A small portion of despair and enlightenment delivered to your inbox every Friday
25 April 2008 ~
We’ve often seen someone driving without a seatbelt and thought they needed a talking to from Steven Gerrard. Evidently this is a widely held view as Gerrard has just come second in a survey organised by Newcarnet (“the premier online provider of automotive content in the UK”) to choose the celebrity most people would like to see endorse road safety. The top ten, which is a near definitive list of people you wouldn’t want to be stuck in a traffic jam with, includes Amy Winehouse, Ant & Dec and Noel Edmonds but no other footballers. This isn’t altogether surprising, though, given that Gerrard is just about the only member of the England squad who hasn’t been seen recently driving while using a mobile. The shortlist for Stevie G’s slogan will include: “I’m The (Road Safety) Man!”, “Belt Up – It’s The Liverpool Way!” and “One Yank Will Do It!”
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 Badge of the week
This is more like it – a superhero-style crest with no nod towards history or tradition, while figuratively urinating against accepted style boundaries. Stjarnan FC are an Icelandic side based in a municipality of 10,000 people. This makes them spoilt for choice in Icelandic terms and could well be a factor in their prolonged status as a First Division club. Despite the fact that the region has been inhabited since 900 AD and overlooks a freakishly large glacier, the founders of the club thought it best to step aside from the well trodden path of historical imagery and plump instead for an explosive star and a big S, reminiscent of the old World of Sport logo, which association has just made me tearful. Alternatively the image could be meant to convey a broken window through which a wraith, blasphemously forming into human shape, is about to seep. This could be a frightening badge to look upon for opposing forwards, especially those with less natural self-confidence, like Leroy Lita in our own league. A departure, then, from the usual club crest design, with a bit of Batman-style Pow! to it that can only make its wearers proud. Cameron Carter
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The things that everyone knows about Richard Keys are that he is Sky’s chief anchorman for live broadcasts and that he supports Coventry. Some will also have heard the story that he is so hairy he has to shave the back of his hands before evening broadcasts. Then there is the YouTube clip in which he makes some uncomplimentary remarks about Scotland’s Euro 2008 qualifier in the Faroes. This week a new incident has entered the Keys pantheon. At a dinner in honour of Denis Law at a London hotel, Keys is reported to have ended his speech by thanking the waiters who, he said, “were all in the back of a lorry at Dover this morning”. Apparently this didn’t raise much of a laugh but it was quite late.
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Historic football websites No 3 ~ Hob Nob Anyone?
I like the idea of a football website sounding like a compilation CD of lost outtakes and bedroom demos. It’s fascinating to follow the club’s peripatetic young life – when the team moved to Muir Park in the 1880s, the Scottish Athletic Journal reported: ‘The new field will be one of the best in the country. Situated in Dumbarton Road, it is being used as a strawberry field at present.’ Their next venue, Inchview, was so poor that the players preferred away games. Next stop was Meadowside, now located ‘beside the present north entrance to the Clyde Tunnel’. Use this site to plan your next Partick Thistle Historic Walking Tour of Glasgow. Ian Plenderleith
Know an ancient site?
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Spotting players
from David Sweetman
“Fresh from his role in the demolition of Birmingham City on Sunday, John Carew was on the 1700 from Birmingham New St to London Euston. Showing a financial astuteness impressive in one who earns so much, he had a second-class ticket and paid the £15 upgrade to travel first class rather than paying full whack. He was constantly on the phone in the Quiet Zone but that could have been a ruse to thwart the attempts of some Villa fans on a stag do to catch his attention. He was nonetheless willing to pose for photos and sign programmes and seemed an all-round nice bloke. He was limping as he walked across the concourse at Euston. This probably wasn't caused by a Blues defender as none of them got anywhere near him; more likely it was down to the unbalancing effect of his watch, which was the size of a small plate.” ---
Tales From The Landesliga ~ No 5
WSC contributor Matt Nation's series about watching lower-league football in Hamburg
FForget Koeman, Beckham, Roberto Carlos and their goal-a-career free-kick records; the best dead-ball expert the world has ever seen is the FC Türkiye centre-half and captain. His lofted passes are the laws of ballistics in the iambic pentameter. His corners make you want to rush into the nearest pub and buy a round for everyone in there. His free-kicks kiss spectators lightly on the forehead and make their life hell. So sweet are his strikes that the ball needs fillings every time he touches it.
