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Stories
League meetings between the two Hampshire clubs have been relatively rare but their derby matches are as keenly contested as any local rivalry in English football. James de Mellow reports
On April 29, 1939, as Portsmouth pulled off a surprise 4-1 FA Cup final win over Wolves at Wembley, only 4,000 Southampton fans showed up for a home league game on the same day, preferring to cheer on their neighbours while listening to the radio. When the trophy was brought back to the south coast, it was displayed for a short time at Southampton Guildhall and even paraded around The Dell for Saints fans to salute Pompey’s achievements. One wonders, then, what Hampshire’s pre-war football supporters would make of Operation Delphin, which the police deemed necessary to prevent trouble before and after the south-coast derby on December 18. As a condition of purchasing a ticket, all travelling Saints fans agreed to be bussed in a “bubble” under police escort between the two cities, while eight-foot-high barriers were erected north-east of Fratton Park in order to keep a minority of idiots from both sides coming into contact with each other.
Al Needham welcomed Steve McLaren’s appointment at Nottingham Forest, but won’t miss him now he’s gone
After the initial shock and subsequent debate across the city of Nottingham, the appointment of Steve McClaren as Forest manager in the summer made a sort of perverse sense. After all, both club and new manager had a lot to prove. For the former, the opportunity to replace the moaning, awkward Billy Davies with someone who has sat at the right hand of Alex Ferguson was an irresistible punt. For the latter, the opportunity to return to a club seething with the potential to get back to where they seemingly belonged was an obvious shortcut to expunging memories of holding an umbrella and looking helpless. As a friend pointed out: “Forest have gone from having the best manager England never had to the worst manager they did have.”
Dear WSC
Congratulations on the article about match-fixing (Crimes and misdemeanours, WSC 283). Paul Joyce did a superb job reviewing the many different cases of corruption in European football. As the German police investigation began, partly because of the controversy around my book, The Fix, I did want to take him up on one issue. He mentioned that “Germany lies second in the match-fixing table” – this is true but it is not because corruption is more prevalent in German football. Rather it is because the German authorities are now, after years of denial, actually taking the issue seriously and are vigorously investigating match-fixing – and the more they investigate, the more they find. This proactive attitude is in stark contrast with British football authorities who seem to have adopted the attitude of “don’t know, don’t want to find out”. The circumstances in British football are similar to other European countries: thousands of relatively badly paid players; lots of poor clubs and lots of interest in the gambling markets. However, the British authorities have not yet fully woken to the dangers. I can only hope that they do before they discover a similar problem to the one in Europe.
Declan Hill, Oxford
Allowing the biggest clubs to loan out their developing players could be distorting competition, says Simon Cotterill
The existing laws on player loans between Premier League clubs need urgent revision. In their present form they allow points to be bought and they are increasing the speed at which the league moves towards being a competition almost entirely devoid of, just that, competition. However, neither the bigger clubs, who use the loan system to farm out future stars, nor the smaller clubs, who use it to bolster their squads, see rule changes as being in their short-term interests. And sadly, the short-term seems to be as far as English football looks these days.