Letter from America

... or from Flint to Foster City (or thereabouts)

Hello, good evening, and welcome, to use the opening line of David Frost's never-popular gameshow "Through The Keyhole".

Firstly, I'm relieved to hear that the club is sticking with Men of Harlech as the team's signature tune. For one awful moment I thought we were going to end up with No Limit by 2 Unlimited. It may be just me, but I think playing a band singing "No" twelve times in succession is not the best start a team can have as they prepare to take the field. However, I must admit that I do like the chorus' general empathy with Word War II fighter pilot Douglas Bader trying to fly with no legs:

No no limits, we'll reach for the sky!
No valley to deep,
No mountain too high,
No no limits, won't give up the fight!
We do what we want and we do it with pride

I think that the "reach for the sky" bit is a nice mantle to hang round Wing Commander Bader's neck being, as it is, the title of the film about his life, starring Kenneth More. So, the song itself does have one redeeming feature. However, saying "No" twelve times in succession into somebody's head through amplified speakers must surely have some sort of detrimental effect, don't you think? (A bit like all of the recordings ever made by Billy Ray Cyrus). Anyway, it's nice to see that most fans have said NO to "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no ,no ,no, no there's no limit!". In fact, in a poll on the RP web-site, out of the 162 fans who voted, 105 wanted to stick with Men of Harlech, while only 57 wanted a new signature tune.

Speaking of the web-site, I now have an able assistant, Mark Williams. As well as being one of RP's audio match reporters, Mark is now in charge of RP's WAP and Web TV sites (www.buzzed.co.uk/?redpassion and www.red-passion.com/tv), and is also looking after our Carling Opta Stats service and the whole on-line matchday experience, which Mark has called "Red Passion Match Day". "Red Passion Match Day" will include match previews, stats, results and audio match reports. Mark's assistance has enabled me to launch other on-line services like "Red Passion Scoreflash", which will be launched on August 12th. "Red Passion Scoreflash" allows you to receive the latest scores and scorers direct to any ordinary mobile phone absolutely free of charge. So if you don't have access to TV, radio, Teletext, or the Internet on matchdays, you can still follow the Reds via text messages delivered to your mobile phone.

However, if you have a WAP-enabled mobile phone, palmtop, or PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) you can take advantage of RP's extended service on our WAP site. WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) is a new language designed for mobile phones, palmtops, PDAs and 2-way pagers. WAP (sometimes referred to as Mobile Internet) sites work differently from normal web- sites, they use different languages and also require special servers and WAP gateways. RP's Online's WAP-site, launched earlier this year, was one of the first dedicated to a Nationwide League football club. So if you have a WAP-enabled mobile phone, palmtop, or PDA, you can keep abreast of all the latest news, scores and gossip, from anywhere in the world, by going to: www.buzzed.co.uk/?redpassion (Please note that the Red Passion Online WAP-site won't work in the web browser of a normal computer - you must use a WAP-enabled device).

Robins fans living abroad also have another valuable weapon in their arsenal this season - BBC Radio Wales have now started broadcasting live over the Internet. So you can now tune into BBC Radio Wales at: www.bbc.co.uk/wales/live/rwv5.ram using RealPlayer.com's RealPlayer software, and hear the Robins "reach for the sky".

Cheers

Gareth Collins