Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Having suffered in cricket's long shadow, Indian football has a big test in 2011. Siddharth Saxena examines the problems
As Bob Houghton made a last-minute mental check before leaving the Barcelona hotel lobby for India’s final practice game in nearby Girona, a steward caught his eye. “I’ll leave a jersey for you when we return,” said the Indian coach. It was packing-up time and promises for souvenirs made over the course of the stay had to be kept.
An inevitable punfest ensues as England book their place in the World Cup finals
England’s qualification for the 2010 World Cup was deemed important enough to knock even current tabloid fixation Jordan off the front pages. To qualify with eight consecutive victories, scoring 31 and conceding only five, is indeed an impressive feat and the manner in which qualification was confirmed, with a resounding victory, was also noticeably un-English. In the immediate aftermath the papers quietly acknowledged that overhyping the national team has been counter-productive in the past. But they were completely unable to resist the temptation to do so again, sometimes even on the same page as the pleas for restraint.
Cameron Carter has had unhappy experiences of following football on licenced premises
Since BSkyB lured us into their gloomed interiors in 1992, pubs have become stand-ins for the old football grounds, somewhere we can still stand or wander about the place and drink lager. Some of the time, the noise and body warmth mimic the atmosphere of a live game, but there are too many reminders that, actually, you are merely in a pub – and not your favourite one – watching television.
Simon Tyers looks at how some presenters and ex-players are not cut out for television
“Kayfabe” is a concept that is not widely known outside professional wrestling. Broadly speaking, it refers to the presentation of fictional or scripted events and opinions as reality. The term needs to be introduced to a wider audience as a way of defining what is going on with the viewer text and email sections that litter The Football League Show like overheating Corsas on the hard shoulder of the M25. You would imagine that the appeal of hearing comments about your club from supporters of other clubs would wither over time. On The Football League Show this sense that people are barging in on your business is heightened when the epithets are being read out by Jacqui Oatley’s co-host, Lizzie Greenwood-Hughes.
Dear WSC
In WSC 272 Jonathan O’Brien finds it remarkable that Celtic’s Bertie Auld “straightfacedly asserts that beating Dunfermline in the Scottish Cup final in 1965 was more important than the title win a year later”. But Auld is not alone in his assertion. No less a man than Jock Stein said in the Dunfermline history Black and White Magic: “It wouldn’t have gone as well for Celtic had they not won this game.” The Celtic history The Glory and the Dream also notes: “The largest framed photograph in [Stein’s] office at Celtic Park showed Billy McNeill borne aloft at the end of the match.”Celtic had won nothing since “the 7-1 game”, a freakish League Cup final triumph over Rangers in 1957. So this win, Stein’s first trophy seven weeks after officially becoming manager, stopped a rot which was threatening to turn Celtic into also-rans in Scotland. Without it the Lisbon Lions may never have been and there may only ever have been one “nine-in-a-row” in Scottish football. And that would never do.
Mark Murphy, Chessington