Friday 2 All league football in Italy is suspended after the death of a policeman in a riot outside Catania’s stadium during their match with Palermo. “What we’re witnessing has nothing to do with football, so Italian football is stopping,” says Federation boss Luca Pancalli.
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Dear WSC
In Nigel Harris’s excellent Fools Gold (WSC 241), he mentions that South Wales Police officers are approachable and highly regarded. This got me thinking about when Cardiff City were the visitors to Preston a couple of seasons back. As my friends and I were sat drinking in our usual pre-match pub, a jolly officer from the aforementioned constabulary approached us and informed us that they would be letting a group of Cardiff City “fans” into the pub and that we should drink up and leave or they wouldn’t be responsible for the consequences. The SWP officers then proceeded to welcome these fans into the establishment and chuckled along as they went round taunting everyone else in the bar with racist anti-English insults. Though I agree that no set of supporters should ever be banned from seeing their team, Cardiff City’s cause is not helped when the body employed to control their unruly fans’ behaviour is seen very much to encourage what they do. South Wales Police may be “highly regarded”, but not in Preston.
Bobby Dilworth, via email
The response of the authorities, at the time and later, to the crush involving Manchester United supporters at Lens would have been all too familiar to those who watch English club sides abroad, says Adam Brown
The problems experienced by some Manchester United supporters at their Champions League fixture in Lens may have attracted an unusual number of tabloid headlines, but they should not have come as a surprise to anybody.
Scunthorpe’s promotion from the last regional Third Division. By Geoff Wallis
The long-term significance
This season sounded the death knell of the two regional divisions that had occupied the third tier of English league football since the early 1920s. The top division of the Southern League had been absorbed into the Football League as the Third Division for the 1920-21 season, adding the suffix (South) when its northern counterpart, drawn from a variety of minor leagues, was formed a year later. Only one team from each Third Division was promoted each season, while the bottom club in both sections had to apply for re-election. For 1958-59 the two regional sections were merged, with the top and bottom halves forming new Third and Fourth Divisions respectively, thus introducing the delights of Tyneside to Torquay United fans and the hotspots of Colchester to their Bury counterparts.
The Northamptonshire marriage has already made it into (and out of) the Football League; now an east London club with roots in four others are riding high in the Conference. David Stubbs watches the battle of the mergers
There’s always that great Saturday afternoon matchday sense you get that you’re approaching a stadium. Suddenly, as you walk into the station, you realise you’re part of a steadily growing crowd. The pace has quickened, with everyone walking with a slightly cocky, anticipatory gait. You squeeze on to the District Line, a hitherto empty carriage now bulging. Then, two stops down, everyone ups and pours out of the carriages en masse. Everyone, that is, except you. For the stop is Upton Park. They’re all off to West Ham v Watford, whereas you are heading further up the line, towards Dagenham East. And now, as the train pushes on, you’re alone in the carriage, except for another bloke and a dog. And they’re getting off at Upney.