Spain joke rebounds on Avenue

10:56pm Friday 1st August 2008

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I thought I’d push the boat out this week as the weather has perked up and do the column from the company yacht.

The sun’s dazzling in the sky and there’s a gentle breeze coming from the starboard bow as we gently circumnavigate the Bahamas.

Oh yes, and Sharon Stone is feeding me grapes while I type.

Hang on a minute. Oi, Shazza, thought I’d told you before to make sure they were seedless.

You just can’t get the staff these days. Anyway, where was I? Oh yes, waking up and realising that it was all complete guff.

The nearest I’ll get to personal service of any kind will be a coffee from a grudging sports-desk colleague. If I’m lucky.

But it breaks up the monotony of everyday life with these flights of fancy.

Some, it seems, take it even further and head for the land of make believe on their pre-season tour.

Which brings me in a rambling way to the summer shenanigans involving Park Avenue and the “did they, didn’t they” matches in Spain.

Some will say that all publicity is good publicity. In which case, news of their sojourn abroad has earned Avenue superb exposure across the country.

I bet the club haven’t been mentioned on national radio since they crashed out of the league nearly 40 years ago. Now, thanks to a little bit of creative thinking – and writing – their exploits have been plastered all over.

To recap for those living on Venus – or should that be Benus – Avenue trumpeted a two-game tour of Spain last month.

The club website carried reports from both matches against what they described as challenging opponents.

Rory Patterson, a newly-arrived striker, was even meant to have notched a hat-trick. Following on from their promotion, it was all good, positive stuff.

If only it had been true.

Patterson, it emerged, had not even gone on the trip. He only became aware of his “goal- scoring heroics” when a fan from his previous club rang up to congratulate him.

Cue red faces all round for Avenue who reluctantly gave their version of events when pressed by this paper earlier in the week.

Yes, they had played two games abroad but perhaps the standard of the teams they were up against wasn’t what it claimed to be on the label – or on the website. They were more Sunday morning teams, admitted an embarrassed director, perhaps more a Diego and Duck XI than Real Madrid then?

Yes, there had been a Patterson in the squad. But it might not have been Rory ...

Their Spanish adventure has turned out to be as genuine as El Dorado.

But the club’s explanation did omit one small word. ‘Sorry’ would have been nice.

Sorry to the paper and the public for publishing blatantly wrong information. And, more importantly, sorry to the Avenue fans for dragging the club’s name through the mud.

It has been described as a bit of a jape by some. Well it wasn’t particularly funny.

The fact the club took so long to come clean – and only then after some digging by suspicious supporters on internet forums – reflects pretty poorly all round.

The paranoid Petes among Avenue’s fanbase claim this is all a witchhunt by “outsiders” determined to bring their club down. It’s nothing of the sort.

This has been a pretty shabby episode whichever club had been involved.

Owner Bob Blackburn has big ambitions for Avenue with talk of back-to-back promotions and a move to a new purpose-built ground at Thornbury. He is a man of action and intends to drag the club forward after too long in the football backwater.

Accrington Stanley and Aldershot have come back from the dead to return to the Football League. Avenue would give their right arm to do the same.

This week’s events have cast the club as a laughing stock – and not just locally.

Some will insist the media are just making a mountain out of a molehill and it will all be forgotten when the season is underway. But there will be many who are not so forgiving.

How can people trust anything Avenue say next when their own official mouthpiece, the club’s website, is reporting fiction as fact.

Nearly a week on from this story going public and the match reports from Spain are still on there.

And I always thought it was just newspapers who were supposed to make things up. We all enjoy day-dreaming. But don’t get fantasy confused with reality.

Now Sharon, be a darling and fetch us one of those juicy green ones ...