It's Green, it's Green, in tangerine

Another positive week on HMS Piss The League. Imagine jumping ship to go and be Robbie Fowler's bag carrier in the Bonesaw Sportwashing League. Your loss, Francis.

Admin excelled once again on Monday. I’m not sure if Mark 'Fully Fitted' Kitching (cheers for that, Baz) and Alex Reid were meant to be Alas Smith and Jones or Statler and Waldorf, but it was top banter again. “I heard something about that, let’s see if there’s anything on Twitter, he’d better be good…it’s still not working, I though this hashtag was decent”. Hahahaha.

He is, indeed, decent. Gabriel Sutton responded to us announcing Charlie Raglan with “Blimey, that would’ve been a great signing in League Two!”. Which is exactly where we intend to be next year, Gabriel. Gloucester Live paid tribute to Raglan’s “historic spell at Cheltenham Town” a few weeks ago, highlighting his role in them winning the League Two title and achieving the two highest final league positions in their history. Don’t ever for a second get to thinking you’re irreplacable, Yarney.

Anyway, I said last week there was a kit launch coming and you might like it. Did you?

*record scratch*

*freeze frame*

Yup, that’s me and my colleagues posing with the new away shirt. You’re probably wondering how we ended up in this situation.

The club wanted to do something with the hospital to join in with the NHS 75th anniversary celebrations. Frank said at the takeover press conference that he wanted the club to be a part of the community and to be something that the people of Oldham could be part of, and things like this go a long way towards achieving that.

My mate Redmond, who’s our intensive care clinical director, and who you may remember carrying Clyde Wijnhard off the pitch at the Fans v Legends game at Avro, forwarded an email onto me late on a week last Monday, inviting Latics fans who work at the hospital to meet at the Chapel Gardens 9am the following day: “We are working with Oldham Athletic FC on the launch of their new away kit, and they would like you to see the kit and pose for photos. The kit hasn’t been seen by any other fans yet.” I texted Redmond asking “Reckon they’ll let you keep the shirt?”, to which he replied “There’s only one in the country so probably not!”. LOL. We might be massive for our level but our level is still the Vauxhall Conference.

So the following day we all take turns putting it on and having our photo taken in the garden, the photographer apologises for making us go out in the rain, saying “It seemed like a good idea when we came here last week and the sun was cracking the flags”. Never assume that it’s not gonna rain in Oldham, mate. The whole time the photographer was telling us we absolutely couldn’t take photos, we mustn’t tell people what the shirt looks like, it’s getting released next week, trade secrets etc etc. He was dead nice about it and said he’d forward the photos on.

Our maternity divisional manager was asking everyone for some details for the staff newsletter – name, how long you’ve supported Latics, interesting fact about yourself. When I told him my name he said, “I know your name, we must have exchanged emails” – seems reasonable. The only interesting fact I could think of was that I write this blog, to which he responded “oh that’s where I know you from! You write the potty-mouthed blog! I read that!” Don’t know what it says about how much effort I put into my paid job that he knows me from my obscene blog and not from having worked as a senior clinical coder at his hospital for 9 years. Hi, by the way, Andrew.

It was all lovely and shambolic and a great example of how far the club’s come in 12 months, from being on the road to oblivion and making stupid comments about the fans and putting out idiotic statements to being a proud part of the Oldham community again. I'm a bit gutted they didn't use the photo of Redmond in the shirt though. He brought his stethoscope to pose with and everything.

Anyway we finally get to do our talking on the pitch today. Isn't it weird to go to the first preseason friendly with a full squad, looking forward to checking out the new signings? Might see you at Hyde. Or you might see me after in the Prince of Orange by Ashton bus station, demanding they change their name to the Prince of Tangerine. KTMFF.

Written by Arlene Finnigan. Photos © Oldham Athletic.