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Stories
Youngsters in search of a football career are turning to the sport’s equivalent of a public school. Gavin Willacy wonders whether this experiment will work or if good money is going after bad
Borehamwood’s Hertswood School v Birmingham City was a league fixture. On the same day, Dagenham & Redbridge lost at home to Brightlingsea Regent, Conference club Histon played Queens’ School in Bushey and Oxford United lost at home to someone called FCV Reds.
The supporter-led takeover was a start for Rushden & Diamonds, but for Graham Dunbar there's still a long way to go yet
For a brief few days at the end of last season, Rushden was near the centre of our sporting universe. Homegrown local players showing off their abundant natural talent in a theatre of dreams, watched by a live television audience numbered in millions. Of course, they were doing it in waistcoats while brandishing a stick of wood at the Crucible.
The power truly is with the people according to Tom Davies
It’s a new season, hopes spring eternal (for a while anyway) and it’s time to dwell on some positive developments at embattled clubs. The fan takeovers at Stockport and Rushden over the summer bring the number of British clubs now owned and operated by supporters’ trusts to 12, with another, Brentford, run if not yet owned by fans.
Dear WSC
Dave Boyle’s article Count Me Out (WSC 207) prompted me to finally come clean about my rather bizarre obsession with shirt numbers. While players wearing 77 seems rather farcical, what gets my goat are squad numbers that bear no relation to the owner’s position. Why does Markus Babbel wear No 11 even though he’s a defender? What is Liverpool striker Milan Baros doing wearing No 5? Even during a game of Championship Manager I can’t get away from it: the other day I discovered that Barcelona had signed Alessandro Nesta and given him No 1. Unbelievable. But what I really need to get off my chest is a somewhat strange habit of mine. For some reason I can’t walk past a replica shirt-wearer in the high street without running round to see whether they have a name and number on the back. I’ve been doing this for quite a while now, so you can imagine my delight when my wife picked up the habit too. We now have a rudimentary scoring system, whereby teams receive one point for a fan wearing a “plain” shirt and two for someone with a named and numbered-up top. I was hoping that someone might come forward and reassure me that I’m not the only one out there looking at supporters’ backs, but I’ll understand if you all want to remain anonymous about it.
Joe Newman, Brighton