The Archive

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.

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A ticketing fiasco leads to hundreds of empty seats at a supposedly showpiece game. Bruce Wilkinson reports

Watching the FA Cup semi-final between Blackburn and Chelsea, you may have been surprised to see quite so many empty seats. The distance Chelsea supporters had to travel and the number of big games they have coming up were contributory factors, while Blackburn have had well publicised problems filling Ewood Park in the past couple of seasons. Ticket prices, however, also had a significant effect on the attendance.

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Dianne Millen reports on an attempted Scottish breakaway

Reports of the demise of the Scottish Football League (SFL) appear greatly exaggerated. Member clubs have overwhelmingly rejected the controversial proposal to create a second Scottish Premier League division – imaginatively entitled “SPL2”.

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In the light of recent events, Italy will introduce a stewarding system. Matthew Barker reports on how a new approach to stadium management, imposed from above, will impact on the game

The day after Manchester United’s Champions League quarter-final first leg in Rome, a series of crowd-control measures were announced by the Italian government. Central to these new laws, drawn up in the wake of the riots in Catania and the death of police officer Filippo Raciti, is the introduction of a stewarding system, modelled on the British matchday experience.

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Hooliganism in the city that is hosting the Champions League final is getting worse. Unfortunately, as Paul Pomonis reports, government action seems sure to be ineffective

Speaking in the aftermath of the police death in Sicily in February, Giorgios Orfanos, Greece’s minister for sport, unfavourably compared the measures the Italian government had just announced with his own anti-hooligan policies. “Our decisions have been much more radical than a league shutdown. As a result, football-related violence in Greece cannot even compare with what is going on in Italy,” he said, adding: “For the last three years the number of sport-related violent incidents has been dropping… We have an ongoing problem and we’re dealing with it aggressively.”

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