CYCM Preview: Whitby Town

Cast your minds back if you will to 2 December 2017, ahead of the Harrogate Town home game which we won 2-0 with two late goals from player-manager Tom Greaves which edged him past Rory Patterson to make him our club's top scorer.  It was the third ever Course You Can Malcolm under the SMRE, after that slightly weird period against the odds when we plonked ourselves down in the function room pre-match.  In those days there wasn't even a proper floor under the SMRE and everyone wore extra layers because we knew our breath would hang frostily in the air down there.  In those days the PA's sound quality was pretty much non-existent (so we're glad to be able to make it up to today's turn five years on).  In those days Vegan Pete was just starting to make his cooking talents known to us, bringing along a homemade vegan pie that afternooon.  (And in those days we knew we needed to fight for proper funding of the NHS - though according to the Commonwealth Fund's 2017 healthcare rankings, just five years ago, the UK was still at the top of the table for excellence. Whereas this week one senior emergency medicine doctor described harrowing conditions in a department 'where five years ago we had 50 patients in handover at night, we now have 180'. Get angry).

Anyway, there to entertain us on that day in 2017, gamely even letting us run a competition to guess the height of that penalty miss by his dad at Highbury, was singer-songwriter Liam McClair.  And on Saturday ahead of the Whitby game he's back to give us more.  Catching a chill in Moston hasn't done Liam any harm as he has performed at the Isle of Wight Festival, sold out headline shows in Manchester at Gullivers and The Deaf Institute and supported Echo & The Bunnymen, Newton Faulkner, Blossoms, Circa Waves and other artists. Recently he's been improvising songs and making music during live streams on YouTube.  You can listen to his music at https://open.spotify.com/artist/4PeWmBKiHFnhgTA76ShAYf , and read more about him at https://www.liammcclair.com.

We're very pleased to be welcoming Liam back. We think he'll be pleased to have a stage to play on this time and - though we say it ourselves - a usually more than decent sound system.  We're also chirpy about being back for the New Year offering you all tater ash pies, cheese pies, peas in our time and muffins of an as yet undisclosed flavour.  Timings are of course fluid but get yourselves to our football ground on the 1pm free bus if not sooner, to hear Baz's introduction to 2023 - plus there are rumours of a speaker being on at around 1.45, and of special guest beers (Cloudwater Coming Home, Happy; and Blackjack Brew Pieces of the Sky) on tap under the SMRE which you'll definitely want to get in early to start supping.  See you there.