The Archive

Northern Ireland’s shock victory over England was a welcome tonic on and off the pitch, as Robbie Meredith reports

Strange as it seems now, the visit of England to Windsor Park wasn’t originally particularly important. Sure, it was a rare chance for us to ogle at the Team England circus and gain some attention from Motty, Wrighty and… um… Woolnoughy, but many Northern Ireland supporters initially viewed the Azerbaijan match the preceding Saturday as more vital. It was a realistic chance to pick up a rare win, whereas most of us assumed that England would stroll into town, patronise us with a load of guff about how they expected a tough contest, then cuff us with relative ease. 

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The success of players such as Michael Chopra and Zesh Rehman may be an advance on the position ten years ago but, Steve Wilson writes, this is not enough and those behind a new report – Asians Can Play Football – are challenging the game to reform

On the day in September when Trevor Phillips, the chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, warned that “we are sleepwalking our way into segregation” and Home Secretary Charles Clarke outlined his “commission on integration” to combat anti-Islamic feelings in the wake of the July London bombings, a group of Asian football fans were lamenting a wasted decade for the advancement of British Asian footballers and challenging the football authorities to back up good intentions with the resources and actions needed to foster genuine change.

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Two sides that met in the Premiership in 2001 are in the Championship’s bottom half and selling key players isn’t the way to get back to the play-offs writes Al Needham. Cue protests…

X On the face of it, laughing openly at the home team’s protest against their board while sitting in their end isn’t the prudent thing to do. “PLEASE HOLD THIS BANNER UP AS THE PLAYERS GO INTO THE HUDDLE BEFORE THE GAME, AND THEN AFTER THE FINAL WHISTLE,” it says. In actual fact, it is a sheet of A4 that looks as if it has been run through an office photocopier and I spend a good ten minutes arguing the toss with it.

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As you’re reading this, a report on the future of the FA is being debated, no doubt in a secret chamber a mile under Soho Square. Roger Titford analyses the proposals made by Lord Burns and wonders if they will be acted upon or shelved

In 1884 the thoroughbred amateurs of Upton Park FC successfully appealed to the Football Association for Preston North End’s expulsion from the FA Cup for fielding professional players. This started an argument about the soul of English football that never has and never will cease. Lord Burns’ structural review of the FA is another episode in the long saga, one that its author all too readily acknowledges may well gather dust on the shelf. The seeds of significant change, however, lie within.

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Cedric Anselin played with Zinedine Zidane in a UEFA Cup final. So how did he come to paint doors at a caravan site near Lowestoft? Jon Welch investigates

To say Cedric Anselin’s career has been a bit up and down would be a masterpiece of understatement. Aged 18, he played in the same Bordeaux side as Christophe Dugarry, Bixente Lizarazu and Zinedine Zidane, collecting a 1995-96 UEFA Cup runners-up medal.

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