The Archive

With the Conference giving varying punishments to different clubs, fans are understandably unsure as to the reasoning behind their decisions. Matthew Gooding reports

Another season is reaching its climax, and the fate of football clubs up and down the country is slowly becoming clearer. But in the Conference, such trivial matters as final league position are often irrelevant when it comes to determining issues of demotion and promotion. For this is a division that has seen at least one club relegated for non-­footballing reasons in each of the past three seasons, with Canvey Island and Boston suffering demotions, and Halifax and Scarborough going out of business all together and re-forming further down the pyramid.

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Brian Gibbs looks back to when Jimmy Hill guided Coventry City to promotion and Notts County had their worst ever season

The long-term significance
Jimmy Hill had been a reasonably successful player with Fulham, for whom he was top scorer in their Second Division promotion season of 1957-58. He was also noted for being the only bearded footballer of the era, which led to his being nicknamed “the rabbi” and “the beatnik” by team-mates. Hill became a national public figure through his leadership of the players’ union, the PFA, during its campaign against the maximum wage, which was finally abandoned in 1961.

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The world of Twitter is gaining more followers by the day, with clubs now producing their own official pages. Ian Plenderleith tries to work out what all the fuss is about

People who have never looked at Twitter (twitter.com) tend to ask: “What is Twitter actually supposed to be?” They used to ask the same things about email and blogs, but then at least a feasible, semi-coherent explanation could be given to even the technologically inept. Once you’ve been inside the super-inane world of Twitter, however, a response is much more challenging, because the point still eludes you. It’s perhaps best described as mankind’s best attempt to waste millions of hours since the invention of prayer.

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Belgium’s linguistic and political split between Flemings and Walloons is now affecting its football, writes John Chapman

Belgium holds a unique place in western Europe as it’s the only country that is anywhere close to be being roughly equally divided along linguistic lines. The two halves – Flemings (Dutch speaking) and Walloons (French speaking) – are rarely united these days; there has not been a national show of unity since 1996 when 300,000 Belgians took to the streets in protest against the police’s apparently mishandled investigation into a series of internationally reported child murders by Marc Dutroux. Prior to that, there are memories of an outpouring of grief at the death of King Baudouin in 1993 and the 1986 return to the Grand Place of the “Red Devils” after they had reached the World Cup semi-finals in Mexico.

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Oil and gas has brought wealth to Kazakhstan but domestic football has seen little of this money, says Mark Gilbey

Kazakhstan’s president is an ambitious chap. Twelve years ago, deciding that he was bored with life in the capital, Almaty, Nursultan Nazarbayev opted to up sticks and build a new city 600 miles away in the desert. The move to Astana cost £10 billion, but money is no object for the oil and gas-rich Kazakhstani government. It’s just a shame that they aren’t football fans.

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