The Archive

It is not only the FA Cup that mixes minnows with giants: county cups do so, too. Gavin Willacy champions these wrongly neglected events

Having despatched Northern League Second Division strugglers Prudhoe, Newcastle United face the University of Northumbria in the cup ­quarter-finals. This is not fantasy football, FIFA 08, or Football Manager. It’s the Northumberland Senior Cup, one of the many county cups that feature Premier League giants taking on not only players who are unknown outside of their front doors, but whole teams that few people have even heard of. In the midst of the 21st century sports business world, they are as much of an anachronism as the Boat Race, the ­Varsity Match or cricket festivals.

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Foreign players are becoming common in the Conference – there’s even an ex-Barcelona man at Northwich, writes Michael Whalley

You might expect a Blue Square Premier club to be giddy with excitement after taking a former Barcelona first-teamer on trial. Yet Nigerian defender Gbenga Okunowo’s arrival at Northwich Victoria in early December created so few ripples that the club didn’t even mention it in their next programme.

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What would you change about football? WSC writers look ahead to 2009 and ask, sensibly enough, for preparation for a global dystopia and for players to learn the laws, which will never catch on

After sneaking an away win at Bristol City a few years ago, Brentford created a minor stir by warming down on the pitch within minutes of the final whistle. Home fans regarded the winners’ touchline-to-touchline trudging to be “unnecessarily provocative” and, via a flurry of letters to the local paper, demanded an apology from the club.

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Australia have thrown their hat into the ring to host the 2018 World Cup. Matthew Hall watches the bid process unfold

As 2008 eased into 2009, Frank Lowy’s luxury yacht nudged a course through the Caribbean toward Trinidad & Tobago. Lowy is the 78-year-old chairman of Football Federation Australia and probably the richest man in the country, mainly due to his vast Westfield shopping-centre empire, which reaches across the United States, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. But while Lowy no doubt enjoyed the Caribbean New Year sun, he had another reason for visiting the West Indies. After all, there are worse place to be in December than at home at his Sydney harbourside mansion in summer.

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England's premier cup competition is starting to suffer in popularity as ITV and Setanta take the rights

On successive days in December, the sports pages carried several pictures of excited young fans reaching out to touch players. Firstly Japanese children in Ronaldo replica shirts greeted Manchester United when they arrived in Tokyo for the Club World Cup. The following day Blyth Spartans fans ­celebrated the FA Cup second-round defeat of Bournemouth; it’s unlikely that their green-and-white shirts are available anywhere other than the club shop and a couple of stores in Blyth town centre.

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