Back in Blighty

I’ve had such an amazing time in Thailand and my last week has been a bit of a whirlwind so the blogging went on hold but here’s a round up of MUTV’s last week in Thailand & Bryan’s second in the job.

On our trip we have witnessed at various times throughout the night four United matches, firstly the win over Bolton to put United top of the table, the Champions league table topping win over CSKA with that late goal from Valencia making sure that United did take all three points which unfortunately wasn’t the case against Liverpool, watched in a beach bar amongst both sets fans which made for very interesting viewing! We may have been thousands of miles away but there was no getting away from the utterly disappointing defeat. It was soon forgotten as the youngsters put on a show in the Carling Cup against Barnsley to brighten up both the damp weather & spirits.
The famous date changing FA Cup Final, finally took place & was not quite the FA cup final I thought it might be. The ‘big’ sides had all been knocked out so think of a final along the likes of Fulham v Stoke, for this reason, It was unfortunately not held in the impressive 55,000 Rajamangala National Stadium because of the low expected crowd numbers and it didn’t in fact half fill the 35,000 capacity old stadium either, but like every game we’ve been to the fans more than made up for that in noise.

Pre match preparations were slightly alternative, the national team bus (which is the home to the driver, yes he actually lives on the bus) broke down on the way several times with the much needed air con completely cutting out on us. The breakdown happened on the way to a hospital where the much loved King was recovering from illness, all the team including myself were invited to sign a book to wish him well, certainly a book signing with a difference. Pre match entertaining consisted of the boys & Bryan being taken from the hospital to a backstreet near the stadium to eat ‘roadside’ of which we paid the equivalent of 80p. There was so much more to Bangkok and our experiences of the city but there’s simply too much to write about, you'll have to watch the documentary for more. Despite the jokes from colleagues about going on 'holiday' to Thailand for 2 weeks I can assure you we worked hard spending everyday on a different shoot, sometimes with a lot of waiting around but all were great fun, particularly the Smirnoff events arranged by Manchester United’s official spirits partner, although I’m afraid we didn’t get much of a chance to drink any! The final part of our journey was enjoyed on the beautiful island of Phuket which played host to the four team Phuket Kata tournament and Bryan’s first game in charge of Thailand which ended in a 2-0 win over Myanmar champions Yadanarbon in the first match. My cameraman Ash and I embraced the rain, Robbo & his players braced themselves for another ghastly pitch and despite the conditions the side won a place in the final with a 2nil victory.

This was played against Vietnamese champions Hoang Anh Gia Lai on another very sloppy pitch which made life difficult for both sides with the Vietnamese boys losing a two goal lead taking the game to a penalty shoot out with Robson’s side successfully converting all seven of their penalty kicks to win the game! Celebration was done in front of a disappointing crowd however, with only about 1000 people braving the weather for the final.


Despite the rain, the Island was beautiful & our hotel almost paradise minus the mosquito’s, I do have a sweet tooth & am wondering if this is the reason why I seem to be so tasty…I have been bitten to death. By far the highlight of our trip was meeting a Buddhist monk who had the most amazing story to tell about his love for Manchester United and his dedication to football. He lives in a temple in Phang Nga north of Phuket and Bryan felt it important to pay him a visit as he’s known as the football monk and has raised funds for a very special project indeed. When the Tsunami struck in 2004 it took with it the hugely successful & popular Goalkeeper for the Thailand national women’s team whom the monk had supported both spiritually and with money over the years in her career. In memory he bought and built a football pitch on a piece of land at the back of the temple for local children to enjoy and to help bring together the children of different religions & backgrounds. He has dedicated his life to raising funds for the pitches upkeep & equipment and the temple even housed its own trophy room for all the youngsters achievements in tournaments over the years.

Our friend the Monk remained quietly in the background throughout our mornings filming but when he did speak he was proud to announce his all-time greatest hero was not Bryan Robson but Norman Whiteside, when we told him we would send a signed photo, his face lit up nearly as brightly as his robes.


I leave Thailand knowing the National side is in very safe hands and safe in the knowledge that our taxi driver in Phuket will be making his daily 5am jog round the mountains of Panwa Bay in an Accrington Stanley shirt (courtesy of Ash) & that there’s a monk who may even just slip on his signed Bryan Robson shirt & pray that that the national side one day may just qualify for the World Cup finals (although I think it'll take more than one monks prayers I'm afraid).

Our journey in Thailand has come to an end but for Bryan it has only just begun & it looks set to be a very exciting one at that……

A weekend of football in Bangkok

So here I am after almost 4 days, still with jet lag and a few tasty insect bites and we have done quite a lot since I last blogged including having a cribs style look around Bryan’s Penthouse as well as experiencing my first Saturday night out in Bangkok and no we haven’t been to Patpong…. not yet anyway.

