I'm quite good at doing pub quizzes, not answering the questions, setting them. I've been doing it for years. I guess I was a bit nervous at first, but over time much like anything else, if you stick at it you become better. These days I kid myself that the whole thing is quite entertaining, that people actually enjoy doing "my" quizzes. Secretly, I've got this little ambition that when I stop running pubs, I'll keep doing quizzes. Maybe I could have a little side-hustle doing a couple of nights a week to pay for a few beers when I've retired. I could maybe go round old folks homes for free of an afternoon, cheer em up a bit and have a giggle with them.
It's not much to have on your gravestone "He did a bloody good quiz as it happens", but at least it's something. It's my little thing, I really like doing a quiz.
My guess is that Ivor was a bit like that with the Man of the match presentation. He did it every time I went to watch Wimbledon at Kings Meadow, long before I was an actual fan. I love football, would quite happily watch two kids teams if I had the time, and on the odd occasion I took the kids to an AFC Wimbledon game, Ivor embodied (to me) what the club was all about. He doesn't (in the nicest possible way) look like your average compere, and he certainly doesn't talk like one. Just like being able to have a beer in the clubhouse and tell an actual player that he'd done well made me fall in love with it, so did the funny little bloke doing the Man of the Match too. I loved the food kiosk doing hot chips that burnt your fingers, the stewed tea served in two plastic cups which just about meant you could carry it. I squirted on the shite ketchup from the big catering bottles with glee, all of it reminding me of when I was a kid and used to go watch Scarborough with my brother. We cleared the snow off the pitch once to get the game on, me and my brother Tony. There was a picture on the front of the local paper. We had these bobble hats on that my Mum had knitted, it was probably fifty years ago and I remember it like it was yesterday. There'll be kids going to AFC Wimbledon games now that'll say the same in half a century.
Time moves on though doesn't it? They've got a plastic pitch at Scarborough now, you can probably clear the snow with a golf buggy fitted with an ingenious front attachment. It doesn't even snow like it used to, time moves on.
Time moves on at AFC Wimbledon too, and so it should. Ivor isn't any more the commercial director bod now, he's moved on and become a freeman of Merton borough. I know him enough to say hello to, not much more, but he deserves that acolode no doubt. What he and the other founding fathers of the club did has enriched my life at least, whatever else they've achieved.
I like it at AFC Wimbledon that even though time has moved on, a certain Marc Jones still designs our kit. He does a brilliant job, does it for free too, so why replace him? Similarly some people who Im lucky enough to consider friends, Graham Price, Xavier Wiggins, Danny Norris etc (I know there are countless others) give THEIR time for free and do brilliant work as well. Why on earth would we pay someone else for the incredible expertise they bring (we couldn't afford it anyway) when they do it for free? It would be nuts.
And back to Ivor. Why would we pay someone to do the man of the match when he did it so well, for free? Now I'm acutely aware that I pour pints for a living and have literally no knowledge of the behind the scenes stuff, the politics and all that. For all I know there might be excellent reasons why the change has been made. Equally, I'm aware that perhaps it's not appropriate to make that reasoning public.
See, I wouldn't ask the question on the blog (I'd stay schtum forever) were it not the case that I was told a few weeks ago that Ivor WAS coming back to do it. I was told by a prominent person at the club, to my face. Since then, I've asked around and that appears NOT to be on the agenda. So am I being fobbed/mugged off, and if so why?
Honesty and transparency, they are things.
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