When is a Town not a Town?
![590px-Hereford_United_FC.svg[1]](https://annaraccoon.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/590px-Hereford_United_FC.svg1_.png)
Okay, so we’ve done politics, we’ve done religion and we’ve done sex – our landlady has tossed many a hot potato into the Raccoon Arms debating circle over the past few years and has left the locals to argue amongst themselves, her work done. But there’s one incendiary subject guaranteed to set passions aflame that has been largely avoided on these premises, football.
Tomorrow sees the Third Round of the FA Cup, the traditional David and Goliath event that brightens up the first weekend of January as lower-league ‘minnows’ ( BBC Sport) have a rare opportunity to take on the pampered Premier League ponces and hope for an upset that will provide them with an even rarer cash injection from the FA. And if there’s one nailed-on certainty of the forthcoming television coverage that is even more dependable than the use of that word ‘minnows’, it’s the annual outing for Ronnie Radford’s rocket as non-league Hereford United sent top-division Newcastle United packing in 1972, the one where the muddy quagmire posing as a pitch is invaded by a thousand schoolboys in pale green parkas. How many viewers who will be reliving this magical moment yet again are aware, however, that the club Ronnie Radford made history with 43 years ago ceased to exist less than a month ago?
In the very year they celebrated their 90th anniversary, Hereford United FC were wound-up in the High Court after already being suspended from the lowly Southern League Premier Division due to familiar financial woes. Situated on the border between England and Wales, Hereford were the last English club to win the Welsh Cup (in 1990); five years ago they were playing in the third tier of English football; now they are playing nowhere. It still seems incredible in an age where the national sport is awash with cash that a football club can disappear from the soccer map; and those for whom football holds no interest whatsoever are probably unaware just how profoundly devastating the loss of a town’s football club can have on the community that has supported it through thick and thin over decades. In many cases, the town’s football club – whether consistently successful or dismally underachieving – is sometimes the one remaining element that community can rally around and come together to invest a degree of local pride in, especially if the town is a former industrial powerhouse fallen on hard times; it can give that town a much-needed identity and for those of us who hear in the plebeian poetry of the football results on a Saturday tea-time the same mystical mantra of the locations on the shipping forecast, a town’s football club is often the sole reason we know that town exists.
Alas, the plight of Hereford United is not unprecedented in the age of the multi-millionaire footballer, an era that began with the formation of the Premier League in 1992. Aldershot FC and Maidstone United both ceased to exist just months before the Premier League kicked its first ball; Halifax Town folded in 2002, Scarborough in 2007, and Chester City in 2009. To the average football fan, they may have been little more than dimly recalled names on a pools coupon, but such clubs were integral to the backbone of the lower-leagues and formed the bedrock of the much-discussed ‘grass roots level’. The old notion of a football club being the defining brand of a town and being situated at the heart of the community still applies outside the Premier League.
There are no armchair followers of Torquay United or Crewe Alexandra; Carlisle United and Accrington Stanley don’t sell many shirts in Japan; kids in Dover or Durham don’t support Scunthorpe United or Bury. For the fan whose allegiances are to his hometown club, however lowly they languish, football has little to do with the Champions League or Sky Television; and each club that disappears from the league tables is a tragedy that should be inconceivable in an age when England can boast the most-watched and fervently followed league on the planet. The clubs that have vanished may have been the unluckiest losers at the football crap table, but many more illustrious names have come close to closure in recent years, such as Leicester City, Derby County, Ipswich Town, Southampton and Crystal Palace. And Portsmouth – winners of the FA Cup in 2008 – became the first Premier League club to go into administration in the 2009/’10 season, a mournful prelude to inevitable relegation.
