A year ago today myself and The Cat launched The Daisy Cutter, an irrelevant football site full of daft, fake news stories. Though we’d occasionally doff a respectful cap to legendary sides or marvel at a cracking footy kit it was mainly about the piss-takes. Some made readers laugh. Most didn’t. However, we still attest that the story of a confused WWII Japanese soldier emerging from Fellaini’s hair is funnier than anything that bald twat from Mock The Week has ever written or said.

As with most things in life the origins behind the Cutter are to be found in love. Or rather the ending of. Motivated by the passing of a thoroughly shite 2010 the site was intended to be a distracting hobby and nothing more. In a nutshell to stop myself from listening to too many Smiths songs.

Soon however it began to gain a life of its own.

Firstly the Cutter got an identity. The gorgeous Natalie Pike agreed to become the ‘face’ of Daisy and it cannot be under-estimated how important that was.

We then started to receive much-appreciated support from friends, strangers-who-have-now-become-friends, and the kind allowances of the moderators on Manchester City’s Blue Moon forum who would turn a blind eye to my shameless plugging in countless threads.

Though we now regard ourselves as a football site and no longer predominantly a City site two things will always remain true no matter where this thing takes us –

1/ The lads on Blue Moon will always be the beating heart of the Cutter

2/ Any praise of Man U will always be written with extreme reluctance

Finally – and here I’ve got to avoid sounding mushy because the gratitude is truly immense – people began to contribute.

Below is a list of just some of the Cutter’s contributors over the past twelve months.

‘Contributors’? Pah, it goes much further than that. They ARE the Cutter.

Kevin Henning

David Sweeney

Nathan Critchlow

Noel Draper

Andy Robinson

Rob Wilson

Daniel Widdowson

Chris Brookes

Alwyn Payne

Simon Jones

Ahsan Naeem

Sam Windrim

Chris Lee

Alex Bentley

Maybe it’s the red vino and Courteeners blasting from Spotify but it actually makes me a little emotional to write the following words – Happy 1st birthday Daisy Cutter.

Once I would refer to her as an actual being purely for affect. Now it seems perfectly normal to do so.

From a clumsy early attempt at satire by comparing Mark Lawrenson’s hair to a biscuit of Shredded Wheat to going on to break a national football story that made Sky News and the Daily Mirror and interviewing the likes of Paul Lake and Dennis Tueart.

From a readership of 18 to 5000.

This week, as our second and third features, we will be running some of the best of the Cutter from 2011.

It’s been – as the starry-eyed cretins say as they get booted off reality shows – one hell of a journey.

Thank you The Cat (one of the best mates a person could ever be lucky enough to have), thank you Blue Moon and to blues of both Manchester and Merseyside, but most of all a huge thanks to you.

If you’re reading this now I really hope we can one day meet in person so I can buy you a pint and we can talk about what the unenlightened dismiss as a ‘sport’. We know however that it’s far, far more important than that.

Ste