WHAT IS THE HATVENT CALENDAR?
This is the third year of PompeyChicken's Hatvent Calendar! It's a bit like an online Advent Calendar.
It's been inspired by the Innocent Drinks company who have been putting little woolen hats on their bottles of smoothies as part of The Big Knit, in aid of the charity Age UK.
You may have seen them on sale in Sainsbury's. PompeyChicken's family has been drinking a lot of smoothies again this year and each hat continues to be a perfect fit!
Two year's ago the Hatvent Calendar made connections between each hat and Pompey.
Last year underneath each hat PompeyChicken unveiled a favourite Pompey video clip.
This year he's been looking through the bookshelves to identify some of his favourite football books. Quite a few have a link to Pompey but not all.
You can read more about the Big Knit, which has been running since 2003, by clicking on the link at the end of this blog.
I hope you enjoy this year's Hatvent Calendar.
POMPEYCHICKEN'S HAT OF THE DAY
TODAY'S BOOK
This book is 'Who Ate All The Pies? The Life and Times Of Mick Quinn' published in 2003.
Quinn played for Pompey of course and was a part of the 1986-87 promotion winning team. He gives some fascinating insights into life at Fratton Park during that era both on and off the pitch. It doesn't make pretty reading.
Just to give you a flavour, in the chapter titled rather aptly 'The Dirty Dozen', Quinn writes the following: "...Going on an away fixture with Pompey...was like going on tour with seventies rock band Led Zeppelin: on the coach there would be tins of lager, barley wine, bottles of scotch - the works...Alan Ball once screamed...after one particularly drunken away trip 'I've created a Frankenstein's monster of a team!'...".
Chuckle. Pompey were pretty 'ugly' at times that's for sure.
There's plenty more of that in this book and although today it makes rather shocking reading, when I think back to that era I'd quite often see Pompey players in local pubs and clubs. That's just the way it was I guess. I never really thought anything of it.
One thing is certain - that team of the mid-to-late 1980s was 'my team'; the first Pompey team I started watching and supporting. On the whole they were a joy to watch, they played proper football.
They 'played hard' off the field and they had the same attitude on it. It was a team full of 'characters', not all nice ones either, and they knew how to look after themselves.
Mick Quinn was the final piece in the jigsaw to some extent, he was signed by Alan Ball towards the end of the 1985-86 season, the second successive season Pompey failed to gain promotion having gone so very close both times.
During his time at Fratton Park he scored 54 goals in 121 appearances for Pompey including 22 in the promotion winning campaign to the top flight of English football that the suffering Pompey fans had yearned for so long (28 years actually).
You can read more about this book on Amazon here ==> Who Ate All The Pies?
LAST YEAR'S HAT
Click on the following link to see the hat and video from one year ago ==> Hatvent Calendar 14th December 2011
WHAT IS THE BIG KNIT?
To find out more about Innocent Smoothies and the Big Knit you can click on the following link ==> The Big Knit
BlueThruAndThru
