The Archive

Tom Bower, whose investigations helped bring down Robert Maxwell, turns to football in his latest book, Broken Dreams. It left Harry Pearson screaming …

A decade or so ago Paul Kimmage, who would later ghost Tony Cascarino’s autobiography, wrote a book about his experiences as a professional cy­clist. A Rough Ride told of systematic drug use by ri­ders in races such as the Tour de France. In Britain, where bike racing ranks alongside clay-pigeon shooting, Kimmage was rewarded with the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In Europe, where cycling is big news and big bus­iness, however, he was denounced by everybody from fellow riders to sports journalists as a fantasist and an embittered loser. The Irishman had predicted this would happen. There existed, he said, a code of silence within the world of cycling when it came to drug taking, extending from the mechanics to the upper echelons of cycling’s ruling bodies, from the team masseurs to all branches of the media.

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Amid heated debates (no, really) over restructuring non–league football, John Carter explains why Ryman Isthmian clubs are stuck in the middle of a biscuit

Isthmian League fans reckon Claremont Road’s cli­mate has more in common with the Yukon than Cricklewood. But bone-chilling temperatures alone don’t explain why only 243 fans turned up for the mid-Dec­ember clash between long-time rivals Hendon and Enfield. Yes, there were special circumstances: most of Enfield’s fans have “done a Wimbledon”, deserting to breakaway new boys Enfield Town; the club’s travelling support now typically consists of three men sharing a cup of Bovril. Nevertheless, many of the ter­race foot-stampers that afternoon re­member times when the fixture could be expected to draw ten times the paying customers it does today.

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A former Leeds chairman, an FA Cup run, a mass walkout; football is the talk of the tea shops. Mark Douglas puts down his scone to tell the Harrogate story

When the time comes to draw up a list of history’s most defiant gestures, it is fair to say the mass walkout of Paul Marshall and his Harrogate Railway first-team squad in February 2003 won’t be muscling out Nikita Khruschev’s shoe-banging rage at the UN in the Cold War’s frostiest days. Given that the repentant players were back at the club’s Station View ground within a few days, it probably ranks with John Gummer feeding his daugh­ter a beef burger. Nevertheless, Mar­­shall’s anger, provoked by the offer of a “disrespectful” £200 bonus for the team’s stellar efforts in their historic FA Cup second-round defeat to Bristol City, does at least draw attention to the crossroads which Harrogate’s football clubs are at. After decades of struggle, Railway and higher-placed rivals Harrogate Town find themselves with the finance and impetus to make a mark on the football world, but a strong conservative streak threatens to undermine the recent success and banish them to football’s backwaters.

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No, you haven't picked up Roy of the Rovers by mistake. A kid on holiday has really signed for Mallorca after a scout saw him having a kick–about, as Neil White relates

Not since Steve Norman and Martin Kemp moved from Spandau Ballet to Melchester Rovers in the early 1980s has there been as unlikely a transfer as the one that took 18-year-old apprentice mechanic Jimmy Stevenson from Alloa Athletic to Real Mallorca.

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Tom Bower's new book looks into the financial irregularities and running of football. Here he tells WSC why these issues will sooner or later shatter the game

The publishers make play of the fact that you are the first non-sports journalist to write on this subject. Do you consider that football journalists are too reliant on clubs as sources for stories to be adequately dispassionate on business matters?
I don’t criticise them for that. I think football journalists write brilliantly. I came to this as an outsider who didn’t read the football pages before. Their problem is they need access to the players and so it’s very difficult for them to do what I’ve done; it just comes with the turf. Where the failure has been is with the business sections of the newspapers. It’s regarded as just sport whereas in fact it’s a huge industry.

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