Kick Off

So here we are. After spending months make no real progress, Block 101 is here. Of course there was no sense of anticipation among the masses and no excitement when I finally went live but it feels good to be up and running at last.

To give you some background, I am an Arsenal fan with not much going on in life but an intense passion for the Gunners. You may note here that this gives me no real right to start a blog based on the subject and you'd be correct. I have no formal writing experience and the quality on show may turn out to be very poor indeed. In response to that I say this: I wouldn't have entered into this endeavor without first considering whether if I had any talent whatsoever when it comes to writing. I've thought about it for quite a while and I finally concluded that you don't have to be Shakespeare to write material online. So while I hope to entertain with my style and content, don't expect anything mind blowing. Very poor should be out of the question though.

Block 101, the blog title, derives from the seating block of the same name at the Emirates. It lies in the North Bank and happens to be where I sit when I make it down to games. I manage to see about seven or eight matches in a season as part of a season ticket sharing scheme. I realise that this makes me extremely fortunate and you only need to look up the position of Block 101 within the ground to understand that watching games is very pricey. Nevertheless, for a full time Gooner (Sort of. I do have a job.) it's a price worth paying.

The first Arsenal game I ever saw was the curtain raiser to the 2007-08 season against Fulham. Before then I'd only been able to follow games on the radio or online. On that day, we conceded within the first minute in the goal directly in front of me. Safe to say it was not the ideal start. But in the end we clawed back a victory in typical Arsenal style thanks to an eighty-fourth minute Robin van Persie penalty and a smart finish from good old Alexander Hleb with only 10 seconds left on the clock. The jubilation was incredible and from then onward I was totally and utterly hooked.

So you might say that this blog, started over six years later, is a natural progression. It'll be good fun but I can't promise to post every day like the talented writer of Arseblog. And I can't compete with bloggers who write for a living either. But that's not really what I'm here to do. I'm going to write to productively fill up my free time doing something I enjoy. I'll be vigilant when searching for typos and I hope, in time, to add a couple of new contributors to mix it up on here. And hey, if a few people read and enjoy what I have to say, then great. But if not, I won't lose any sleep.

I'll keep writing, ideally keep improving and wish Arsenal the very best. Anything else that happens is a bonus.

Evening.