Our night consisted of watching a lot of football all viewed on big screens from the comfort of the official Manchester United bar & restaurant which is definitely more of a classy dining experience than your usual Saturday night down the local.

For Bryan this was the first of what will most certainly be many nights spent here in a private room with plasma screens of any game you could possibly want at your fingertips. This is a country that’s very proud of its national dishes but following on the theme of a true Manchester bar everything is typically English from the menu of burgers & chips (Bryan’s choice) to traditional Old Trafford fish & chips. We even met a good few Mancs enjoying the win over Bolton with torrential rain pouring down outside….just like home.

We woke on Sunday morning and decided to do something relaxing before another days filming began, a traditional Thai massage was the order of the day and it was pretty brutal, my cameraman Ash has bruises and I have a lovely Chinese burn on my wrist so naturally had to go for a swim & Jacuzzi after that.

I’ve been collecting the local papers every day and on the back pages since Bryan’s arrival he’s featured in them all and there’s always news of Manchester United. In the Bangkok Post on Sunday there were six different articles on the back page all reporting on the win over Bolton, absolutely fanatical! Everywhere we’ve been we have seen United shirts, Liverpool seem to be pretty popular too as do Arsenal who’s academy has strong links with Beco Tero Sasana, a team in the Thai Premier League. When we mention we are from Manchester the Thai people only know one team, surprising considering their former prime minister owned City.

After a spot of lunch with Bryan where he was briefed about the national players by Steve Darby his assistant for the national side we headed out for the day to watch more football, this time the Manchester United of Thailand, Muang Thong, who were playing Beco, the Arsenal of the Thai Premier League. Unsurprisingly both sides included Thai national players, it was the last game of the season so Bryan was keen to see some of his players in action before taking them on a training camp to Phuket next week. I mentioned that Muang Thong bore remarkable similarities to Manchester United, this is an understatement! They call themselves MU UTD, their match day programme is also called United Review & has the very same layout, they play in red although the majority of the shirts in the stadium were United ones, they’re the only team to have a club shop (like a mini megastore) and they too are Premier League champions, there was a sell out crowd ( ok15,000 not 75,000 but nearly record breaking for a Thai league game) & the fans never once stopped singing; Glory Glory Man United was translated into Thai & all the chants were mostly Manchester United ones, very surreal.

There are some thing however that couldn’t be further from the Premier League and not just in distance. There’s no such thing as a reserve team, youth team or academy, the reality is that some players simply never get a game, they are just happy to be associated with the team, kick-off takes places just as soon as each side is ready and tickets are the equivalent of £1, at half time refreshments were cakes in little paper boxes with cold flannels to wipe yourself down, not from the cake but the sweat which was literally pouring from us all, lovely!



This was all enjoyed in Muang Thongs stadium the Thunderdome Sport complex which was the biggest difference, the ground is more Macclesfield than Manchester United (No offence to the Moss Rose), there’s no groundsman & the pitch is also the surface that the team train on. The match would most certainly have been called off back home but the players simply got on with the job in hand with the Muang Thong players covered head to toe in mud celebrating at the end a 2-0 win and trophy lift after which there were no signs of flash cars, one of the star players simply strolled out of the ground grabbed a drink from a stall & rode off on his bike! I am not quite sure it was quite what Bryan expected but we (MUTV) got his every reaction to a very different match day experience indeed.

My first 2 days in bangkok

So I’m here in Bangkok, shattered & up at 2am blogging but have had a crazy couple of days in this amazing city already so prepare yourselves for my first & probably longest blog. If you read my first blog you may know that MUTV are making a behind the scenes documentary following Bryan Robson's every move in his first couple of weeks of his new role as head coach of the Thailand national football team. You probably think staying in Thailand for 2 weeks is almost like being on holiday…well after seeing the itinerary & experiencing the treacherous weather this is certainly no vacation. I am currently enjoying a cuppa from the comfort of my hotel room as the rain lashes down outside, I'm accompanied only by some very dramatic thunder & lightening I’m afraid and already my favourite shoes are ruined and the hair…don’t even ask about that!

Both me & my cameraman Ash arrived in Bangkok in the early hours of Thursday and decided (god knows why) to stay up throughout the day despite missing a night’s sleep in order to acclimatise & to film Bryan’s arrival at the airport later that day, which he did in true David Beckham style, greeted by a swarm of photographers & cameramen.

