Dear WSC
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the article on footballing statues (Striking a pose, WSC 294) it did miss out one rather infamous example – the Ted Bates horror show of a few years back. This short-lived “tribute” to the former Saints player, manager, director and president was astonishingly inept, with legs roughly half the length they should have been. To add to the indignity, more than once a resemblance to dignity-phobic Portsmouth owner/asset-stripper Milan Mandaric was pointed out. The overall effect was of a top-heavy, inebriated and besuited dwarf waving at passers-by. Not really the ideal summing up a lifetime’s service to a club.
Keith Wright, Cheltenham
Search: ' Clarke Carlisle'
Stories
Dear WSC
In his article on football in film (WSC 278) Rob Hughes quite rightly says that the most convincing football scene ever takes place in Ken Loach’s classic 1969 film Kes. I attended the school that Barry Hines, author of a Kestrel For A Knave, worked in as a teacher. Mr Sugden, while probably never acknowledged by Hines, is clearly based on our old games teacher, Ron “Rocket Ronnie” Hallam. Ron was driven by a will to win at all costs and a classic Ronnie-ism was said to me when I tried out for the school team as an 11-year-old, “goalkeeping’s an art son”. I can still hear him say those words. In fairness to Ronnie he was right. I was never much of a footballer but was occasionally prone to bouts of brilliance. One such example came against Rocket Ron. He was playing a sweeper role when a ball was played forward for me to run on to. I pushed the ball past Ronnie and advanced on goal, easily rounded the full-back and slotted the ball under the advancing goalie. As I wheeled away, delighted with my goal, Ronnie was whistling furiously. He was yelling “offside, offside”. When I said that was rubbish he sent me off for arguing with the ref. Ronnie Hallam may well have been too keen to win at times but he was fantastically knowledgeable about football and cricket, and we didn’t waste much time on cross-country running. Some of Ronnie’s protégés went on to play professionally – the Shirtliff brothers turned out for Sheffield Wednesday among others and Steve Shutt played for Barnsley. Ian Swallow passed up football for a pretty successful cricketing career with Yorkshire. I guess one big disappointment was that Ronnie’s son, Matthew, never reached those heights. Rocket Ronnie though. A living legend.
John Hague, Leicester
Success and Failure at Burnley FC
by Dave Thomas
Vertical Editions, £12.99
Reviewed by Alan Tomlinson
From WSC 294 August 2011
When Burnley drew Bolton Wanderers in the Carling Cup the season after their Premier League campaign, all was in place for a morality play as much as a football match. Owen Coyle, the Bolton manager, had walked out on Burnley in the middle of their first year back in English football's top tier for 33 years. Burnley tumbled down the league table, Bolton survived and Coyle was labelled Judas by inconsolable Burnley fans.
Dear WSC
While it was an otherwise fairly accurate piece culminating in stating what many of us believe (WSC 232), which is that Neil Warnock is an “offensive gobshite”, Pete Green lets himself down by recycling that old rubbish about Warnock spending his career “picking up ailing clubs off the floor and setting them back on their feet”. Not quite true. In the late Nineties, Stan Ternent guided Bury Football Club from the then Division Three to Division One with successive promotions, and kept us up in Division One while luminaries such as Manchester City were relegated from it (oh how we laughed when we beat them at Maine Road in the process), before buggering off to Burnley and leaving us to the mercy of the “Red Adair” of lower-league football. Warnock’s tenure at Gigg Lane started off in patronising fashion, referring to us as “a smashing little club”. He flooded the team with under-performers he had dragged with him from his previous clubs, turned up at Gigg Lane wearing a Sheffield United club tie while we were paying his wages, got us relegated to Division Two, then skulked off to Bramall Lane, taking some of our better players with him and paying peanuts for them into the bargain. Bury were then relegated to the bottom division, went into administration and nearly out of business. So please spare us the revisionist history about Warnock. If the truth be known, Stan was the Man who turned the Shakers around – Warnock destroyed his work. And yes, I will be looking for Sheffield United to be humiliated in every match they play next season
Howard Cover, Liverpool
Dear WSC
The revival of Lok Leipzig as detailed in your Germany supplement (WSC 231) is not quite the heart-warming story it might appear to be. FC United have been asked to play Lok in a friendly soon, but they are having reservations about doing so. The main problem centres on the fact that Lok’s support contains a significant fascist element. This is sadly not a new development in the region – extreme right politics have long been seen as a form of rebellion by disaffected youth in the former East Germany. However, there is little sign that the club themselves recognise this as a problem. The fact that Lok’s owner, now a successful businessman, was once the leader of the club’s hooligan fringe (albeit not a neo-Nazi) does not encourage hopes that steps will be taken to discourage the boneheads. As I understand it, the consensus in Manchester is that FC United will play in Leipzig but only if they are able to use the occasion to draw attention to grassroots anti-fascist campaigns in the former DDR. Whether this will be acceptable to the Lok leadership remains to be seen.
Tony Barraclough, via email