In England, the dreaded drop from the Premier League became even more perilous with the collapse of the digital TV channel, ITV Digital. It had purchased the broadcasting rights to all Football League and League Cup fixtures in a deal worth £315 million in 2000, promising to pump fresh cash into the three leagues that had been starved of financial oxygen ever since the operation that separated them from the top division in 1992. However, just two years later, ITV Digital went bust, owing the Football League £180 million, an amount it had no way of paying. This catastrophe hit many clubs in the division immediately below the Premier League hard, clubs who had gambled on the prospective income from ITV Digital as a launching-pad to the Premier League, clubs who now found they were left high and dry.
In Scotland, the situation was even grimmer. The traditional dominance of Celtic and Rangers became more pronounced as the Sky money enabled the Glasgow goliaths to compete with the likes of Manchester United and Chelsea, attracting top European talent at the expense of the smaller Scottish clubs struggling in their colossal shadow – although even the mighty Rangers went into administration in 2012; and if it could happen to them, it could happen to anyone. It had already happened to poor little Gretna FC, who came within a whisker of winning the Scottish Cup in 2006, yet were dissolved at the end of their solitary season in the top flight of Scottish football just two years later. But, whilst wild over-ambition and a willingness to pawn a football club’s family silver may have placed a number of clubs on the precipice of extinction, one of the key components in the debt cycle of 21st Century soccer is the wages of players and the crippling effect they can have on a team that has just lost its seat at the table of the elite. In the era of the maximum wage, however, the bond between fans and players was strong in a way that seems unimaginable today.
The maximum wage meant that the average footballer could never stray too far from his roots, with many playing for just the one club for the entirety of their careers, travelling to the ground on the bus and often running a small business, such as a newsagent’s shop or a pub, that would provide them with a steady income once they hung-up their boots. They were genuine members of the community, and the grounds they played at weren’t named after corporate sponsors with no connection to the locality or situated in out-of-town industrial estates; they were smack bang in the middle of that community, surrounded by rows of houses, and as central to the town and its people as any grand municipal building or renowned industry. The directors and chairmen of clubs were, in the main, self-made men for whom this was their hometown team; the notion of fans supporting clubs from towns other than the one they were born in was anathema. If you were from Liverpool, you supported Everton or Liverpool; if you were from Manchester, you supported City or United; if you were from North London, you supported Arsenal or Spurs; if you were from the North-East, you supported Newcastle or Sunderland; if you were from Glasgow, you supported Celtic or Rangers; if you were from Edinburgh, you supported Hibs or Hearts. There was no debate, no argument; one’s allegiance was handed down from father to son like a working-class form of hereditary peerage.
But those days are long gone where the elite are concerned – unless they experience relegation, of course, and the fair-weather fans who like to follow a trendy team leave to find another one. The week that Hereford United folded, I switched on BBC1’s ‘Football Focus’ to see what the pundits would have to say about the sad saga. And they said bugger all, despite the fact that they resurrect Ronnie Radford every January. Such are the priorities of the beautiful game in 2015. It’s enough to make you as sick as a parrot.
Petunia Winegum
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January 2, 2015 at 10:38 am -
The love of money is the boot of all that is evil about the beautiful game today.
Park Life is the only interest I take in it nowadays. -
January 2, 2015 at 10:38 am -
Sorry – not interested, don’t care (wouldn’t stop the rest of you wasting your time and money tho’ – I’m no socialist that bans what it doesn’t like)
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January 2, 2015 at 12:30 pm -
Ditto
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January 3, 2015 at 3:36 pm -
Agreed. Although I wish that it wasn’t assumed that every heterosexual man is obsessed by football and “their” team. I really don’t give a damn and neither do most of the men that I’ve happened to spend much time with over the years.
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January 2, 2015 at 10:54 am -
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January 2, 2015 at 11:15 am -
I was there, so know it was.
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January 2, 2015 at 11:25 am -
As a die-hard Shayman for decades, I’m afraid your purported ‘facts’ about Halifax Town are a bit out.