Unfortunately, he's not all that good at football, as he proves in the home game against Turn-und Sportverein Sasel von 1925. Not only does a big-for-its-age waistline prevent the set-piece sonneteer from running or jumping effectively, his positional sense is also akin to that of a drunk at a pub urinal. After ten minutes and just three come-to-bed goal kicks, a long clearance causes him to lose balance without moving his feet and the visitors go a goal up.
Ten minutes later and he can’t even get sent off properly. Following a run-of-the-mill shoulder charge, Captain Curvaceous takes exception to his opponent getting his hand caught between two layers of flab. The ensuing punch takes so long to arrive that, by the time it’s failed to connect, the referee has not only blown for a foul, but also shown the red card, done the paperwork and booked a couple of other Türkiye players for dissent.
His replacement in the middle of the defence is so skinny that he has to wear the captain’s armband around his waist. Although every bit as athletic, he doesn’t have his predecessor’s composure on the ball, with every pass and clearance spinning upwards and backwards like a coin being tossed. Sasel take this as a sign to turn on the style. Their full-backs rampage, their midfielders maraud, their forwards swashbuckle. They’re so dominant that the game assumes the air of a training session the day after a Champions League final victory. Their passing patterns rewrite the rules of geometry, they dribble around imaginary traffic cones, do stepovers without the ball and even manage to pull off those tiresome tricks that involve flicking the ball up with their studs and then doing the mashed potato for absolutely no reason at all.
And they lose 2-1, the first goal a glorious falling-over header, the second a last-minute counter attack, with the visitors’ defence in their opponents’ box, flicking their own ears as a punishment for having collectively nutmegged themselves. At the final whistle, the ten winners leave the field hand-in-hand, too delirious to console their disgraced skipper, who’s sat on the terraces, still in his kit. He’ll be kicking himself at having missed out on this rare victory; unfortunately, very few people will be there to see him do it. ---
WSC Trivia ~ No 12
We received a phone call about an article on Mansfield that had appeared in a WSC series called Five Minutes in 2002. Was the caller right in thinking that it had mentioned Keith Cassells? It had. Cassells – “a stylish striker whose goals won us promotion in 1986” – had featured as the writer’s Hero (the Villain being controversial chairman Keith Haslam). Could they buy it over the phone? We said yes. In fact, could they buy three copies and pay with a credit card? They could. So we asked for the card number, then the name. “It’s Keith Cassells, spelt C-A-S...” We sent the copies for free. Yes, this is similar to the “JR Hartley” Yellow Pages ad, but heartwarmingly real. ---
 Stickipedia
A mine of information constructed from sticker cards
Gerry Hitchens, Cagliari Panini Figurine Calciatori 1968-69
Gerry Hitchens still holds the record for the most appearances in the Italian league by an English player, 205 games in total. He left Aston Villa for Inter in 1961 as part of a wave of transfers from the Football League to Serie A. Most of the exiles, including Denis Law and Jimmy Greaves, quickly returned home but Hitchens stayed. He left Inter for Torino in 1962, moving to Atalanta three years later then on to Cagliari for two final seasons, before returning to England with Worcester City. Hitchens won seven international caps but, strangely, was never picked by Sir Alf Ramsey who became England manager after the 1962 World Cup. Personal enmity may have been a factor. Ramsey once bumped into Hitchens among a group of reporters at a game in Italy and exclaimed: “Ah yes, you’re playin’ in these parts aren’t you.” After Ramsey had moved on, Hitchens imitated his distinctive intonation and muttered “tosser”.
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