Search: 'dugouts'
Stories
Embed from Getty Images
It can take decades to build up a sense of familiarity at a new stadium – just ask fans of the Lincolnshire side, who are reflecting on 30 years at a ground that in 1988 was the first of its kind
The steady increase in the number of permitted substitutes has made one of the most exciting parts of the game an ever rarer occurrence
Football at the
sharp end
by Richard Gordon
Black and White, £9.99
Reviewed by Gordon Cairns
From WSC 349 March 2016
“Tales From The Technical Area” may have been a more pleasingly alliterative title, but the stories author Richard Gordon elicits from his subjects are generally of the more humble variety; summoning the sense of a damp bus shelter rather than a Perspex conservatory. The author is better known as the reasonable anchor man on Radio Scotland’s Sportsound among more excitable colleagues. Drawing on these radio connections he has amassed 48 interviews with a range of figures in the Scottish game. What is refreshing is that stories about Celtic and Rangers are minimal, allowing backroom staff and managers from smaller teams to tell their tales with a remarkable degree of candour.
On a rare weekend when Tyneside’s sporting focus was not on football Harry Pearson saw Gateshead take on Cambridge United
It’s the Saturday of the Junior Great North Run. At Newcastle Central Station the usual hordes of stag and hen-nighters in identikit Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts, nurse’s uniforms and pink cowboy hats with signs saying “sperm donor needed” have been temporarily displaced by mobs of enthusiastic tots in running gear, herded together by harassed adult helpers. (“Emma, man, if you drink any more of that pop before you set off you’re gonna throw up, I’m telling you.”)