Whilst Bryan quite rightly travelled in style on a direct flight, MUTV's journey was an emotional one with my butch camaraman & 2 week companion shedding more than a tear at the in-fight movie ‘My Sisters Keeper’, he blamed it on the spicy complimentary nuts! He had already shed tears at forking out a small fortune for excess baggage, he blamed that on my make up bag! not the ridiculous amounts of equipment we need in order to make a programme like this.



Well, after an exhausting journey I was VERY pleased to be greeted at Bangkok airport by a bright pink taxi & the cab ride certainly kept us awake as Mr Anan our driver, Thailand’s answer to Jenson Button both entertained & nearly killed us on the way, he was also very reluctant to actually take us to our hotel & tried his hardest to sell a visit to a tiger temple.

It suddenly dawned on me as we entered the city that although we were mere visitors, Bryan was actually giving up life in England to move to Thailands capital, which although is one of the most interesting places I have been lucky enough to visit, it's certainly not the prettiest. So, our first day ended with 3 taxis, 2 flights, an evening river boat ride and tuk-tuk and yes we were still arguing about the excess baggage.



The following day/today we woke to thunderstorms, flooding and almost unbearable humidity and despite being slightly jet lagged had our first big job to shoot. It was less than 24 hours after Bryan’s arrival when was thrown into his busy schedule starting with his introduction at a press conference. We were the first to arrive (which makes a change) but at least got all the good food first (god knows what it was though) & met with Bryan for a brief chat whilst he had lunch with the chairman of the Thailand FA & what looked to be other important people. I was informed by one that a match we are going to attend with Bryan had changed dates for apparently the third time, which by the way is no ordinary game, it’s the FA cup final! due to take place in less than a week, hopefully. It then became very apparent that although the Thai people are the most friendly and polite I have ever met they do not adhere to time keeping or organisation as a steady stream of journalist, photographers & cameramen came trickling in for the 1 hour press conference with mobiles going off throughout (Glory Glory Man United was one of the journalists ring tones). I penned just half a page of notes as the whole conference was in Thai, apart from Bryans words of course.

There were 2 British journalists present & it wouldn’t be a press conference would it without someone asking a completely irrelevant question which by the way was about Fabio Capello, his tactics & an apparent lack in strength & depth of the England squad. Bryan of course put him right, after all didn’t fringe man Crouch get a brace in the win against Belarus midweek?!

Also during the press conference to everyones excitement there was a live conference call with Sir Alex which gained an outburst of giggles when a polite Thai lady’s voice came ringing through the speakers. When the right number was dialled Sir Alex wished Bryan all the best of luck in his new job & told how he was by far the best captain of United he’d ever had & how he was a powerful influence in the dressing room. This is however one of the things which Bryan will have to hold back on as after meetings with Peter Reid (the previous Thailand national manager) he explained that the Thai players were less than happy when they were given a dressing down in front of colleagues so Bryan is going to have to hold back on all he learnt from Sir Alex Ferguson & his infamous hair dryer treatment.

I failed to mention yet a big problem we encountered on arrival, a piece of our equipment had become damaged on route & an important piece at that so we found ourselves traipsing round Bangkok looking for a radio-mic with just the words please & thank you to do so. Luckily we were handed the contact details of an extremely helpful man called Mark from Asian Works who very kindly lent us one. It was almost fate as we met him in a building which housed Bangkok’s BBC, ITN Channel 4 & ABC correspondents amongst others, so met a lot of really lovely people & 1 not so lovely grumpy fat old man to see how they are reporting Bryan’s arrival. Mark also introduced us to the Penthouse Bar, also known as the Foreign Correspondents Club (think more Manchester’s Press Club than Panacea) this is where we met the fat grumpy old man. Our day ended with a high rise coffee, some unrecognisable, inedible ‘soup’ & a chaotic journey back to the hotel with a brief stop at a shrine/sanjao, around 90% of Thai people are Buddhist so visit temples or places of worship, which are a real calm amongst the traffic noise, street vendors, constant construction & general mayhem of the city. People were praying so I joined in…there is a match tomorrow after all, 2 for me in fact as United take on Bolton & my home town team Boro face Watford.

In the conference call to Sir Alex, Bryan wished him luck for tomorrow’s game against Bolton where we will next be meeting him to enjoy the match and I will report back on our experiences of watching the home tie from a Manchester United bar in Bangkok in the middle of the night. We all know Robbo likes a drink & I’m a McQueen so it should be a fun evening in his new local.

Two weeks in Thailand

On Wednesday I will be venturing to Thailand for two weeks to follow Bryan Robson in his new role as manager of the Thailand national football team and also covering his work as an ambassador for Manchester United. My journey to Thailand and as a blogger starts here with regular updates and pictures from my travels following Captain Marvel on his Thai adventure.