strike and educate the fishes

As the top leagues here in Bonny Spain were on strike for the start of the season my boyfriend (in pic) and I thought (well mainly me he just got roped in) that the fishes around Barcelona could do with a wee bit of an education. 

Today's blog post comes from the match day programme of the 20th Aug 2011

Raith 1 - 1 Morton

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Paella and Bovril

Vilassar de Mar is a small costal town a short drive up the road from Barcelona and has been more famous than London riots the past few days here in Catalonia’s capitals as Vilassar de Mar famous son is coming home, (when I was wrtiting this Barca were 99.9% sure he was signing). Cesc Faregas has re-signed for the club he left at 16.  After a 3 year “will he won’t he?” he is coming home and the ubiquitous  Twitter played its part again with Carlos Puyol and Gerard Pique announcing a big “welcome home” to Cesc on the famous networking site.  I have to say I am not a big “tweeter”, I have been know to refer to those who tweet as “twitters” but my football, mainly Raith Rovers addiction will now be forever grateful to Twitter and its users.

I like my football, and love my Raith.  Being a 2,217 km, 23 hours 32 mins drive from Stark’s park or an less than budget airline flight from Barcelona to Edinburgh (only one company does a direct flight and they might even charge for the toilet soon!!), a “live” match is a rarity and an addict needs her fix and I mean a fix of good old Scottish banter and rain, not this classy footwork from Messi and co. Trust me living in Barcelona you can get too much of a good thing, if they could have more hours of coverage about Football Cub Barcelona in a day rather than the  pitiful 24/7 they  have now, they would!

Over the past few seasons the thousands of miles between Barcelona and Kirkcaldy have been made to feel a little less by the internet and at the end of last season I thought that it could not really get any better! I was going to see a live Dunfermline versus Raith title deciding fight-to-the-death derby! Dunfermline TV were allowing you to buy a “ticket” to view the match online! I was off; the next hour or so was spent hooking up the computer to the projector and surround sound system to the radio iPlayer so I could see and hear my beloved Raith in all their technological glory (my boyfriend still laughs about it today, “all this for Raith Rovers; a 3m x 2m screen and numerous speakers, it is only Scottish football not the world cup final” (he is paying for it now, I made him dive with a scarf for the photo!). Roll on 4pm local time, the locals were going to be in for a shock cause I am sure you could hear East End park in the East end of Barcelona! As I am sure you know the match did not go Raith’s way, but I had a great afternoon, not sure the neighbours did though nothing quiet like a bunch of loud Scottish Football fans to liven the place up! Footballing wise the end of last season maybe did not end on a high but my “iFan” experience did. Was this a taste of things to come……………? Not really, not for a fan of a smaller club.  But never mind I thought still have the radio on the computer for my fix.

Picture it, first day of the season and Raith are kicking off against Falkirk at home, I am tuned into the pre match build up and ready to wave my scarf at the kick off. And they are off………silence…..beep beep, “due to rights restrictions this programme is not available in your area”……..silence. NNNNNOOOOOOOOO. Disaster strikes. I am onto Facebook and websites in a flash why of where has it gone? For the past few seasons BBC’s “Open all mics” had been avaliable pretty much globally, I’ve heard of people getting up in the early hours around the world to listen to their team’s antics.  I discover it has been Geo-Blocked (can’t listen outside the UK). No warning, no reason, gone. Now I understand that TV buys the rights to the big games, but normally 3 o’clock on a Saturday was in the past, I thought, TV rights free.  Now I may only be speaking for myself but I would be happy to pay for a season listening to football, but whom can I buy it from? From what I can see if you ain’t in Scotland you ain’t getting our football.

But nobody panic, I was not completely without updates. I turned to the BBC sports pages, Facebook and club sites. No updates on the Raith home page and Facebook was being slow, dare I try it. Should I go and see if the “twitters” could keep me posted. After trying to remember the password I had used when I set up the account ages back, I was part of the twittershpere. And a happy little twit I was, Raith Rovers Live (@RaithRoversLive, thank you sooooo much!) was there to keep me up to date! All was forgiven Twitter and you twitters; you had the trump card of Raith up your sleeve to make me love you!

So I would like to thank all those who keep us iFans up to date and please keep up the good work.