A small portion of despair and enlightenment delivered to your inbox every Friday
22 August 2008 ~
In a week when Brian Barwick was told to sling his hook as FA chief executive, we set to wondering what had happened to one of his predecessors. If you’re at a loss for something to do, drop in on Graham Kelly’s personal website. The man who helped to create the Premier League promises to voice his “opinions on ‘the beautiful game’, the people behind (and in front of) it and current issues” but that’s a hollow boast so far. The Premiership forum is a lonely old place with just the one post, made over a year ago. Even Graham hasn’t joined in.
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 Badge of the week
The town of Pori in western Finland is known for its international jazz festival. In 1992, the directors of the football club that had been known as Porin Pallotoverit (or PPT) decided on a rebranding to connect their team to the town’s main cultural event. A saxophone with a ball stuck in it would have done the job as a badge, or a figure in football kit topped off with dark glasses and a beret. The design they settled for could just about be a stylised representation of a vibraphone but to us it doesn’t remotely summon up the world of hissing cymbals and atonal parping. FC Jazz won two league titles under their new name before folding in 2004. Like, gone, man. ---
from Rob Freeman
“While not exactly vandalism, you would think that Wikipedia’s choice of picture for Neil Ruddock could be kinder. As could the caption.” ---
Historic Football Websites No 18 ~ Kick It Out
Founded in 1993, maybe we take the Let’s Kick Racism Out Of Football campaign too much for granted nowadays. Yet when you read the timeline on its site that tells you “2008 – The Football League features five Asian professionals, the highest number to date. Paul Ince becomes the first black English manager to lift a trophy” then you realise that, like winning the league, challenging prejudice is a marathon, not a sprint. The campaign’s site, meanwhile, is a worthy and worthwhile read reflecting that changing attitudes don’t just come about through some organic process of enlightenment, but are the result of the slow but sure work necessary to alter bigotry’s mindset. Ian Plenderleith
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Lincoln City opted not sign Romanian striker Adrian Patulea despite his having scored a hat-trick in a pre-season match in July. Patulea had introduced himself to the club in quite an unusual way, as BBC online’s Lincoln page reported: “‘He was spotted by the groundsman running around the training ground with his girlfriend on his back,’ said manager Peter Jackson. ‘The trouble is his girlfriend was naked, which got the attention of the players.’” Spotted by JP McKenny
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This week in history ~ Division One, August 22, 1959
Results Eventual champions Burnley began with a 3-2 win at Leeds who were to go down. Winger John Connelly, a 1966 World Cup winner while with Man Utd, got the visitors’ first goal and was be their top scorer with 20. The title was clinched on the final day with Burnley winning 2-1 at Man City. Rivals Wolves, who were second by a point, won too, 5-1 at Chelsea in front of over 60,000. But they slipped up in their penultimate match, losing 3-1 at home to Spurs.
Spurs led the table themselves for several months but came unstuck with successive home defeats against Man Utd and Chelsea at Easter and finished third behind Wolves on goal average (it was this system that generated the odd-looking first-day table). Welsh winger Cliff Jones scored three in the opening day demolition of Newcastle; the team was to do the Double the following year.
The Leeds side that played Burnley included Don Revie and Jack Charlton. Billy Bremner was the only other player from what became the “Revie era” to play for them that season. The squad also featured black South African striker Gerry Francis, whose better known compatriot Albert Johanesson was to be an important member of the mid-1960s side.
The other relegated side were Luton for whom Northern Ireland winger, and later manager, Billy Bingham scored in their 2-2 draw at Everton. Bingham moved to Goodison the following season and featured in Everton’s League winning team of 1962-63. Luton were stuck in the bottom two from September onwards having won only one of their first eight games.
Nineteen-year-old Jimmy Greaves scored a hat-trick for Chelsea, but they were to struggle, finishing three points above relegation. Tom Finney, 37 and playing in his final season, was among the scorers for Preston who were to go down the following year.
Dennis Viollet got both goals for a young Man Utd side, still rebuilding after the Munich crash, in their defeat at West Brom. He was to be the division’s top scorer with 32 goals, three ahead of Greaves and Jimmy Murray of Wolves.
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WSC Trivia ~ No 29
As happened a few times in the early 1990s, the WSC office was visited by a group of German zine editors, most of them involved with St Pauli, the Hamburg club known for its leftist fan culture. They had a lot of questions about the fascist infiltration of English football, about which we knew very little. We took them to a cafe nearby, frequented by motorbike couriers prone to loud anecdotes about confrontations with van drivers. One of the many denim patches worn by most of the St Pauli supporters read Gegen Nazis (anti-Nazis). A biker on the next table eyed them for a bit then came over and said matily “So where’s Gegen, then?” clearly assuming that they were Nazis from a place of that name. Fortunately his mistake was taken in good heart and he quickly returned to his torpedo roll and milky tea.
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Stickipedia
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
 Damir Desnica, KV Kortrijk Panini 1987, Belgium
During the 1980s, Damir Desnica was one of the many Yugoslav players in Belgium, where he made over 100 league appearances in four seasons with Kortrijk. But he was unusual in one respect – he was a deaf-mute, possibly the only such individual to have had a career as a professional footballer. Desnica, a striker, began with his home town team NK Rijeka with whom he won the domestic cup in 1978 and 1979. After getting 12 caps at Under-21 level, he scored in his one appearance for the Yugoslav national side, in a European Championship qualifier against Romania in 1978. He later claimed that his affliction took pressure off him in that he didn’t feel intimidated by large crowds at away matches. Settling into a foreign country wasn’t too big an obstacle either, as he communicated in the standardised international sign language in Belgium just as he had at home. ---
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