The Archive

Irving Scholar was just one of the strange heroes of The Men Who Changed Football. The BBC documentary gave only a partial account of the past two decades, says Nick Varley

I was one of the men who changed football. Well, actually, I was one of those in The Men Who Changed Football, BBC2’s three-part documentary on how the game was transformed from “national disgrace to big business”. Granted, it was a fleeting appearance, lurk­ing behind Tony Banks and David Mellor, the Laurel and Hardy of west London, after they completed an ill-advised football-playing photocall before the launch of the Task Force. The press conference which followed the slapstick routine was, you won’t be surprised to hear, a lot less entertaining.

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To kick-off a new series about trophies that are no longer with us Peter Collins recalls the distinctly lukewarm appeal of the Full Members Cup

Football chairmen abhor a vacuum. So when Eng­lish clubs were thrown out of European competition for an indefinite period after the Heysel disaster in 1985, it didn’t take long for someone to come up with the idea of a domestic cup competition that would make up for the lost glory and, most importantly, the lost revenue from all those European nights.

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Cris Freddi recalls a narrow escape against Austria in 1932, when the 'man of paper' exposed the shakiness of England's supposed dominance over the Continental teams

The last time England had played a foreign country, almost exactly a year earlier, they’d thrashed Spain 7-1. Now the selectors decided it was no more Mr Nice Guy. Putting it another way, they were bricking it. With just cause, too. While Spain were a perfectly res­pectable side (the great Ricardo Zamora simply had a shocker in goal), Austria were something else. In a run of 13 unbeaten games, they’d hammered Scotland 5-0, Ger­many 6-0 and 5-0, Switzerland 8-1 and Hungary 8-2. 

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Ian Plenderleith shows us websites from the top of the football hierachy, to the bottom.

There is no end of general football sites saturated from the top down with Premier this and that, but one website with the courage to eschew the tedium of big boy coverage is League Matters, which describes itself as the independent and dedicated guide to league football. And by that it means the Football League.

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Dear WSC
On January 13, Paul Alcock officiated at the Northampton Town v Bury match. During the obligatory photo just prior to kick-off, home mascot Clarence the Dragon made as if to push Alcock à la Di Canio but actually made no contact. Alcock’s reaction was to spit out: “Oh very fucking funny! I haven’t heard that one for at least ten fucking minutes.” This in front of the two young mascots who immediately told their parents as they came off that the referee had sworn at Clarence. Unbelievably, Alcock actually reported the “incident” to the FA with the result that the club has been fined and Clarence handed a severe reprimand and cautioned as to his future conduct. Just what planet does this prissy little pipsqueak come from? Talk about double standards.
Peter Smith, Northampton

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