The Archive

Before it's too late, Tom Davies records the relaxed conviviality of chatting in the quietest part of a quietish ground, pausing only for the odd barbed reference to the game in the background

Those who have campaigned for the retention or return of terracing at football have aimed their fire too narrowly. In highlighting the mystique of a terrace as a throbbing, heaving mass of partisan passion, they’ve missed what makes an awful lot of terraces – particularly a lot of those that still exist – special: their quiet, easy-going affability.

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Tirol Innsbruck, a familiar name from the Champions League, has vanished from sight. They could be a long time coming back, as Roderick Stewart writes

The dramatic collapse of Tirol Innsbruck last year, from Champions League qualifiers to the third division, was probably the most extreme case yet of a club being punished for financial misdemeanours. Now, in a new guise, the club have started the long haul back.

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Dear WSC
How’s this for a delicious sense of irony? Brentford v Colchester United, Tuesday February 18, 2003. 1) On a freezing cold night when almost everyone wishes they’d stayed indoors, the Bees put in a dreadful first-half display and are roundly booed off the pitch. 2) In an effort to pla­cate the home fans, Brentford decide to play the D:Ream hit Things Can Only Get Better over the tannoy. 3) Immediately the song finishes, the club announ­ces the match has been abandoned at half time. If only the Bees’ strike force was as good as their comic timing.
Eddie Hutchinson, Ashford

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Steve Ragg talks Latics

What have been your best and worst moments as an Oldham fan?
Seeing the team walk out at Wembley for the Littlewoods Cup final in 1990, then clinching the old Second Division title with a last-minute penalty in the final game the following year, represent a two-year spell that it is hard to see being beaten for a Latics fan. The worst: two last-minute goals, one against Leeds in the 1987 play-offs, the other, just too painful to mention.

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Don't make players pay for failure

It has been reported that Gary Megson has taken to bringing a giant cheque, of the type normally reserved for pools win­ners’ photographs, into the West Brom dressing room to remind his players how much they would make in deferred bo­nus payments if the team stay up. It hasn’t worked – to date he has brought out the big cheque three times and the team have lost each match.

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