Halifax Town AFC did not fold in 2002, that was the year we became the first club to be relegated to the Conference twice, no the actual death of the club was 9th May 2008, when the debts of the club were discovered to be far in excess of that previously reported and HMRC would not support any further attempts at restructuring the debt. It has become a familiar tale, in essence the club was overwhelmed by costs and salaries and could pay the PAYE or NI and so HMRC forced them to close.
However, all was not lost and a team was resurrected as F.C. Halifax Town and has been something of a success story, rising from the grave and restored to the conference as well as a 30-match winning streak while playing at home (still The Shay of old).
We’ve never been a glorious team, even at our height of victory in the 1970’s we only managed to get into the 3rd Division and that not for long, but we do have a lot of the other attributes you need in a team, with a half-decent home ground 1/2 mile from the town centre and loyal supporters who come from far and wide.
There is a lot more honesty at The Shay than there is in these Premier League clubs and at least the players are mostly local lads.
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January 2, 2015 at 2:10 pm -
The rebirth aspect has happened to several of the clubs mentioned – Aldershot and Chester spring to mind, and a new Hereford are poised to emerge, from what I can gather. I could have gone into the whole area of extinct clubs being resurrected by fans, but there’s only so much space available, alas, and I was more concerned with commenting on the initial death at a time when the sport is hardly cash-starved.
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January 2, 2015 at 2:29 pm -
Wimbledon created their own Club (again) when some bastard nicked their team and took it to Milton Keynes…
This gimmick comes from the States (surprise!!) where San Diego play in New York and New York play in Chicago… or whatever. Franchises they call it.-
January 3, 2015 at 4:37 am -
I believe what you’re referring to happened in the NFL, when in 1984, the Colts, a team that had played in Baltimore, left for Indianapolis, but retained the continuity of the team as the Colts, which was not unusual for teams to do in American sporting leagues at the time. In the 1980’s, the Oakland Raiders became the Los Angeles Raiders (since returned to Oakland, but possibly heading back to Los Angeles), and the St Louis (football) Cardinals became the Arizona Cardinals.
What changed all of this was the move of the original Cleveland Browns (namesakes of the Family Guy character) to Baltimore in the late 90’s when they received a better deal for a home field. The Browns fans agitated for the league to suspend the “Cleveland Browns franchise” and hold it on ice till such time as there should be a replacement in the future. Mind, the team itself could move, but it became in some sort of legal fiction the “expansion team” the “Baltimore Ravens,” as the Colts were still very much the Colts in Indiana and didn’t care to part with all the associated licensed-merchandise sales. Cleveland then obtained a team a few years later in a round of expansion, which became the “Cleveland Browns” in continuation of the old entity. They entered the league at the same time as another team did also, that other team as a replacement for a departed Houston team, which had similarly abandoned their “Oilers” identification and had moved to Nashville to become the “Titans”– except the new Houston team decided it wasn’t worth reviving the “Oilers,” and became the “Texans” instead.
So the moral of the story, boys and girls, is, that if you want a home town team badly enough and you are willing to make any team which will EVER play in your town Arcebuckett FC (The Crappers), and you can get all on board with the idea and trademark the name outside the FA’s purview, it doesn’t really matter if the Crappers are the Crappers or WERE the Crappers, or they’re the former Watercloset Town FC moved in to become the new Crappers to replace the old Crappers who have since moved to Bogbrush.
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January 2, 2015 at 11:27 am -
C’MON the baggies….
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January 2, 2015 at 12:40 pm -
The changes in football (a sport in which I’ll confess to having no interest whatsoever) are mirrored in other sports, as the drive to optimise audience revenues succeeds over sporting issues.
Motor-sport is (or was) my bag – but Bernie’s Formula One, a brilliant exercise in cash extraction, has taken any prospect of participation away from the ordinary ‘clubman’. The effect of costly technology has filtered down to all levels of motor-sport, so that even those forms of competition which were affordable for Ordinary Joe 20 years ago, no longer are. They don’t want you doing it, they just want you to pay to watch it, either directly or via advertising.
