Search: 'Chris Hargreaves'
Stories
My Life on Football's B-Roads
by Chris Hargreaves
The Friday Project, £8.99
Reviewed by Piers Pennington
From WSC 299 January 2012
If you were told that a footballer called Hargreaves had written an autobiography you might not be surprised, although Chris is probably not the first name that would spring to mind. Despite the unpromising title, arising from a tenuous connection between the author having played for a lot of clubs and having long hair, it proves to be a thoroughly enjoyable and – in an immediate, haphazard, unpolished kind of way – well-written account of what life as a lower-League professional footballer is really like.
Wembley may not be full but for fans of two former League clubs the Blue Square play-off final represents more than just a day out. And for the players, there’s the chance to meet Martin O’Neill. Taylor Parkes was there
One of the innumerable problems with the concentration of power in 21st century football is the banalisation of the big event. Like boy pharaohs fed powdered gold, fans of the chosen few grow blase and faintly nauseous (“not Barcelona again!”), while the rest exist in a world of shadows and reflections, where up and down begin to lose their meaning. Days like this can restore your faith. Neither Cambridge nor Torquay are strangers to League football, so re-entry is an itch that must be scratched, more than an adventure – but for everyone involved, this is a very big deal. Wembley Park station is heaving, not just with shaven-headed forty-somethings but kids and old ladies, girlfriends and boyfriends, well-wishers and day-trippers (and a child in a Chelsea shirt who doesn’t quite get it). Grey skies and high winds don’t so much dampen the festive mood as accentuate the drama, as we weave through police horse dung down old Olympic Way, towards what will, for men of a certain age, always be “the new” Wembley Stadium.
Setanta’s Conference coverage has been surprisingly refreshing – more so than the station’s attempts to reinvent the wheel when it comes to sports news and the Premier League, believes Josh Widdicombe
If ITV Digital taught us one thing, it is that lower-league football is less popular with television audiences than a knitted monkey. So, like a team about to sign Nigel Quashie, you might think that someone should have warned Setanta of the mistakes of the past before they splashed out on 79 games from the Blue Square Premier (aka the Conference) to supplement their Premier League coverage.
Tuesday 1 Liverpool beat Chelsea on penalties to reach the Champions League final. “In extra time we were the only team who tried to win,” says José, pouting more than ever. Joey Barton is suspended by Man City for a training‑ground fight with team‑mate Ousmane Dabo. The FA are to investigate Oldham chairman Simon Blitz, who made a £500,000 loan to Queens Park Rangers.