It’s Not Only Premier League Players That Have a Story to Tell

I am sure many people are aware that I like to read a good book. Autobiographies are my favourite. Over the past few years I have read some and really enjoyed them while some of them were plain boring and I only finished them because maybe I had started to read two or three before them and had given up and did not want to tell myself that I was giving up on every book I read.

I have read a great deal of sporting Autobiographies and some of the most boring that I have read or attempted to read are of those who many would regard as leading players of their time. On the other hand some of the better sporting autobiographies that I have read were of players who for whatever reason started life with a Premier League Club and were left go while still a young player or maybe had their injury cut short because of injury for example.

This evening I completed another book which I thoroughly enjoyed. If I asked you who Ben Smith was I am sure that few could give the correct answer, or if they knew of a sporting person whose name is Ben Smith it could well be a different Ben Smith to the one that I was reading about.

Ben is now in his early 40’s and penned Journeyman in 2015. He signed for Arsenal as an 11 year old when George Graham was in charge and then Bruce Rioch. He was involved with the Arsenal Youth Team when it was coached by Pat Rice who would go on to be Arsene Wenger’s Number 2 for a number of years.

He was invited to train at one stage with the Arsenal first team and did so with players like Dennis Bergkamp and Ian Wright, but left the club in the 1995-96 season after a head to head with then head of Youth Development at Arsenal Liam Brady without making a single competitive outing for the Gunners.

He would join Reading a then Division One side and stayed at the club for two seasons making the massive sum of ONE competitive appearance, that coming in his first season with the club before he was once more released.

For the remainder of his professional career Ben Smith played in the lower leagues at clubs like Yeovil, Southend, Hereford, Shrewsbury, Weymouth, Crawley Town and Aldershot where he made 500 competitive appearances.

Normally when a person reads about a professional soccer player in England or Scotland and when they talk out  renewing a contract they talk about figures in their tens of thousands they want each week to play for a club or how many million they want over the course of a season. In his excellent book Ben Smith talks at times about trying to get an extra £50 a week and maybe a few thousand pounds if it meant to relocate to a new area if joining a new club.

In his career he celebrated three promotions, one relegation and a number of “big” wins in the F.A. Cup including beating Leeds United while playing with Hereford in November 2007 while one of the highlights of his career was playing with Crawley Town against Manchester United at Old Trafford in February 2011, a game the home side won 1-0, a United team that had the likes of Rafael, Wes Brown, John O’Shea, Michael Carrick, Anderson and Javier Hernandez in the starting line up, while Wayne Rooney, Chris Smalling, Darren Fletcher and a young Paul Pogba were on the bench. Crawley Town at the time were in the fifth tear of league football and early in the season then manager Steve Evans told Ben Smith he wanted him out of the club but smith would not move when the club would not pay him the £15,000 he wanted to terminate his contract with the club. The season would end on a high for him and the club however as they won the Football Conference.

When most of us think about soccer players in the UK we think mostly about the all too often over paid and sometimes over rated players that are the stars of the Premier League. But we all too often forget about the players that don’t make it at a Premier League Club and move down the leagues to make a career for themselves or we forget the players that maybe who may have what looks a good career ahead of them at a big club only for it to disappear when they pick up a serious injury.

Some of those latter players just like players in the Premier League write about their career however long it lasted at the end or towards the end of their career and often it is much more interesting that what some players who played their whole or the most of their playing career in the Premier League. Ben Smith’s story is one such excellent story and the book is well worth a read if you can manage to get your hands on. Maybe to source it online might be your easiest option in finding it.

An Post’s New Plan While Welcome is Not New in Some Areas

They say there is no such thing as bad publicity, and I am sure An Post thought to some degree they were onto a winner in the last few days when they announced that they would implement a series if new services to help people during the Coronavirus pandemic.

The news that they are to take parcels and letters from elderly and vulnerable people and deliver them free is something that I am sure will be welcomed, but who is to decide who is elderly and who is vulnerable. I have heard people in their eighties tell those they were talking to that they were not old people or in the case of one person in his eighties – he was not a geriatric. On the other hand I have heard people in their early sixties tell people that they are the new older generation of people.

The question has to be asked once this terrible pandemic has passed will we see the cost of posting letters and parcels increase to make up for the losses the Post Office might suffer now that there will be free postage to some. After all we have heard often enough that the post office is not making enough money as less and less people use it since the introduction of electric posting to send bills, emails etc and since many people have started to carry out online banking to pay their bills rather than to go through the post office and to have any social welfare payments etc paid into bank accounts.

 We are told that Post men and women will call into elderly people and those living alone on their routes to check on their wellbeing and if needs be contact the charity Alone if assistance is needed.

We are also told that An Post will roll out a newspaper delivery service whereby a person can get delivery of a local or national to those that are cocooning, whereby customers can sign up and pay online for their paper or papers of their choice can have them delivered to them by their local post man or woman.

All this to some might seem new and a great idea, but to many particularly in rural areas is something that has happened since Adam was a boy, or at least since Post Men and Women no longer relied on a bike or ‘shanks mare’ as a mode of transport to get them around their often large daily route.

All of us living in rural areas and maybe some in urban areas will know of post men and women who would deliver whatever needs to be to particular houses on their daily route.

My Father’s only brother ‘Bob’ was known to many people in West Waterford and to everyone in the Ballinamult area where he worked. For much of his working life he worked as a postman and for much of this time drove the old Orange and White Renault “P&T” Van that many postmen had and later the Green “An Post” Van.

In many of those van’s which he drove over the year’s there was often no passengers seat, but if there was one, he would possibly have had got someone to take it out for him as there would be no room for it in the van.

To his left after sorting the post at the Post Office at Ballinamult just over the road from his house and later in Ballymacarbry Post Office he would lay it out to his left in bundles sorted into the different Townlands which he was passing that day.

The back of his van would also be packed. He would call to some houses every day even if he had no post for them. He would call to those that lived alone and those that might not see anyone during the day just to see that they were ok and also for them to have someone to talk to even if it was for only a few minutes.

In some of the most remote areas which he worked in he would bring maybe bring the daily paper to some, a bottle or carton of milk to others, a loaf of bread to others, a bottle of gas to some, a bag of coal to someone else. All would be paid for by him when he was getting the items in one of the local shops and a receipt would be got for each person and would be paid there and then by the person whom he shopped for.

He and some of the other post men and women in the area if they were well known and trusted by some people living away from the Post Office would give to them there pension book or children’s allowance book after signing it and would have it collected for them the following day and delivered to them the following day often in an open envelope and would ask that it be checked so that all the money was in it, not that there was ever need to check it.

While most people these days have the means to go to the Post Office to collect payments or get to the shop etc. there is still some Post Men and Women who are still calling to people on a regular basis maybe dropping in one of the free newspapers printed each week to people that live alone or who will stop and talk to people that they see out and about especially if they live alone or spend large parts of the day alone.

While some of what An Post have announced in the last two or three days is something new to many and must be welcomed by most, in some areas what they have announced is happening with many years.