Football is the same, spectators at the stadium or in front of their TV, are mere sale opportunities – it doesn’t matter whether it’s football, rugby, athletics, tennis, golf or any of the professional sports, they are no longer about sport, but rather about paid-for entertainment, with the rules and formats juggled mercilessly to deliver the desired audience effects. And with the bookies in the equation too, often covertly, one would be wise to question some of the apparent ‘results’ which occur.
Add to all that the undoubtedly corrupt money being laundered through most major sports and a highly-creative approach to taxation (plus openly buying off criminal cases with the odd $100m, Bernie), then it’s a very sad picture.
If you’re interested in sport, any sport, the only remaining place you’ll find that is in amateur levels, where honest folk play honest games for honest results and honest pleasure – but that will never make it onto ‘Match Of The Day’. -
January 2, 2015 at 12:41 pm -
I was born not only deaf but without the football gene -infact I am missing the entire ‘Sport’ section of my DNA so I have never been able to see the appeal in playing football, let alone waste 90 minutes of my life watching others do so. That said, the Bestes Frau In The World does like to watch the German National team conquer and crush all before them so I was forced to watch that World Cup thingy last year…under protest and with the promise of rewards (a cup of tea-I’m British) for my bravery later if Germany were indeed victorious. There is something quite disturbing about having your , normally quite calm, German spouse jumping out the chair screaming ‘TOR!!!’ (‘Goal’) and then ‘S I E G!’ with all the passion of a BDM girl at Nuremberg.
“Calm down My Sweet, tis only a game and not the Anschluss”
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January 2, 2015 at 12:53 pm -
“Barnestoneworth, Barnestoneworth, Barnestoneworth, Barnestoneworth…..”
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January 2, 2015 at 12:55 pm -
Isn’t the problem that the commercial aspects of football have invaded even the lower reaches of non league football?
Sure, I remember the maximum wage days; as lad there was a local player living a few doors up, still with his parents in a council house. I recall too, as an apprentice ex-players working as toolsetters in the same factory. Billie Wilkes comes to mind, lovely man: shamefully I was beersick at his terraced house after a toolroom ‘do’.
A very long time ago.
I think the FA need to make their minds up about how football changes from being a participative sport in the community to being a business activity. There seem to be a lot of park teams requiring stands (won’t used), floodlights(so all games can start at 3.00pm), paying gates etc. Non league also seems to be a very financially opaque & shifty business based on my experiences locally.
What’s so special about football?
Why do players expect to be paid to play on the rec?
Tin hat is on.-
January 2, 2015 at 1:30 pm -
Just out of sheer disinterest in football but no little interest in local skulduggery, I googled up our local town team (I assumed rightly there must be one). This article about them building their new interactive, 3D laser guided, all singing and dancing ‘Sports Complex’ just screams back handers and dodgy deals. It also screams ‘your tax $ at work’. http://aylshamfc.co.uk/?p=1592
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January 2, 2015 at 2:54 pm -
Huge grants available, as link shows.
From local experience, admittedly a few years back, very little oversight.
I’ve never forgotten, aged about 12, burly Welsh sports master, Dai the Bad I think we called him, telling us very firmly…’We play rugger here. If you want to play soccer there’s a girl’s school down the road.’
No wish to offend.
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January 2, 2015 at 2:12 pm -
Chester City is my local club; not that I’ve ever taken much interest. I do recall that sometime in the mid 1970’s, the then Third Division club beat Leeds (then a very strong First Division team) 3-0 in an FA cup match, only to be thoroughly trounced in the next round.
The club did indeed go out of business in 2009, and it’s then owner (always euphemistically described in the local press as ‘a Liverpool Businessman’ ended up enjoying a longish holiday At Her Majesty’s Pleasure, for many matters, not all of them connected with football. This seems to me almost a typical example of football generally; it seems to attract people who’s integrity and love for ‘the game’ has a considerable degree of flexibility. For some, football is a convenient money-laundering vehicle, for others with rather less financial ‘acumen’, it was often an excuse for a bout of vandalism and thuggery. The worst excesses of 1970s football hooliganism are fortunately but a memory, though the occasional incident does still occur.
