Search: ' Len Ashurst'

Northern and Proud
The Bob Stokoe Story
by Paul Harrison
Know The Score, £17.99
Reviewed by Joe Boyle
From WSC 269 July 2009 

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Left Back In Time
by Len Ashurst
Know The Score, £17.99
Reviewed by Joe Boyle
From WSC 269 August 2009 

Buy this book

As Sunderland head for next season with another new manager, where are the templates for managerial success on Wearside? Bob Stokoe is the obvious choice but, on the evidence of two recent books, a more nuanced understanding of the club and the game comes from Len Ashurst, another former Sunderland boss.

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Football has a longer history and bigger support in a rugby-infatuated region than most people give it credit for. Grahame Lloyd reports

Welsh rugby fans might not like it – some probably won’t believe it – but Wales are currently the best-supported team in European football. Even though they lie 108th in the FIFA rankings, an average attendance of 63,000 for the last three internationals at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff has put the Welsh ahead of Italy, Germany, Spain and co-Euro 2000 hosts Holland. Cheap tickets – £10 for adults and a fiver for children – and a magnificent setting have combined to satisfy the huge appetite for football and given the lie to the longstanding but often overstated claim that the national sport of Wales is rugby.

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Peter Ridsdale quietly rose to the position of chairman at Leeds United in 1996.  Nick Varley gives us the lowdown of the lifelong fan who appears all to happy to mix it with the supporters

Distinguishing features First publicly spotted in the mid-1980s, he resembled a chipper, well-dressed geography teacher, ie tweedy sports jackets, but without leather elbow patches. The suits have stayed sensible, but the boyish parted hair has turned white so that he now looks like an avuncular Swedish diplomat.

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