pass it from the back if we wanted, so why we insist on banging it forward at pace, so we only have about a 50-50 chance of retaining the thing is beyond me.