I wonder how many of your hitsters remember that famous old character from the days of football stockings, cotton shirts and old men smoking pipes and stamping their feet in anger on the floor of the wooden stand at Huish. Sage Seth could be found at the very top of the stand leaning against the glass window and staring dreamily out across the pitch. He was renowned for his pearls of wisdom, which he dispensed to the world in a thick Somerset accent. Moments of poetic eloquence and philosophical wisdom had many devotees trudging up the C block steps to sit in the howling wind and listen to his guidance whilst, almost ignored, the Glovers thumped the ball up and down the slope to another defeat.

As one of his followers, I collected many of his thoughts and wrote them in old programmes on the � Up the town, George Brown� page. For many years they have been hidden in a cardboard box, visited on winter nights before away cup ties. Sage Seth made his followers promise never to reveal these secrets to the world until "the Green and Whites played a bit of decent football". I have wrestled with my conscience and decided that six wins out of nine is as decent as it will ever get. It is time for Sage Seth - The Green and White Guru to share his secrets with the world:

On Poole Town�s first goal, Monday 2nd September 1968:
"That�s it ! They�ll get a hatful now. We might as well all pack up and go home."

On the final whistle against Barnet, Saturday 21st September 1968. Yeovil had won one nil.
"They was bloody lucky. You see, football it does that. They spend all their time losing. We go along and it�s a nice social get together. We drinks our oxo secure in the knowledge that we�ll beaten. We know where we are and then - they slip in a win, just to confuse us and get us all jumbled up with a bit of hope. That�s bloody football. That�s bloody Yoval." ( Sage Seth always called Yeovil, Yoval, the Yo bit rhyming with yo-yo and the val bit pronounced as a very quick diphthong. Not the Ye-o-ville, which seems common today. )

On Dick Plumb getting into a fight with the Worcester City goalie (this is an old fashioned word used to describe what is today referred to variously as �the keeper� or �custodian� or �glovesman� or �Waleses, Waleses number one�).
"When you stop and think about it football seems a funny game, a load of blokes running round the field and getting all airiated."

More of the thoughts of Sage Seth - the Green and White Guru will be revealed as the season progresses.

The Sage Seth Archives are here.

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