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18 April 2008 ~

This may have been the worst week of the season for Derby County fans. A 6-0 home defeat by Villa strengthened their chances of finishing with the fewest points ever at the top level. Howl’s man of the month, Paul Jewell, claims that next season’s parachute payment has been spent already, on players acquired by his predecessor Billy Davies. Phil Brown, sacked by Derby in 2006 after less than a year in charge, may now be heading to the Premier League with his current club, Hull. To top it all, the Derby board have announced that supporters can vote for themselves as the club’s “player of the season”, which might have sounded like a good idea for about five seconds. Cack-handed condescension could just boost season-ticket sales but you wouldn’t want to bet on it.

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Badge of the week
Situated in the Jutland area of Denmark, Aarhus appears to be a cosmopolitan place. The city has a higher than average immigrant population and its residents can claim the highest average IQ outside of Copenhagen. So it comes as no surprise that the local football club's badge dispenses with big letters, swords, tigers and footballs, instead revealing a pianissimo tableau of Renaissance gentility. Two flaxen-haired men meet in their bedgowns, with their anchors, to discuss the pivotal subjects of their day. Because their subjects are so new and challenging, they gesture wildly with their hands when making their point; and of course sometimes, they both excitedly talk at once. One cannot help but surmise that AGF are the Danish game's innovators and Fancy Dans – bookishly ineffective and not so happy on the hard winter pitches. One of the more tranquil of the world's club crests. Cameron Carter

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In the days before major sports events were the exclusive property of one channel, the FA Cup final used to be covered live by the BBC and ITV. Both networks devoted several hours to the build-up including quiz shows and comedy sketches, such as this one from 1984 in which Bob Wilson interviews Michael Barrymore dressed as John Barnes. Anyone perplexed by Barrymore’s meteoric rise to stardom in the 1980s will be even more baffled now. Spotted by ‘Harry Carpenter’, a contributor to the WSC messageboard

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Neil Warnock’s weekly column in the Independent is called “What I’ve Learnt This Week”. One day a sub-editor on his final shift will replace all the text with an enormous “Not Much”. Neil never misses an opportunity to play the pantomime villain. This week’s excuse is provided by a visit to an acupuncturist for a back problem: “Lying flat out with needles being stuck in me. I bet a lot of football fans up and down the country would had loved to be in the acupuncturist's position, only they would have wanted to use knitting needles.” Boo. Hiss. But that stuff’s bearable compared to the brain-melting banality surrounding it. Neil’s family have two puppies, Percy and Donald. This week, one of them weed on the carpet. Oh no he didn’t. Oh yes he did. Here’s Neil: “I was playing football with [son] William in the house, so he was wearing socks, when suddenly he found a puddle. As I said to him: ‘It could have been worse – it could have been me that stood in it.’” Next week, Wednesdayites will be in stitches when Neil opens a carton of milk only to find that some of it sprays on the floor.

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from Richard Mason
“This week is the 50th anniversary of Woking’s greatest day, their 3-0 Amateur Cup final victory over Ilford, watched by 71,000 at Wembley. I was at that match, which featured several players with the sort of names you don’t see on teamsheets anymore. One of Woking’s two goals was scored by 18-year-old winger Reg Stratton, while the programme describes Ilford's right-back Gus Simmons as ‘a trenchant and lusty defender with tremendous energy’. Gus ‘breeds budgerigars as a hobby’ and ‘his celebrated grin often disconcerts opponents beaten in the tackle’. Left-half and England captain Henry Dodkins has ‘a bulldog-like appearance’ which is ‘matched by his style and never-say-die spirit’. Baby of the side Danny Durston has a ‘surprisingly strong shot, so unwary goalkeepers beware’. Especially as ‘his former headmaster will be watching him today’. But for an illness (TB?) that ‘took him to Switzerland for six months for treatment’, centre-forward Dicky Winch ‘might have been the Andy Wilson of today’. Andy who? Then there is inside-left Bill Butler, who believes that ‘goalkeepers in possession are meant to be charged’ (as Nat Lofthouse was to prove against Harry Gregg in the FA Cup final three weeks later). He has a ‘vivacious wife, Joan’ who is ‘the inspiration of Bill on the field and off’.”

Anyone with further information about the career of Dicky Winch should drop us a line.

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This week in history ~ Division Three, April 18, 1987



Results

Bournemouth, managed by Harry Redknapp, won the title by three points from Middlesbrough. Their team in a first ever promotion to the second level included midfielder Sean O’Driscoll, later the Cherries’ manager and now with Doncaster, and current Stoke boss Tony Pulis. They also got ten goals from erratic striker Trevor Aylott, who, as mentioned in a previous Howl, now drives a cab in Chislehurst, Kent.

Bruce Rioch’s Middlesbrough safely negotiated their first ever League derbies against Darlington, with a 1-0 away win and 1-1 draw at Ayresome Park, the stadium they left for the Riverside in 1995. Their defence, which was the best in the division in conceding only 30 goals, contained the 21-year-old Gary Pallister plus current Championship managers Brian Laws and Tony Mowbray.

Three of the next four teams made the play-offs but Notts County missed out to Bristol City by one point, after failing to win any of their last four games. Centre-back Dean Yates was the only player still with the club when they reached the old First Division five years later.

Bolton’s player-manager Phil Neal scored in the 2-0 defeat of Carlisle. That was the only win in their last 11 games, however, and they dropped to the fourth level for the first time. Their average crowd was 4,851 – just over ten per cent of the capacity at their ground, Burnden Park – although that was a slight improvement on the previous season.

The goalless Bristol derby was watched by one of its lowest ever crowds, 4,695, a consequence of Rovers having just begun what was to be a ten-year tenancy at modest Twerton Park, home of non-League Bath City.

The bottom three in this table all went down with Newport finishing bottom. A year later they were relegated again and went out of business before the end of 1988-89. The Fulham side that beat Newport included future England defender Paul Parker who left for QPR that summer.

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WSC Trivia ~ No 11
Has WSC ever won an award, you ask? Why, yes. We received a Bronze certificate (no medals) in the ACE Press Awards of 2004 for Circulation Excellence and Endeavour by a Smaller Magazine. Who said that sounds like being rewarded for breathing and standing upright? How dare you.

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Stickipedia  
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
Trevor Hockey, Sheffield United A&BC Chewing Gum, 1972-73
A&BC published sets of football cards packaged with chewing gum from 1958 until 1974 when they were taken over by American-based rivals Topps, manufacturers of Bazooka Joe bubblegum. Topps’s subsidiary, Merlin, hold the official sticker rights to the Premier League. Unlike the sticker sets, gum cards weren’t stored in albums, hence Trevor Hockey is looking a little frayed. The data on the back included a question whose answer was revealed by rubbing a copper coin in the appropriate space. In this case the question is “What was Trevor until a few years ago?”. Anyone hoping that the answer might be “a woman” will be disappointed to discover that it’s “a winger”. The fearsome Hockey, understandably known as “The Soccer Viking”, was one of the first English-born players to be capped by Wales for whom he played nine times in the early 1970s. He died in 1987, aged 43.

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League table courtesy of www.statto.com: the place to go for football stats & odds comparison – English & Scottish stats from 1871 plus European & International

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