The Archive

The falling cost of satellite technology has combined with an increase in broadcasts of live English games. Bruce Wilkinson examines modern football's global accessibility to televised matches 

The international popularity of the Premiership has given rise to an ever growing demand for broadcasts of English football around the world. What began as a few Scandinavian coun­­tries beaming back live games has grown into scores of television companies from Los Angeles to Uzbekistan paying to show live transmissions, delayed broad­casts and highlights packages.

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Team Bath made headlines with their FA Cup run in 2002 and now the university  side are racing up the non-League pyramid. Matthew Brown explains how they do it

Last season a football club called Team Bath FC gen­erated a vast swathe of media coverage when they became the first university side for 122 years to play in the latter stages of the FA Cup. As they progressed through five qualifying rounds to the first round proper, the Bath stu­dents spawned a rash of nostalgic features about the long-ago, pre-professional days when footballers were educated gentlemen and uni­versities were at the hub of the national game.

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Friday 2 Martin O’Neill denies being approached by Liverpool – “I’m going to try and remain calm and say that story is totally and utterly untrue” – while Lazio coach Roberto Mancini is the latest to be linked with the Spurs job. The transfer window opens with a creak: Leicester sign Nikos Dabizas from Newcastle and turn down a Blackburn bid for Muzzy Izzet; Wolves sign Romania striker Ioan Ganea on a short-term deal; Eyal Berkovic may take a wage cut to leave Man City for Portsmouth.

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Racing Genk have recently experiemented with earpiece technology, enabling the coaching staff to send orders to their keeper. Despite being used in cycling, Genk's innovative approach was a global first in football, as John Chapman writes

Where did Sir Alex Ferguson’s legendary anger and desire to win come from? Some say it’s due to the time he spent as an apprentice tool-worker, but others trace it back to Rangers’ 4-0 defeat by Celtic in the 1969 Scottish Cup final. Fer­gie was made the scapegoat for the de­feat, after he failed to mark Willie McNeil at a corner two minutes into the match. Almost as the final whistle blew, Ferguson was on his way out of Ibrox, seemingly into obscurity.

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Having watched Conference football since 1997, Hereford United fan Richard Butler is eager for his team to escape non-League and once again compete with their Welsh rivals

Could Hereford’s gates increase significantly if they made it back into the Football League?
When we first broke into the Fourth Division in the 1970s, the club regularly drew crowds of 10,000, an astonishing figure for a town Hereford’s size, and we would once again be the only League club for about 50 miles in any direction. But sadly, 25 years of mostly mediocrity has made many folk cynical about the club. However, council plans for redevelopment of the “Edgar Street Grid” are in the pipeline, which could secure the long-term future of the club and may even mean a new stadium.

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