The Archive

In case you've ever caught yourself totting up how many different grounds you've been to and thought you might be coming down with an obsession, Ian Plenderleith has found the sites of the true hard core

Most fans like to visit an uncharted sta­dium for the first time. A change of view and a new degree of toxicity in your half-time snack are the small paybacks for taking on an often unrewarding away trip. But there are people who take things a bit too far. Welcome to the world of groundhoppers.

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Dear WSC
With League clubs’ financial departments having been brought back from Planet Zog – thanks to the generosity of ITV Digital – and the Conference’s introduction of a salary cap, one might have thought the days of mismanagement were over. Not in south Essex they’re not. How exactly have Hornchurch, who pull in 400 punters on a good day, been allowed to sign upwards of a dozen full-time pros? Latest rumours have them offering £100,000 for Chester’s Daryl Clare and a contract worth almost £3,000 per week. How do Weymouth feel now about their investment in Steve Claridge when the stakes have been raised to ridiculous lev­els in Conference Two? From Chelsea to Hornchurch, the prac­­tice of deliberately running clubs as loss-making concerns remains football’s biggest problem. Someone needs to sort it out, but I don’t suppose they will.
Alan Dawson, London W10

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Lincoln City boss Graham Taylor announced his arrival on the managerial scene as his side's outstanding home record gave them the Division Four title, Roger Titford recalls

The long-term significance
This was the season that launched Graham Taylor’s career. Look at those Lincoln City stats – 71 home goals (an average of more than three a game!), 111 in all and 74 points (equivalent to 106 with three points for a win). Among the stars of the side were John Ward and Percy Freeman up front; Ian Branfoot and Sam Ellis at the back. Two years later Taylor nearly repeated the feat with Fourth Division Watford. Sadly, international football was another matter.

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However unjust their elimination from Euro 2004 might have seemed at the time, the truth is that England will never go further than the last eight in a major tournament until there is a major rehaul of the Premiership

 England’s elimination at Euro 2004 felt like a compilation of all their previous tournament crises. The team tend to rely on survival through attrition, of desperate defending with their “tin hats on”. But that never pays off, so other reasons for failure are found, often involving making a scapegoat of a referee (Urs Meier this year, Kim Milton Nielsen in 1998). This means uncomfortable questions don’t have to be posed, such as whether it’s right to place faith in star names when they are playing as badly as David Beckham, or indeed whether the best English players are in fact especially good in the first place.

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Beginning our European Championship reports from writers in Portugal, Philip Cornwall offers an upbeat assessment of the England experience, where expectations were met on the pitch and exceeded off it – even if the portents for 2006 are shakier

C autious optimism, last month’s WSC editorial sug­gested, was in order on and off the pitch for England at Euro 2004. I should have paid attention. Ten min­utes from time against Portugal I was edging nervously past caution and starting to dream. Then again, what happened next was a long, long way from the England nightmares of the past. The national team have won two European quarter-finals: in 1968 against Spain in a home-and-away tie, and against the same opponents in 1996 when, as hosts, they won on penalties after the opposition had had a goal disallowed controversially. Any sensible analysis of England’s exit has to have this context: it rarely gets any better than this and could so easily have done so.

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