Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Do you dream of talking rubbish into three mobile phones at once while evading income tax and wearing a cheap-looking but expensive suit? Then Ian Plenderleith has the fantasy site for you
Every football fan once dreamed of being a player. Then, as we got too old for that, we dreamed of being a manager instead, and that’s when someone invented Fantasy Football. But how many of us have dreamed of making money at the top of the game simply by sending faxes and making the odd phone call?
Cameron Carter listens to a landmark TV moment
Those of us who believed we would see a female Doctor Who before we died have been so far disappointed but a big gender breakthrough did occur last month as Jacqui Oatley provided commentary for the Fulham v Blackburn game on Match of the Day. Barring the nagging sensation that we were listening to the earnest trilling of a schoolboy competition winner, her summary of the game was, as you might expect, entirely satisfactory. There were a couple of St Hilary’s moments, as Zat Knight “saved the day” for Fulham with a goal-line clearance and Blackburn apparently had “two exquisite chances”, but nothing that accounted for the mostly negative response of a subsequent Daily Telegraph internet survey.
Dear WSC
After the thrilling second leg of Chelsea’s Champions League tie against Valencia, I have found that the only way to get through ITV’s woeful coverage is by marvelling at how retarded the commentary team must think we are. Having lived through Andy Gray’s 18-month-long reconciliation to the “crazy” offside rule, and survived two seasons of Five’s head-scratching over the “barmy” UEFA Cup groups, I was amazed at just how often ITV’s team felt we needed to have the away goals rule explained to us.
I realise the networks want to make their coverage accessible to all, but even the casual football observer understands the away goals rule. If I had a pound for every time the commentary team explained to me that, if Chelsea score now, then of course Valencia will need to score twice, then I would probably have collected enough to get a Setanta subscription.
Gareth Allen, Normanton
Poland and Ukraine win the race to host Euro 2012. Steve Menary reports
Was UEFA’s decision to award Euro 2012 to Poland and Ukraine really just extra punishment for match-fixing scandals and hooliganism in the favourite, Italy? The Italians had, after all, hosted the European Championship in 1968 and 1980 – albeit just four- and eight-team events respectively – and a World Cup in 1990. Poland and Ukraine have not hosted an international tournament of note. Apart from a four-team European Championship in Yugoslavia in 1976, no major tournament has ever been staged in eastern Europe.
A surprise quartet won promotion from the bottom division, remembers Simon Willis
The long-term significance
The season began with referees being instructed by the Football League to clamp down on foul play, especially the tackle from behind. As a consequence, bookings and dismissals reached record levels, as did players’ appeals against their cautions – a disciplinary points system was introduced the following season. Some club chairmen demanded the resignation of League secretary Alan Hardaker, saying they hadn’t been consulted over the new interpretations. “We are getting away from common sense and instead finding chaos,” said PFA chairman Derek Dougan. Many referees duly became more lenient as the season went on, but the days of blatant clogging were slowly coming to an end. A transitional era for the game was to be recorded by the alternative magazine Foul!, launched by Cambridge University students in October 1972.