CYCM. Sisters, brothers, red, white and black...

CYCM. Sisters, brothers, red, white and black"¦

Firstly and secondly, and not saying which is more important than the other because they are both the same and cannot be divided"¦.

Congratulations firstlysecondly to the Margy’erines for that last minute comeback against the Clarts. In conversation with the joke-telling-challenged-one he said "The day felt like a win."?? From what we could see from the height of the windows of malcolmses the crowd felt so too. It bordered on a Quorn. We saw Rigga fall on someone. That could never be good for the fallee.

And firstlysecondly to Vinny ’Angry of Longsight’ Thompson and the thankless-thankless-we-don’t-do-it-for-thanks-we-do-for-love volunteers who built the day over the last few months and got us to that 3348 crowd. Carden’s performance on the turf mirrored the efforts off it. It was a true spectacle to see the forecourt rammed and boingy. A little bit of Manchester once again travelled to the wrong end of the tramlines.

It’s not always going to happen, we’re in the Unibond, we’re going to have long, arduous-mid-season moments, but went it does like it did on Saturday, the talented women and men we have at this club of ours make you feel privileged to be part of it. A fantastic, inspiring day and for once over this unlucky season the elements were with us. No epoxy resin is stronger, no splinter strong enough, to fracture the good will that permeates through us all.

Sisters, brothers, red, black and white.

Fraternally yours,

The CYCM oddies.


CYCM. The Stately homeless"¦

Malcolmses has been designated to play its small part in paying the matchday expenses. It’s needed for that. It does its bestestist for that. If you don’t pay the rent, you end up in a midden. If you’ve not got a home, however temporary, then it’s no use getting any glo-white for your nets as you have no windows to put the nets in. So why bother glo-white’ing them? Unless you really just like glo-white’ing nets.

However, the key word in that last paragraph, which you’d think would be glo-white, is in actual fact ’temporary.’ No one in Malcolmses ever loses sight of the absolute necessity to build that Development Fund. We have been designated as part-rent-payers to keep us alive today for a better day in a bit.

We keep the presence and importance of the Development Fund alive and mithering in our confines. The simplicity of three-enormous-25-person-bowls of tater hash earning a tenner for the DF just by walking through the door by the power of the Tater Hash Tenner is made possible only because of the dedicated band of tater hash tenner’ers.

Please step forward now please the Development Fund gameshow that is
’Look at the size of my sacks.’ In conditions not conducive to it being a success
’Look at the size of my sacks,’ was. We suspect it is going to be far more successful when Reds understand just what the good jesus it is on about. It raised £43 quid on Saturday.

In the briefest description possible, with apologies to those who read the CYCM preview for the Bamber Bridge game, ’Look at the side of my sacks’ involves"¦

• Ritual humiliation of the porky person involved, as the audience get him on stage and look at the size of his sacks. In a good, comradely way obv. This week it was Oche Youth. The audience admired the self-effacing, humility of Oche Youth as he allowed himself to be a fundraiser by way of his poor, if somewhat expansive, diet and distinct lack of exercise. The Oddies cannot thank you enough youngster for being the first Malcolmses attender to be brave enough to do so. The enormous round of applause you received as you left the stage was warm, well meant and generous. You will go down in history as the first.
• The game show also needs two sacks full of empty bottles.
• A set of bathroom scales.
• The audience being pre-mithered by Lynette ’the-librarian-with-malice’ Cawthra
• The audience guess what the porky fella and the two sizeable sacks are going to weigh. Lynette ’the-belt-sander-librarian-who-you-would-think-would-accept-a-no-thanks-not-today-from-you-but-from-our-knowledge-never-has’ Cawthra has noted in her book what your think the size of the sacks will be in stones and pounds. We’re not being unprogressive, we’re just not good at KGs.
• The closest to guessing wins £22 worth of fare from behind malcolmses bar. This, we feel, equates to a fine future day of freemans beer and nosebag for the winner.
• It is a backdoor way of introducing a name-card-game-of-chance without actually having to put ’Aldershot’ or ’Stoke’ on a football name card and not feeling good about yourself afterwards.

On Saturday the lowest guess was that Oche Youth, together with his two enormously overflowing sacks, would weigh 12 stone 7. The highest guess was 22 stone something. It was 20 stone 2 pounds. However at the next Saturday home game against Newcastle don’t think you have got the measure of events. The chance element comes in the discriminate size of the sacks chosen by Saint Liz behind the bar.

Liz is the, as yet Vatican-sanctioned, patron saint of Mrs Robinson’ness therefore her word is avowed. Also we’ll be changing the person whose sacks we are going to be looking at the size of each week. It’s an audience participation/inclusion thing.

But all this is leading to the success on Saturday of the Ancoats cider. From five bottles of Manchester’s first ever, and only ever, cider we raised £263 for the DF.
Thank you to all those who took a swallow.

