Dear WSC
I enjoyed Roger Titford’s nostalgic piece about half-time scoreboards (WSC 202). Many people will remember Huddersfield Town’s big scorebox at the old Leeds Road ground. It was manned from within and, although it couldn’t boast Fulham-style coloured lights, it was still a complicated business to fathom its information. Scores were displayed in three groups (A, B & C) of eight and unless you watched it constantly, you couldn’t be sure whether the scores shown were from Group A or Group B. I missed many a goal and other dramatic incidents early in second halves through over-attentiveness to my programme to see how (for example) Plymouth and Blackburn were getting on. It was usually 0-0.
Stuart Barker, Carlisle
The Archive
Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
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.”
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.
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.
Alun Rogers on promotion, Cup upsets and having big red neighbours
Are home crowds as big as they could get?
Attendances have long been a sore point. It can’t help having Manchester and Liverpool a leisurely 45 minutes away, but the town and outlying population have been expanding at an incredible rate over the past ten years. The inhabitants display a keen affection for Poundland-style shops; it might just be a cheapskate attitude that afflicts attendances.