Martin Penney

I felt a certain amount of trepidation before this one as soon as it was confirmed that Mike Dean would be in charge of VAR. I was as disappointed with that as my Spurs mate Nicky would have been to see the name Serge Aurier on the teamsheet. Factor in our woeful record in the […]

Phew! When Paul Tierney blew that final whistle on Saturday the relief was audible, tangible and celebrated by absolutely every Canary in the ground. To me this was encapsulated by Tim Krul and Todd Cantwell enjoying the most heartfelt man-hug since Oliver Reed grappled with Alan Bates in Ken Russell’s Women in Love. At least […]

Well, that was always going to be a little bit too predictable wasn’t it? I deliberately didn’t put a personal score guess into the MFW Man Utd preview for just that reason. We’ve been described almost everywhere in the media as “poor” on Saturday and with pretty good reason from what I’ve seen and heard. […]

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. Step forward the great yellow and green hope as in Adam Idah, who scored the coolest hat-trick you’ll ever see. And on a first NCFC start to boot. The stuff of dreams for him and the source of hope for the rest of us. Our youngest hat-trick merchant of […]

Phew! There were some pretty powerful and heartfelt comments on Gary’s article yesterday – all of which I very much enjoyed reading. I’ll return to that later but first a few words about the match itself. Personal circs dictated that I couldn’t attend, which is a real rarity for me, so I loaned my season […]

It’s not football any more and that’s for sure. There was not a single person in Carrow Road, including referee Kevin Friend and his assistants, who thought Teemu Pukki was offside from the assist of the season courtesy of Mario Vrancic. Then some c*ckwomble many miles away in Stockley Park behind a TV screen said […]

I don’t normally deal in prologues, which are best left to Frankie Howerd and Geoffrey Chaucer, but this is an exception. Following on from Gary G’s article yesterday and the excellent appraisal of Martin Peters courtesy of Mick Dennis, I feel I have to. 2017 was a year bemoaned by music writers and fans alike […]

My next door neighbour in Mundesley, Matt, is pretty much like-minded to myself in that he watches Match of the Day either on Saturday night or Sunday morning and then takes his dog out to do the a.m. canine things. Yesterday morning on Mundesley Rec, Oscar the beagle and Geezer the Patterdale terrier discussed their […]

My old man was a great lover of both westerns and epics such as Ben Hur and the one about Moses. These always had either Charlton Heston or Kirk Douglas in them – and no I don’t mean Spartacus. The Moses one was called something else I cannot now remember. One of these aforementioned epics […]

We often notice on MFW that many of our readers love a debate about whether it’s better for us to watch our beloved club in the Championship or the Premier League. I reckon Sunday’s enthralling encounter surely saw the old swingometer tilting even more in favour of the Prem, and that’s always been my personal […]

I have always been one of those folks who tries to negotiate his way around the football world without wearing blinkers in that I love nattering about the game to anybody, irrespective of who they support. Maybe it’s my historical circumstance that dictates this attitude. If you’re born into a family of West Ham fans, […]

When Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 she kicked off a bit of a trend. Georgian, and later Victorian, folks had a great fear of being quite literally buried alive, so insisted they were interred with a cord around their wrist and a bell on the surface that they could tug on, hoping somebody, […]

It seems a strange thing to say as we are in the Premier League doldrums, but have we ever felt more appreciated as supporters? We have a situation in which the Canaries Trust, Proud Canaries, Along Come Norwich, the Barclay End Project and maybe other organised supporters’ groups I’m not aware of are treated with […]

Yes folks, it’s yet another international break so this time round MFW thought we’d ask our readers which has been your favourite Norwich City match and, as ever, why. Of course, your favourite match may not even involve City at all as I’ll delve into later. Anyway, to give plenty of scope to all of […]

When I was a sixth former I had to read many “classic” books of English literature, several of which I could barely finish and very few that I actually enjoyed reading. As I trooped long-faced out of Carrow Road on Friday night a section of one of these returned from the past to hit me […]

This was supposed to have been one of my two away matches this season. I would have met my Brighton-dwelling friends, sat in with them at the game and enjoyed a good old natter about the football afterwards and a meal, scrounged a bed for the night and returned home early on the Sunday morning. […]

Number one son and I went to the UEA to see a Swedish progressive metal band on Sunday night. They are called Opeth and were absolutely brilliant. They exceeded our expectations and went down a storm. Opeth’s strength is light and shade. The riffs and fills were very heavy while the keyboards and vocals provided […]