The club reformed, playing in the same (Council owned) ground, and with a strong family-oriented ethos (which everybody hopes will last). They are currently rising in the lower leagues, I gather, and good luck to them. I’d still rather do other things on a Saturday afternoon, though.
As for the obscenity of Premier League players being payed more in a week than some people can earn in a decade – well, it’s all been said before, far better than I can.
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January 2, 2015 at 5:32 pm -
Ah, those were the days. I remember a night when half the Leeds United team appeared after what used to be called a “night out” in the Accident and Emergency Department at St. James’s Hospital late one night a couple of days before the Cup Final where all but one player managed to recover enough to appear. Today this would be called a “team bonding exercise”
The UK press usually kept such shenanigans under wraps and reported that players were out due to “muscle strains” or “influenza”. We won’t see the likes of them again, those kids who grew up in wartime Britain and played their soccer on bombsites.
The players were not always so lucky when they went overseas, and fearless Leeds and Scotland captain skipper, one William Bremner, was hauled over the coals and banned from playing for Scotland for life for a nightclub incident on the night after an important international fixture in Copenhagen. A minor indiscretion that hardly matched that of his team mate Jimmy Johnstone who was found stranded without a paddle in a rowing boat off the coast of Largs, Scotland a few days before a big match versus the Auld Enemy in which he was to participate.
Apparently his attempt to cross over the sea to Skye after a few drinks failed rather badly and he had to be rescued by the coastguard. However, history is never ending and we may soon see the first member of the Royal Family in prison since Bonnie Prince Charlie and Mary Queen of Scots were in their heyday.
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January 2, 2015 at 6:14 pm -
“we may soon see the first member of the Royal Family in prison since Bonnie Prince Charlie and Mary Queen of Scots were in their heyday.”
Just how often did Jimmy Savile visit Epstein….?
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January 2, 2015 at 9:46 pm -
Interesting that all the focus has recently been on Prince Harry’s alleged paternal genetics – somewhat more subtle questions have been raised about the stallion bloodline of the current ‘target’ for the past 50 years. Maybe those will rise again…..
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January 2, 2015 at 6:58 pm -
I was obviously a malign tool of the mocker Gods. Two of the three football grounds I have visited were….Chester and Hereford !
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January 2, 2015 at 10:53 pm -
” … that has been largely avoided on these premises, football.” That is where I stopped reading. Yawn.
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January 2, 2015 at 11:52 pm -
I thought it worth introducing the subject as a change; sport does enflame a lot of passions in this country, after all. But it would appear it is not one that holds much interest for the Raccoon regulars. You don’t know these things until you try!
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January 3, 2015 at 1:56 am -
It was certainly worth a try and today’s SUPER SOAR AWAY SUN proves you do normally have your finger on the pulse – they published a ‘lost words’ list. Not that I read (ie look at the pictures) in the SUN but I had to wait at the barbers this morning and they don’t have WIFI.
However, I don’t think there will be a wide screen Sky Sports on the wall of the Raccoon Arms anytime soon. Thank God.
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January 3, 2015 at 11:05 am -
I certainly wouldn’t want a wide screen TV showing live football at the Raccoon Arms. I remember once being on a ‘date’ in a pub about fifteen years ago, quietly sat having a drink with the lady in question when the room was suddenly invaded by two dozen rather rotund characters in rugby shirts who proceeded to switch on a TV broadcasting a rugby match at full volume and turn the light out. Couldn’t understand why the punters didn’t simply stay at home if they were so intent on recreating their front room.
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January 3, 2015 at 2:57 pm -
Well – looking at it from the publican’s point of view, the opportunity to shift several barrels of ale to a large band of ‘rotund characters’ may have slightly offset the desire to supply a pint and a small rum to a meeting couple. Even publicans have to keep the wolf from the door, as it were.
