Miners, ministers and munchies



Gosh it seems like a life time since I last served up a Paella and Bovril! I have been trapped by the wonderful world of work and have been out of contact with the real world for what feels like years! 
To those who are new to Paella and Bovril or a thinking of trying this a a football blog, but a wee bit different. Even if you are not a fan of the mighty Raith Rovers you will still love this blog!
This weeks wee serving is another blast from the past and will contain a "letters from Barcelona" from last seasons match day programme against Stirling Albion.
The summer leading up to this letter home was filled with the stories of the Chilean miners! 

Hope you enjoy this week side serving of Paella and Bovril!

PLEASE SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL MATCH DAY PROGRAMME!


Letters from Barcelona

Summer is drawing to a close here in Barcelona. My tan is now just a few freckles and I have swapped the t-shirts for a jumper. It is still 22 by mid-day most days. I have swapped my morning cup of cold orange juice to a nice good, warm cup of tea. 
The other morning the internet was playing up so we were without our usual fix of BBC Radio 4 morning news. So we had the Spanish T.V news on.  Not a normal state of morning affairs so had to pay a little more attention to the stories. Then one jumped out of the usual stories of “the crisis” and politics, “The president of Chile scored the winning goal”.  A president scoring a goal, had I misunderstood? A world leader playing in a football match and scoring? I was sure my Spanish had let me down.  I made another cup of tea and sat down to concentrate on the story when it came on again.  I listened, and yes, I was right, a President had scored a goal. He was playing against a group of very famous miners.
So not only did the world famous rescue story have happy ending, it also had a game of football, ok a 16 a side, 40-minute match, but a football match none the less.
The Miners, captained by 53-year-old Frank Lobos, who played for Chile's national team in the 1980s, played the Rescuers, who had the Chilean president, Sebastian Pinera, as captain and several political ministers in the team.
To make the game extra interesting, the teams had made a bet, the winners of the match would return to the presidential palace, and the losers would go back down the mine.  They said they would rescue them again!
The Miners went 2 nil up early on, and held onto this lead at the break. Unfortunately they were beaten 2-3, the winning goal scored by the president himself.
A genuine good news story was made better for me by adding a little bit of football.  
If our Members of Parliament decided to have a wee kick about in a National stadium, dressed in full football attire. Ready to play in front of thousands. Would we cheer them on? Maybe even see the Prime Minister score the winning goal.  Or, would we hide away in embarrassment?
Maybe we should be asking our local MPs, SMPs and council members to look out the old gym shorts, pull up their socks and play a little friendly game of football.

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