Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Cris Freddi reviews the local tie which ended non-League Canvey Island's FA Cup hopes
“You can’t be serious about these shrimps.”
“We’re not, really…”
The Shrimpers Club bar. Some poor sod hobbling round the pitch in a pink prawn outfit, tail trailing in the mud. Who decided we needed cuddly toy mascots? Cyril the frigging swan. Dumber and dumber.
The signs are good for Japan's chances at the World Cup, but less so for anyone who might want to go and watch any of the matches. Justin McCurry reports on the co-hosts' preparations
For all their supposed organisational acumen, Japan’s football authorities seem to stumble whenever tickets enter the equation. Three years ago, thousands of Japanese fans who had booked on package tours to France 98 turned up at Tokyo’s Narita airport to find their tickets had failed to materialise. Just last month, refunds were being offered to 62,000 people who had bought tickets for a combined Korea-Japan v World All-Stars match on January 3 after stars such as Zinedine Zidane and Paolo Maldini withdrew because of changes to the Serie A schedule.
Ian Plenderleith looks at a few fan sites
There are a handful of good reasons for visiting another club’s independent website, such as checking for neanderthal-free pubs, or the hosts’ opinion of the 34-year-old, injury-prone defender who is about to sign a two-year contract with your own already struggling team. The other main factor likely to send non-partisan visitors to alien cyber-territory is humour. Not witless abuse of the team from the next town along, but something with the spark to earmark a webzine from the endless screenfuls of hackneyed bile hashed up in the name of rivalry.
Dear WSC
Matt Nation’s defence of the long ball game (Myths, WSC 167) was a welcome read for someone like me who went to Wimbledon regularly in the Eighties and saw contempt spat at the club from all directions for the no frills style of play that apparently invalidated everything we had achieved. Long ball football, admittedly, can be boring, but only if it doesn’t work. And for Wimbledon in the Eighties it did work – like a dream. In fact the Dons were the League’s top scorers in each of their first two seasons of hoofing it (1982-83 and 1983-84) with 96 and 97 League goals respectively, topping the hundred mark in all competitions.We were also, not surprisingly, promoted in both as well (as champions with 98 points in the former) and again in 1985-86. By September 1986 – less than four years after losing 4-2 at home to Halifax in a Fourth Division match – we were top of the whole League (albeit only for 11 days). In all the excitement I don’t think I even noticed that we were a “boring long ball side” until the media and our disgruntled victims started bleating about it.
Brian Matthews, Sutton
The sports minister reopens the debate on safe standing
There used to be a sign over the stairs leading out of the away end at Upton Park urging supporters to “Remember Ibrox” and leave without pushing. It seemed pretty rich, back in the Eighties, when spectators would struggle to get out of that tangle of unforgiving fences and barriers in one piece.