Fixtures

The fixtures for the new football league season were released today. Wycombe start at home to Morcambe before trekking to Chester on the second weekend of the season. Exeter at home and Gillingham away over Christmas and Notts County at home on the last day of the season. Not bad, but it's all a bit underwhelming. When you could have been playing Leeds United and Leicester, home games with Bury and Barnet seem less attractive somehow.

I guess that's how if feels to support wycombe wanderers at the moment. it's too soon yeh? I still see Liam Dickinson firing stockport into the play off final in May i still see Tommy treading on the ball and Leon not getting back quick enough, and then, in a moment, the season's gone. We'll never look as beautiful as we did heading up the M6 that day. Not for a while at least.

Recently another set of fixtures were released as well. ECU Pirates start away at Virginia Tech and then at home to Virginia, they play at UAB in Alabama on the Thanksgiving weekend, and finish off at home to UTEP (no idea who they are). Those are their Conference USA games anyway, there are some 'Bowl' games as well apparently. I don't really know what they are, but i do know ECU won the Sheraton Bowl away in Hawai'i last season. Now thats an away game i could get excited about...surely i deserve a trip there after all my away games to Mansfield and Rotheram!

Here's the nub though. I don't really understand the different between the C-USA games and the Bowl games. I can sit and tell you why i think the late 20s early 30s Wycombe team was better than the team of the fifties, but not the seventies team. How i'll always be biased towards the early nineties team because i grew up watching them. I can also give you a little parenthesis about how interesting it is that Wycombe's glory years coincide with the best periods of English domestic football (fifties, seventies and nineties) whereas the eighties were generally a horrible write off ( we were awful in the eighties).

So when it comes to sporting life in eastern North Carolina, i haven't much got a clue. Everything's different. Even North Carolina's one pro football team (Carolina Railhawks) have a section in their websites FAQ entitled 'what happens if it rains?' They 'play on' apparently. Well yeh. And they play somewhere called the SportsMed Park or some sort of other silly franchised name. So everything different. Apart from one thing. The Gospel.

Hey, people in North Carolina still need to be called to repentance, still need to be baptised, still need to gather with other believers for worship and instruction. The Gospel's still true. People get squeamish about the Gospel. They'll say that we can't possibly call people all over the world, in every tribe, tongue and nation to believe on Jesus. How western, how white. How Republican. But, Reading or Washington, RG1 or 27889, the Gospel is true, Jesus is the only way to the Father, and people need to hear about it. Jesus is still providentially ruling for His glory and His people's joy.

What hope, what joy, what security we endanger when we think about throwing out the uniqueness of Jesus. What silliness.