That said, I can see why it would irritate the aforementioned meeting couple.
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January 3, 2015 at 9:08 am -
Whereas Ms Raccoon knows exactly how to inflame football passions by writing about the cultural habit of Liverpool fans for partaking of a beverage in the hours before a game….we had to have the entire pub rebuilt after the assembled Liverpool fans/ aka new readers left.
Some regulars have never recovered their composure after that day…-
January 3, 2015 at 3:08 pm -
“It is seldom hard to tell the difference between a ray of sunshine and a Scouser with a grievance” as P.G.Wodehouse nearly wrote.
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January 3, 2015 at 10:32 am -
Some of the happiest moments of my life before the age of 19 were spent on a football field. I love football. I just detest talking about it and as for the professional game, I’d as soon consort with hedge Fund managers.
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January 3, 2015 at 7:20 am -
I find it hard to understand why so much airtime and column inches are devoted to the game of football. Why has football become so ingrained into society? Why has it been elevated to such a level of importance? Why do we need captions superimposed during other events to give us the latest football scores? Why do we make heroes out of men whose only talent is the ability to run and kick a ball? While we’re at it, why are any sportsmen or sportswomen so idolised? Why is an imbecile like Wayne Rooney a household name, yet Sir Joseph Bazalgette and men of his ilk remain almost unheard of?
No, I really couldn’t care less which football clubs go “tits up”.-
January 3, 2015 at 8:35 am -
“Sir Joseph Bazalgette”
The man who made it possible for me to live for a whole 6 months in London and not catch Cholera once! I admit I had never heard of him until a recent ‘Great Lives’ prog on Radio 4.
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January 3, 2015 at 9:34 am -
Football is merely one component in the ‘circus’ element of ‘bread & circuses’ – one of those things the Romans did for us. (Eastenders, Corrie, X-Factor and Strictly comprise the rest of that big-top.)
Persuade enough of the hard-of thinking that it’s important and they won’t then worry about the things which are.-
January 3, 2015 at 11:07 am -
No socialist in 60 years of British life has had more followers than Bill Shankly; no-one on the left has had greater success. Taking over as manager of Liverpool Football Club in 1959, with his team struggling in the second division, by his retirement in 1974 Shankly had guided Liverpool to three league titles, two FA cups and the club’s first European trophy, the UEFA cup. He built the structure for the team that would, over the next decade, go on to win a further four European Cups, and six League titles. This was a domination, at home and abroad, that no other team in the long history of English football has come close to matching.
Part of Shankly’s charisma came from the way he related his brand of football to a philosophy of collective endeavour, saying: “The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It’s the way I see football, the way I see life.” Shankly kitted his Liverpool side all in red. “Chairman Mao has never seen a greater show of red strength”, he said after one performance.
https://www.greenleft.org.au/node/54958
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January 3, 2015 at 9:58 pm -
The part of Northamptonshire where I currently live has two monuments to man’s obsession with the so-called beautiful game.
Exhibit one is a empty and rusting shell of a football ground, where the grass hasn’t been cut for years, and where the sale boards advertising it as a “development opportunity” have been vandalised by disgruntled fans.
I watched a game there once about twenty five years ago, soon after we moved there. It was a Boxing Day “local derby” between Kettering Town and Boston United- although calling two towns fifty miles apart seems a bit far fetched. I stood on the terraces with the others, each of us with acres of space, as the home side lost. It reminded me of another time twenty years earlier, the last time I’d ventured inside a football ground. It was 1974 and I watched Northampton Town play Crewe Alexandra- and yes, they lost as well. The Northampton ground was a joke, situated as it was at one end of the cricket pitch, with stands on three sides and a couple of benches on the fourth.
