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In this exclusive WSC Supporters’ Club edition of the podcast, magazine editor Andy Lyons, writer Harry Pearson and host Daniel Gray discuss Interfering Chairmen from Dave Whelan free-kicks to Imperioso the team-picking horse. Record Breakers brings us a Japanese jive, and we continue our sprightly feature The Final Third, in which a guest contributes a match, a player and an object to the WSC Museum of Football. Joining Dan as our visiting curator this time is Barry Crossan, editor of Shelbourne’s Red Inc fanzine.

The only way to hear this episode is to sign up for the WSC Supporters’ Club for as little as £2 per month. There are great rewards, including bonus episodes, extended editions, badges, T-shirts and photo prints.

Dave Hannigan on George Best’s brief spell playing for Cork Celtic

Three days after Christmas, 1975, 12,000 fans were shoehorned into Flower Lodge to see George Best make his debut for Cork Celtic in the Bass League of Ireland. At that point in his travels through the world game, Best’s latest club had been Fourth Division Stockport County. They had reportedly paid him £300 per game. Cork Celtic had lured him across to Ireland with the offer of £1,000 per outing and, for his first game against Drogheda United, Celtic took in £6,000 at the turnstiles.

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Dermot Corrigan reports on the very different approach of a club bucking the trend of financial chaos in the League of Ireland

The self-made millionaire who takes over a football club, bringing initial success followed by disappointment and disaster, is a stock character in football, as fans of English clubs as disparate as Chester City and Crystal Palace know well. But the story of Wexford Youths and Irish property developer/philanthropist/philosopher Mick Wallace is different. Or so it seems anyway.

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Martin Greig looks at a possible solution to the poor performance of Scottish clubs in international competition

“In this country there are some pretty smart people. But I always ask how the nation which invented the telephone, the television, penicillin and getting drunk till you fall down, possibly think about playing football in the winter?” The words of Arild Stavrum, the Norwegian striker who played for Aberdeen, evoke the spirit of Robert Burns in calling for the ability to see ourselves as others see us. Another season of collective failure by Scottish clubs in Europe has prompted the perennial debate on the merits of summer football. Four of the country’s six representatives, Aberdeen, Motherwell, Falkirk and Hearts, were eliminated from the Europa League in the qualifying rounds.

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Dermot Corrigan on the sad fate of Drogheda, after they nearly knocked Dynamo Kiev out of the Champions League

In August, Irish champions Drogheda United came within inches of eliminating Dynamo Kiev from the Champions League. Midfielder Shane Robinson saw his injury-time cross-shot diverted on to a post by Kiev keeper Taras Lutsenko, before the ball agonisingly rolled across the goalline with no Drogheda player on hand to tap home. Minutes earlier Adam Hughes had somehow fired over an open goal from six yards. The rattled Ukrainians held out to sneak through 4-3, then hammered Spartak Moscow 8-2 on aggregate to seal their place in the group stages. Drogheda were left ruing what might have been.

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