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Search: 'Northwich Victoria'

Stories

Diminished responsibility

The disappearance of Chester City from our Saturday afternoons in 2010 highlighted the problems with the football authorities' safeguards for clubs. WSC took a look at what went wrong and what should be done to make sure it doesn't happen again

In the build-up to this year’s Carling Cup final, there were several mentions made of one of the biggest upsets in the competition’s history. This was in 1975 when reigning League champions Leeds were beaten 3-0 in the quarter-finals by Fourth Division Chester, who lost to Aston Villa in the semis. Two days before this year’s final, Chester were expelled from the Conference and have sinced ceased to exist.

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Letters, WSC 277

Dear WSC
In response to my letter published in WSC 275, Mark Brennan Scott accepts that we send someone to each of the weekend’s Premier League games, to commentate live, but not unreasonably asks whether Match of the Day commentators ever “re-record bits they are unhappy with”. Not exactly, but the beauty of an edit rather than a live game is there is scope for tweaking both the sound and visuals by transmission time. Every now and then, a commentator will, for example, misidentify a goalscorer and then correct themselves, in which case we have been known to remove take one in the edit. I’ve found a copy of a letter I had published in WSC 240 in which I said: “If a commentator gets something wrong at the time we may even spare him his blushes at 10pm by removing the odd word.” That remains the case, but most of the time the commentator’s natural reaction works best. If it takes a couple of replays before they identify a deflection or suspicion of handball, that will nearly always feel more authentic than trying to look too clever after the event. In shortening a game for transmission, we may occasionally “pull up” a replay or remove a few words, but would almost never re-record any section of a commentary unless there’s been a technical problem. Furthermore, in all cases the commentators go home after the post-match interviews and a producer back at base edits the pictures and sound recorded at the time. In early days of the Premier League, only two or three games had multi-camera coverage and commentators present, so there were occasional attempts to add a commentary to single-camera round-up games, for example, for Goal of the Month. However, not every commentator was a convincing thespian and one or two “Le Tissier’s capable of beating three men from here and curling one into the top corner. Oh my word, he has…” moments did slip through. With multi-camera coverage and a commentator at every game, that no longer happens.
Incidentally, call us old-fashioned but there was a degree of pride in this office in MOTD’s recent use of “crashed against the timber” as cited in Steve Whitehead’s letter. Better that – or maybe “hapless custodian” – than some unpleasant modern notion like “bragging rights”.
Paul Armstrong, Programme Editor, BBC Match of the Day

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Familiarity and contempt

Matt Withers looks at a fierce neighbourhood feud between the clubs of a Cheshire market town

In November, a week prior to Northwich Victoria’s home FA Cup second round victory over Charlton, Graham Shuttleworth, enterprising secretary of town rivals Witton Albion, took to Addicks message boards. Albion offered travelling Charlton supporters parking at their ground for £2 on the day, along with opening the social club early to offer them “a comfort break, a drink or something hot to eat”, while “no doubt enjoying the build-up to your game on the large screen”.

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Point blank

With the Conference giving varying punishments to different clubs, fans are understandably unsure as to the reasoning behind their decisions. Matthew Gooding reports

Another season is reaching its climax, and the fate of football clubs up and down the country is slowly becoming clearer. But in the Conference, such trivial matters as final league position are often irrelevant when it comes to determining issues of demotion and promotion. For this is a division that has seen at least one club relegated for non-­footballing reasons in each of the past three seasons, with Canvey Island and Boston suffering demotions, and Halifax and Scarborough going out of business all together and re-forming further down the pyramid.

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Fifth dimension

Foreign players are becoming common in the Conference – there’s even an ex-Barcelona man at Northwich, writes Michael Whalley

You might expect a Blue Square Premier club to be giddy with excitement after taking a former Barcelona first-teamer on trial. Yet Nigerian defender Gbenga Okunowo’s arrival at Northwich Victoria in early December created so few ripples that the club didn’t even mention it in their next programme.

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