The Archive

The number of Australian players in Britain has turned from trickle to flood, fuelled by an army of agents. Neil Forsyth  traces this all back to a very English wheeler-dealer

Ten years ago it was Scandinavians. Every United Kingdom team, it seemed, had one. Cheap, professional and highly adaptable to the British playing style (apart from Tomas Brolin, on all three counts) they stream­ed across the North Sea. It wasn’t a coincidental occurrence, a sudden outbreak of itchy feet. Rather, it was down to the emergence in those countries of an ambitious and inventive breed of a relatively new football phenomenon, the modern agent. Well educated, fluent in English and with a largely untapped resource to market, the fledgling Scandinavian agents found the UK a fertile mar­ket. One, Rune Hauge, brought a novel bus­iness approach to his dealings with then Arsenal manager George Graham, leading to the Scotsman’s sacking.

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MC Harvey may be the only rap star who plays football to a decent standard but there are plenty of players who would love to move the other way, as Phillip Mlynar explains

Taking a hiatus from his role as one of the rappers that make up the So Solid Crew, MC Harvey – or simply “Harvey” to his new team-mates – now spends his Saturdays as left-back for AFC Wimbledon. Debuting in a 3-0 victory at Chipstead, Harvey proved to be a defender with an eye for a goal and struck up a promising understanding with Ryan Gray down the left. He also appears just as pleased with the team’s form as any of his peers who, as is usual in the Combined Counties League, don’t have a sideline in Top of the Pops appearances. “The music thing was always really just a hobby in one respect,” says Harvey who was once on Chelsea’s books. “It was fun, es­pecially when we had top-ten hits and performed at the Brits, but I’ve always loved football first. And now I’m back playing with some old mates and I’m loving it.”

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Footballers’ autographs are big business these days. Al Needham went to an exhibition at the NEC to snub Jimmy Greaves and see what an old Tony Woodcock would be worth

The first autograph I ever got was a signed photo of Tony Woodcock kneeling behind the League Cup, in exchange for my Dad moving house for him. I would dig it out now, but I chucked it away when he was transferred to Cologne. I filled up assorted notebooks with autographs purloined at the Nottingham Forest training ground and outside dressing rooms after matches. Brian Clough always wrote “Be good” after his name, Martin O’Neill always had a face like a smacked arse when he did his and John Robertson always said: “Jesus, not you again.”

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Ian Plenderleith looks at Football Fans Census, a site that attempts to regularly examine the attitudes of supporters to a range of issues and to thereby influence the game’s authorities to take concerns seriously

The advent of the internet has done wonders for fan democracy. It takes very little effort to fire off an angry email to your club com­plaining that the ageing defence, the fumbling goalie, the clueless coach and the thick, sweet tobacco from the pipe of the old boy sitting in front of you all combined to increase your blood pressure to dangerous levels the previous Saturday and you’d like a refund NOW.

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Barney Ronay considers the way that a piece of squat, ugly technology, once a source of condescension, changed English football

Desperate times call for desperate publicity stunts. In 1990, with the battle for control of the skies be­tween BSB and Sky TV at its most feverish, camera-shy media mogul Rupert Murdoch took the unusual step of paying a surprise visit to the home of Sky’s millionth UK subscriber. Awkwardly posed in raincoat and inch-thick specs, Murdoch smiled for the cameras with an arm around the shoulders of his hosts, a family of five torn from their expensively assembled tea-time viewing to stand outside in the cold next to a laconic billionaire.

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