It’s been a bit of a crazy last few weeks. Since I last wrote for the Chronicle, Argyle have started the season pretty terribly but I’ve had a lot of plaudits on a personal note thanks to the performance of myself and my good friend Adam Price in the talkSPORT Cup and a certain viral clip that has arisen from it.
From the talkSPORT Cup to National Attention
Let’s back up a little. The cup itself was filmed over spring and summer with most of it actually being recorded at the tail end of last season. Due to our partnership between Argyle Life and talkSPORT (we are part of the fan network for club podcasts) we were given the opportunity to participate in an event called the talkSPORT Cup.
In short, it was to be a series of quizzes in a head to head straight knockout cup format of 64 teams (one team per club, all PL/EFL sides) – a maximum six rounds and three days of filming.
After a few false starts, we were offered a filming date of March 28 – just before Argyle were due to play Watford on the Saturday: it seemed written in the stars to combine it with a London weekend. So we did, and we won our last 64/last 32 fixtures to progress to the second day of filming.
It was not without a scare – Huddersfield in the second round was a team made up of former Mastermind and Pointless contestants. But, Adam and I had enough to edge them out and return for a second visit.
Incidentally, all of these videos are available to watch on YouTube if you’re bored on a rainy day this autumn. The viewing figures have not in truth been quite as explosive as talkSPORT may have hoped, but it is at least a chance to see two of Plymouth’s nerdiest football brains (if I do say so myself!) in motion recalling utterly pointless trivia details.
Day two came with two hard fought victories over two more very strong sides. We edged out Burton Albion in the last 16 before a Titanic clash against Ipswich in the quarter-finals. Reminiscent of our 2022/23 title battle on the field, Argyle just had enough to come out on top.
The third day of filming was finals day – we were narrowly beaten by a strong Leicester side in the semi final and consoled ourselves that at least our travel was being covered as a result of having made the last four!
The Viral Clip That Changed Everything
However, it’s what happened next that seems to have truly changed things for me personally.
I have, for many years, always had an exceptionally strange knack or gift when it comes to my Argyle related memory. As described by the excellent and ebullient talkSPORT host Charlie Baker ‘a Westcountry talent.’
@talksportThis Plymouth fan’s encyclopaedic knowledge of football is UNBELIEVABLE! 🤯♬ original sound – talkSPORT
Since I was first taken along to a game by my dad on a cold Tuesday night in March 2002, I can remember the date of every Argyle game to have been played during that time including the opposition.
As a conservative estimate, I would say that about 97% of the time I can name the score and at least 90% of the time I’ll be able to give you some further detail about the game such as a goalscorer or some knowledge about the goals.
So what happened to bring this to prominence? During a break in filming for the semi-final game, one of the producers noticed how I would always provide a bit of extra detail whenever asked any question about an Argyle match and asked me three randomly selected games from the 00s for me to provide the score and date.
Having done so, the clip seems to have gone, to say the least, pretty viral. I’ve had a few people aware of this gift and admire it for a while due to my appearances on our podcast and on the Life of Pie YouTube channel but this has taken the attention to new heights.
My memory has always been as much of a curse as a blessing, in all honesty. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy being able to do it. And yes, the viral 15 minutes (15 days?) of fame that has come from it does boost my ego slightly…I’m only human, after all.
Going Head-to-Head With Ally McCoist
The cherry on the cake then came when I was invited on to the talkSPORT Breakfast Show off the back of it with football’s OG statto himself Jeff Stelling and his co host, Rangers legend Ally McCoist.
WATCH HERE
Jeff pitted me against Ally to see how my memory of Argyle games fared against Ally’s memory of Rangers games. The twist being, the Rangers games were ones that Ally himself had played in! I won 3-1 and Jeff was left in almost stunned silence. From this, the internet attention seems to have gone even further into overdrive.
A Blessing and a Curse
Where I’ve began to almost rue it is the nagging doubt that I’m wasting my brainpower – the level of storage space being used on Argyle could surely be better equipped on some kind of complex coding system for the benefit of wider humanity? As Ally McCoist said to me, ‘you’ll be expecting a call from GCHQ soon!’
However, on reflection, memory isn’t really that useful a tool when compared to some others. In this day and age, everything that can be saved on a database is saved. And really, who doesn’t know how to take an Excel course. The real talent is how to use, interpret and apply the data. And, as much as I enjoy my party trick, that isn’t really part of it and never has been.
No, sometimes a good party trick is just a good party trick.
The Brain Behind the Party Trick
The Chronicle asked me the question many have asked – they wanted me to write about where this talent comes from. I feel to an extent I’ve failed in that task having described it in such detail – all I can say is that I’ve got one of those brains that tends to hyper fixate on a special interest and in doing so can give incredible depth of information on that subject of interest.
Perhaps not many can do so to such an extent – and I like to think I can do so with enough self/awareness and humour that it goes down well on social media – but in truth it’s not really any different to people who can give in depth episode descriptions of Star Trek or DC Comics.
Looking Ahead to Another Season
Some brains are made for breadth and some are trained into it- I most definitely incline naturally and perhaps irreversibly towards depth. Here’s to another season of memorising wins, draws and losses alike. I do sometimes wonder if I’ll eventually run out of storage?
