Book reviews

Tom Davies argues that the one-year ban imposed on Leyton Orient's Roger Stanislaus for pre-match drug taking is both unfair and inconsistent

Two of the symptoms widely attributed to cocaine use are paranoia and confusion. Similar feelings can be experienced at a fraction of the cost by trying to make sense of the contradictory reasons given for Roger Stanislaus’s year-long banishment from the game. Stanislaus has been banned by the FA because a test after Orient’s 0-3 defeat at Barnet on November 25th found “performance-enhancing” levels of cocaine in his blood. He was subsequently sacked by Leyton Orient in order, basically, to set an example to the kids. Football must be seen to be whiter than white, said chairman Barry Hearn, making no reference to the FA’s implication that Stanislaus was a cheat.

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No style magazine worthy of the name would go to press without at least one feature about supermodels, Britpop, Hollywood hunks and… Liverpool players. John Williams got past the security on the door to ask a few questions

More years ago than you would care, or want, to remember, the great Merseyside net-buster, Bill ‘Dixie’ Dean, visited Pathé News in Soho to be interviewed for some football cinema coverage. Dixie once jumped into the crowd at White Hart Lane to smack a local racist and, after a serious road accident, was also popularly thought in the city to have had a steel plate inserted into his head, thus accounting for his thunderbolt headers that started out somewhere near Garston.

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We'd just been wondering whether we'd ever had a feature extolling a much-maligned ginger-haired striker, when Davy Millar offered a tribute to the singular Iain Dowie

Each generation of footballers produces its own crop of heroes, the men whose talents single them out for mass adulation. The rest can briefly rise to national prominence only by persistently psychotic tackling or by becoming a national joke. Iain Dowie is a select member of this group. Ridiculed by lazy comedians and desperate fanzine editors, he is doubly cursed as his physical appearance is considered as amusing as his performance on the pitch. Everybody now knows that he is an anti-Adonis with the footballing ability of a carthorse in labour.

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Archie MacGregor explains why Edinburgh clubs have little need of trophy cabinets

On the top of a hill in the centre of Scotland’s capital rests a sorry-looking, unfinished 19th Century monument to the dead of the Napoleonic Wars. Intended to be a replica of the Parthenon in Athens, it has for many years now been popularly referred to as ‘Edinburgh’s disgrace’. As a symbol of inflated grandeur, unfulfilled potential and downright farce it has few rivals throughout these isles, yet, oddly enough, two of the closest contenders lie within its immediate environs. They are called Hearts and Hibs.

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Doug Stenhouse explains why Berwick Rangers, rescued from the brink of oblivion, have more reason than most to be thankful to their supporters' club

You might know Berwick Rangers as the only English team in the Scottish League. You might even know that through a quirk of history, the town of Berwick was left out of the peace treaty at the end of the Crimean War, so Berwick was technically at war with Russia for over 100 years. You probably do not know that Shielfield Park, Berwick Rangers’ ground is owned by their supporters, a unique situation brought about by a tale so bizarre even the script writers of Baywatch would have found it too far-fetched.

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