Lunacy versus reality

It was a casual glance at BBC News 24 while I took a break from the searing heat of the Canary Islands which told me that Cristiano Ronaldo had signed for Real Madrid for a fee of £80 million and a reported salary of £500,000 per week.
I went to the fridge, poured myself another San Miguel and resigned myself to the view that top-flight football really is going to eat itself in the very near future.
It was as I got back to work at the weekend that I discovered a piece of news which should make the likes of Gareth and Cristiano hang their heads in shame.
Tony Kempster has died.
Tony who?
Tony Kempster was to non-league football what David Dimbleby is to general elections; what Jeff Stelling is to Saturday afternoons; what the late Bill Frindall was to cricket.
His website, www.tonykempster.co.uk, was the Holy Grail for those of us who care about the real end of the game. An exhaustive detailed analysis of teams, fixtures, structures and results from the Conference right down to the Midland Combination and its equivalent leagues across Britain, it attracted and honoured those players, fans and officials who are involved in football for the love of it, not for the glory or the money.
Programme editors and groundhoppers across the nation relied on Tony for their facts and knew he would be right.
Tony was only 56 when he died of cancer last week. He was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award when the National Game Awards for 2008-9 were handed out just before he passed away.
He posted a message on his website recently saying that it would be frozen as his health deteriorated. But it is such a thing of beauty to the non-league fan that it would be an awful shame (I cannot bring myself to use the word 'tragedy' when a 56-year-old has died of cancer) if it was left to stagnate.
Take a look at the link below, admire the detailed beauty of this map and remind yourself just what football is all about. And the next time a Championship manager tells you that "we'll take each game as it comes and the boys will give it 100 per cent" feel free to smack him in the mouth.

Tony Kempster RIP

http://www.tonykempster.co.uk/maps09-10.htm

For details of how to donate to Tony's chosen charities, please go to: http://health.tonykempster.co.uk/