This summed up my experience of football in the lower divisions and I resolved that my local team would have far more chance of success if I stayed away. I’d read about their exploits in the local paper, or watch an interview with the current manager on the TV or even more rarely, watch highlights of a game on Match of the Day.
Both teams had something else in common, aside from losing every time I watched them play- they were tenants. They didn’t own their ground. This meant that no matter how successful the team was- the state of the ground meant that they could never gain promotion to the higher leagues. (yes I know that Northampton Town did play in the old First Division- but that was back in the 60s, pre-Hillsborough, pre-Heysel. I believe they set another record that hasn’t been repeated. They were promoted from the Fourth to the First Divisions in successive seasons, followed by relegation from the First back to the Fourth in successive seasons)Ownership of Kettering Town changed hands several times. each new owner promised league football, but the problem of a short lease on the ground could not be overcome. Eventually the club was wound up.
A few miles south of Kettering along the A6 there’s a small town called Irthlingborough (Ade Edmonson says that it’s where earthlings come from), and they used to have a local football team that played on a tiny ground next to the bridge over the River Nene. They played in a minor county league and the ground had a tiny stand that held a few dozen supporters with a club house alongside. I recall it was the venue of choice for several of my wife’s family’s wedding receptions. It was typical of hundreds of clubs across the country, a hub of the community.
Enter a businessman who’s firm made arguably the most famous boots in the world. Traditionally a deep red colour with a patented sole and worn first of all by skinheads, but becoming a world wide brand.
His firm had factories in every town and village. He was rich. He had a dream to own a football club and to see it play in the Football League.
He amalgamated the Irchester Diamonds with another local team, Rushden Town and Rushden and Diamonds were formed.
The first thing to go was the old Social Club, to be replaced by a huge Conference Centre. The old pitch was enclosed and a modern football stadium was built. It could seat every man woman and child from Irthlingborough and most of the surrounding villages and still have room for the visiting fans. They were still playing in the Conference South at the time.
Eventually the team won promotion to the League and were promoted to League 1. Then the recession hit.
The club’s wage bill was higher than the club could afford but they soldiered on.
The owner sold the club to a supporters trust. It looked like they might pull through.
Then the firm moved production to China. All the small factories were shut. These factories were the main employers in the area.
As a protest the locals boycotted the football club.
It was no longer theirs.Today the ground is empty. The Conference centre- empty. The Football Academy- closed. The pitch- overgrown . It was a state of the art modern football ground- but miles from any large centre of population. It’s unlikely it will ever be used again.
Both Kettering Town and Rushden & Diamonds survive- just. They’re battling their way through the lower leagues, playing their games on another club’s pitch and dreaming of one day owning their own ground.
Much has been said about the “pyramid” structure of the game. But any pyramid needs a wide base to support the top.
It’s only the money from the TV companies that is keeping the game afloat. Some money trickles down, but as far as I can see, life at the bottom isn’t fun at all. -
January 4, 2015 at 5:02 pm -
Some while ago the newspapers were giving away the BBC footage of the 1966 World Cup Final. I decided to watch it a few months ago. I was amazed how continuous the game was, fouls just led to free kicks immediately taken and I scarcely remember any injury treatments eating into the playing time. The one and only time there seemed any suggestion of the cheating attitudes now ubiquitous was when Alan Ball (then the youngest player I think) started to make a meal of a bonk on the head, but then as if conscious of the disapproval of the men on the field, stopped acting like a little boy and trotted off so the free-kick could be taken. The time flew by and it was the best game on TV that I recall watching for many years.
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January 4, 2015 at 5:45 pm -
I remember about ten years back a contemporary referee viewed the notoriously brutal Chelsea v Leeds 1970 FA Cup Final replay and declared at least five players would have received an early bath by today’s standards.
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January 4, 2015 at 5:50 pm -
Round One is on the toob…
http://youtu.be/fBlflWJWgJI
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This gimmick comes from the States (surprise!!) where San Diego play in New York and New York play in Chicago… or whatever. Franchises they call it.
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