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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The internet has its critics, but after using it to spend his money on football games to make up for his deprived childhood, Harry Pearson  certainly isn’t one of them

My childhood contact with football board games was confined to gazing wistfully at the adverts in Jimmy Hill’s Football Weekly. They promised so much delight. Wembley was based on “The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition” and boasted “the most gripping features and exciting uncertainties” recreated “with vivid and amazing fidelity”. Soc­cerama, meanwhile was thrillingly endorsed by Eng­land World Cup star Alan Ball.

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For Steve Wilson, the gleaming seats and award-winning arches of the McAlpine Stadium cannot replace the pleasures of standing behind the goal at Leeds Road under a rickety iron roof

I can hear the words before they’re formed. Someone new asks me which team I follow. “Huddersfield Town,” I reply, then wait. A slightly blank look appears on their face, mixing surprise, confusion and pity. And then it comes: “Nice stadium.”

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This is the time of year when the news­papers are filled with hopes for the com­ing year, with pleas for respect for ref­erees, less diving and world peace. All very laudable but, really, we can’t be do­ing with any of it. There is only one thing we’ll ask for – that this year’s FA Cup isn’t won by one of the top three, or Liverpool. We’re even prepared to tolerate one of the curses of the modern age, tracking cam­era shots of whooping fans in jester hats and curly wigs, provided they are cele­brating a victory for an underdog.

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