Sunday, July 3

Solomon Islands Irons

My fellow WHU fans Matt and Nigel might call themselves groundhoppers, but they will struggle to match this. We have just visited the Lawson Tama Stadium in Honiara, the national stadium of the Solomon Islands, and seen a schoolboy futsal tournament in the sports hall next door.

SI players are skilful, have plenty of dribbling ability and like a tackle. The best have moved on to play in Fiji, Papua New Guinea and Australia and WHU could do worse than get a scout over to the Pacific. The greatest result in SI history was a 2-2 draw away to Australia in the World Cup qualifies of 2004, ensuring SI played Oz in an Oceania group play-off, resulting in huge parties back in Solo. This helped to unite the country after ethnic unrest had resulted in 200 deaths and the intervention of the the Australasian military peacekeeping force of RAMSI (Regional Assistance to the Solomon Islands).

There are already some West Ham links in the Solomons as we've discovered a school called Allardyce (long ball studies compulsory) on the island of Isabel.

There's even a West Ham fan in Honiara. Back in the early 1990s I took Arthur Wate, now number two on the Solomon Star, to West Ham versus Wimbledon. A 3-1 win and goals from Super Johnny Hartson and Eyal Berkovic made him a convert.

Indeed, Solomon pidgin seems particularly suited to discussing West Ham's fortunes. Avram Grant hem nomas good. Robbie Keane hem makem me karange for good now...

3 comments:

matt said...

Nigel would certainly be jealous - I am not a groundhopper myself, despite all those games in the Faroe Islands, Lanzarote, Highland League etc...

You will be pleased to hear it has been another quiet week at WHU, with just the odd allegation of corruption over the Olympic Stadium bid, various employees suspended, threats to take legal action against Spurs, The Sunday Times and lots of other people, speculation about the whole bid being re-opened....Is that Australasian military peacekeeping force busy at the moment? I think we might need them....

Pete May said...

tessedJust seen the BBC report about this and it all sounds very John Le Carre with alleged double agents everywhere. But I'm all for suing those litigious bastards at Spurs...

Hope to view Solomon Islands v Vanuatu on Thursday...

matt said...

Soloman Islands v Vanuatu? If you go to that I will be jealous.

It is not looking likely that the the Olympic Stadium bidding process will have to be re-opened, and while the whole thing looks bad for us, the currently climate of phonehacking makes it probably even worse for Spurs - in fact it could be the worst own goal since the Football Genius at Millwall (speaking of whom, our game at their gaff has been moved on police advice to about 5am).

Interesting picture special on training on the Club website that carefully mentions every single senior pro still on the books - other than Carlton Cole (apart from O'Neill who is injured). Which rather suggests he is off, but the likes of Boa Morte, Faubert and Ilunga are staying.