Welcome to this week's Off the Ball, which has been well and truly Googled

So there I was, burning the midnight oil on my PC late one night, finishing off another OTB for you all. Having finally put the article to bed, and contemplating doing the same to myself, I suddenly had a thought (it happens occasionally, you know). One of those silly thoughts you get late at night (steady on, where's this going??). I closed down Word, called up Google, and, yes, I did a search on myself (oh come on, we've all done it!).

And guess what - yep, there I was! Lots and lots of Neil Coles, as many as you could ever want. Admittedly, the first one did turn out to be some sort of evangelist real estate agent in the States, and the second was an Australian MP who appears to have had some sort of mental breakdown and is now making heaps by flogging a book about it. Oh yes, and there was the comedian-turned-MTV presenter whose fan e-mails I used to get (true - I would frequently receive e-mails from teenage girls in Norway and the Netherlands telling me I was both hot and cool (not sure how I managed both at the same time, but there you go) and asking for pictures. Boy, did they have a disappointment coming.

Anyway, there, amidst all these Neil Coles who weren't me, was a reference to a match report between Cambridge United and Reading. At last, I thought, fame - I've made it to Google! So, naturally, I clicked on the item, cheeks glowing with a touch of pride, read it through, thought, 'yep, that was pretty good if I say so myself' in a self-satisfied kind of way, then remembered that I've never written a match report in my life, nor have I even seen Reading play. So if it wasn't me who wrote it, who was it?

Well, to cut a long story short, it turns out that I have a rival. Reading FC not only have our Dave Kitson, they also have a Neil Cole. Turns out he writes regularly for them. Not only that, he even takes part in their prediction league, just like our very own Moosenet Prediction League (only not as good, obviously).

So, lest anyone out there start thinking that I'm only pretending to follow Cambridge whilst actually being a spy from the Madjeski, let me assure you now that I have nothing to do with this other Neil Cole - not only have I never watched Reading, I've never even been to the place, and I certainly never received any brown envelopes after Big Dave's transfer!

However, by this time my curiosity was aroused and I did some further searches. It seems there's also another Off the Ball, this time on BBC Radio Scotland's website. Run by two dodgy-looking geezers called Stuart and Tam, it describes itself as "the most petty and ill informed radio show imaginable", though to its credit it does run a 'Splat the Player' feature where you get to blow up footballers' heads (sorry, heeds) in a version of Space Invaders.

I've also discovered an entire website called offtheball.co.uk (damn, why didn't I think of that?), which is dedicated to "satirical football information" (damn, why didn't I think of that too?). As far I can see, the only very slight drawback of the site is that, six months after its relaunch, it doesn't actually have any content whatsoever, but other than that it's quite good (ah, who needs to look anywhere other than here for biting satire, not to mention cheap sarcasm?).

However, the biggest thrill of all on Google these days is undoubtedly gained by visiting www.googlefight.com. This little feature allows you to type in any two sets of words, names or phrases you like, and then two stick men have a fight before the winning word or name is announced. It's actually based on how many Google hits each set of keywords attracts, but can lead to hours - well, minutes, anyway - of harmless fun. You can even create your own tournaments. As indeed, I did...

The Googlefight Cambridgeshire League
Having taken the best three teams in the county, plus Peterborough, and typed their names into Googlefight, here are the results: (getting excited yet?)

So a glorious triumph for Cambridge United, thanks to our fantastic following, immense popularity, and the cunning plan of adding FC to the name, thus avoiding us getting beaten by 'Boring and City! Incidentally, the word Peterboring actually picked up a respectable and rather pleasing 1,360 hits, though this was dwarfed by the 174,000 hits garnered by the phrase "Barry Fry is a Clown". Which leads nicely on to:

The Googlefight Cambridgeshire Football Personality of the Year
A straight clash here between Rob Newman and Barry Fry. As we've seen, "Barry Fry is a Clown" proved popular, but nowhere near as successful as "Rob Newman is a God" which polled a whopping 5,360,000 hits! (Though more worryingly, a typing error produced an almost-as-impressive 4,120,000 hits for the phrase "Rob Newman is a Dog").

However, in a straight head-to-head, there was no contest:

It's turning into a might of triumph for Cambridge!

The Cambridge United Googlefight Player of the Year
Clearly it was time to turn the might and power of Google onto our players. Having run every member of the current U's squad into Googlefight, the arguments are over and the results are in. And there could be some surprises in store:

It was a tough competition, with some fine individual performances, but here are the winners - in reverse order, step forward:

and the winner is... by a landslide, Stephen Smith with 104,000,000 hits! Congratulations Stephen!

Unfortunately Stephen can't be here to pick up his award in person, but has asked me to thank his parents, his family, his coach, all his friends and teachers, his girlfriend, the bloke down the road, Nelson Mandela, etc, etc...

In case you're wondering, by the way, how some of the others fared, here's the bottom of the table:

Tommy Jaszczun 959
Fola Onibuje 781
Robert Wolleaston 588
Mbiyeye Medine 261
Gavin Heeroo 174

Aw, bless…actually, Gavin Heeroo even lost out to the mysterious Gavin Onibuje, which brought all sorts of alarming images to mind.

Well, on that bombshell, that's it for this week. But before I go, I will leave you with this safe-as-houses prediction - I bet you'll all be logging on to Googlefight this week to see how you get on!

Late results just in
Results from this evening's late kick offs:

Any great Googlefight results? Nominations for awards? Fed up and want your money back? Drop us a line at the usual address, cufcofftheball@aol.com

Neil Cole

If you missed Neil's previous 'Off The Ball' columns, you can find them here

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The views expressed on this page are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Cambridge United Football Club or the webmaster.

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