The Archive

Bruce Wilkinson finds out about the added extras you have to pay on the internet in order to acquire tickets

 When the cost of watching a Premiership match can be upwards of £50 it can come as quite a shock to find that this is far from the complete price of admission to a game of football. You may have to pay several pounds in booking or administration fees; fork out to join a membership scheme or away travel club; or even have to give the club thousands of pounds for a debenture or to join a bond scheme. Whereas once you were able to turn up to a match and hand the turnstile attendant your tenner, supporters now need to be aware of a multitude of add-on costs to the advertised admission price.

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The decline of three o’clock Saturday football has claimed another victim, to Peter McParlin’s regret

On Saturday December 17, 2005, 110 years of Tyneside tradition came to an end when the last edition of The Pink, the Saturday evening results paper published by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle since 1895, rolled off the presses. The paper has become obsolete in an age when mobile phones can deliver instant goal alerts from hundreds of miles away. Who needs a late edition for the results when that little piece of gadgetry in your pocket can even replay the goals on its mini LCD screen? But to those of us of a certain age, new technology can never replace what The Pink, and its like elsewhere in the country, used to add to Saturday nights.

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A new generation of football magazines has appeared in Europe of late, breaking the monopoly of established, establishment titles. The first of an occasional series looks at the subversion and humour attracting readers in France. Neil McCarthy reports

Publishing its 30th monthly edition in January 2006, S0 Foot is becoming firmly established as France’s main alternative football magazine with a print run of 80,000 and an estimated readership of more than 200,000. It’s not a mean feat, considering that French football is already largely covered by three mammoths: the daily L’Equipe, its bi-weekly stable mate, France Football, and the monthly Onze Mondial. L’Equipe and France Football both celebrate their 60th birthdays this year and Onze Mondial, France’s equivalent of Shoot!, its 30th.

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Rupert Lowe has seen a lot of defeats on the pitch of late, but fared rather better in court. Neil Rose examines the implications of the Times’s defeat for journalists and fans 

London’s libel courts are well known as home to the rich and famous, so it’s no surprise to see the football fraternity make themselves comfortable, too.

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While a site devoted to the football itself may be the best new discovery, Ian Plenderleith finds himself strangely drawn to the world of groundsmen by memories of a difficult career choice

It’s often been said that 90 per cent of the internet is a load of balls, but the “site of the month” award goes to a domain that has taken this to new and detailed extremes. Soccer Ball World is a football anorak’s long wet dream of history, stats and specifications centred around just one spherical object.

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