Also the limited edition of 22 X 2 CYCM t shirts were all effectively paid for on Saturday. This raised £244 for the DF. Thank you to the manufacturer for being beaten into a competitive price and for all those who were willing to walk around with ’FC United of Manchester. Awkward xxxxx. CYCM, where love is the licensee’ or ’Anyone who knows anything about football, knows that football isn’t about football. Anyone who doesn’t know that knows nothing about football. CYCM, where love is the licensee’ written at a jaunty angle down the side of their chest.

We make that £560 pounds collected on Saturday for the DF. Thank you again to all those involved. Anyone who wants to fill in a standing order form for the DF and hasn’t got around to it now has the ideal opportunity as Lynette has been designated as chief DF dosh gatherer within malcolmses. Lynette deserves special, special praise because without her own special brand of refined aristocratic cheekiness, where just by the virtue of saying ’one must’ or ’forsooth’ alot, she manages to beat a few bob out of you without you realising it. In many cases you finish up thanking her and you’re not quite sure how. Thanks specky. They are, I just did it again.

Fraternally yours

The CYM odd carriers.



CYCM. The price of nothing and the value of everything"¦

When the oddies first got together, a few meeting each other for the first time, we all came to an agreement. The agreement was that we would try to build something that would enhance the match going experience. If it was any good and worth having, we agreed, then the profit was not important. Being there and doing something right was the basis on which this football club was built. Therefore a tidgey operation within in it had to carry that proud ethos.

We saw the importance of music in all our, and Manchester’s life, and that no other club would be doing what we were doing. We were the first, we remain the first, we remain the only ones doing what we are doing. And that is we are marrying football and new, original live music before every game as music and football were meant to be married. And we’re throwing in pre-turn-turn culture of poets, comedians, theatre groups, book launches etc before that. And Irwell-when-it-needs-sandbags-at-the-side-of-it portions of beer.

It’s with great honour then, and with apologies to your livers, to state that you made Malcolmes a record breaking Malcolmses on Saturday in paying the landlord. For the first time ever we broke through the ’bag of sand’ barrier and raised - after all stock costs were taken out - £1,155. 75. CYCM, it’s yours and it’s been proven different. And in its difference - and as a lovely side issue - it’s profitable. Profit was never its main drive. And therein for many of us, lies a part insight into the beauty of this football club and this thing of ours. Deliciously different. We’re here, because we’re here.

However, three things have to be mentioned. The first thing is due to unfortunate, unfortunate circumstances the band played a couple of songs at halftime. There was a clamour for an encore. The team wasn’t on the pitch at this point and so we let them have a third song because they were so popular. The team came out just as it started. Just as the band finished the microphone was hogged and everyone was told to get out and support their team as quickly and as loudly as possible. Our club is paramount. That’s why bands only play the famous 22 minutes in deference to the amount of players about to take the pitch and to the amount of players in the two Uniteds but the soul is one. Deference and respect is written into everything we attempt to do. However, we - because sometimes we’re a bit dim - forgot about noise leakage into the stand. That won’t happen again. But you knew that anyway.

The second thing that has to be mentioned is we ran out of beer. Theoretically. Jo and Liz found one bottle of Night Owl hiding in the corner after you’d all gone. So theoretically we didn’t run out of beer. Just because we didn’t sell it you is just semantics.

Also we were light on the day by two crates of Staropramen which was the deliverers fault. We all know that the 1994 side would have won the European cup if we could have fielded a proper team. It was the same in our supposed loss on Saturday. If we had been able to play the beer-team we wanted then you would have tasted defeat yet again.

Having said that in a show of respect, the lad who talked to me at the end and who we think posted on the messageboard as ’The funkster deluxe’ deserves that bottle of Night Owl for freemans as his post about your free flowing forward, attacking set up is true and very funny. And good comedy should always be rewarded. However, don’t get to giddy you lot as, yes you are becoming a foe to sort of be reckoned with "¦ but "¦ only in a ’We beat Anderlecht 10-0 in 1956’ and you’ve sort of gone to ’We beat Cassy Gabs 10-2 in 2006’ sort of a way. We do, more than seldom, score ten against you.


The third thing that has to be mentioned is the ’Go back to May the 11th 2005, we bet you’d never thought you’d hear yourself saying that’ sentence of the day. Against Bamber Bridge it was:"¦

" Would the last one out of Malcolmses please take the spoon out of the door."??

Please free to tell us your ’Go back to May the 11th 2005, we bet you’d never thought you’d hear yourself say that’ sentence of the day and we shall print it.

Sisters, brothers, red, black and white thank you and see you all on the 15th of March against Newcastle when we’re putting together a bit of a Holt’s day. No Holt’s lager obv as it taste like chilblains.

Fraternally yours

The CYCM odd carriers.