The Archive

Two top-ten teams in their group and trips to war-torn countries and earthquake-affected Turkey made the Republic of Ireland's qualifying campaign tricky, but Piers Edwards tells us how they came so close to success

“For us it is a football match, for them it is a matter of life and death.” Ireland’s manager Mick McCarthy was actually talking about the earthquake in Turkey, but he may as well have been discussing the football. For the Irish, it was another unbelievable episode in a campaign full of them. For Turkey, the earthquake meant the nation desperately craved the opportunity for celebration that the play-off promised.

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Having been once billed as the 'Dream Team', Davy Millar explains how Lawrie McMenemy and his backroom team's reign with Northern Ireland turned into a nightmare

And so another one bites the dust. Lawrie McMenemy is no longer the boss of Northern Ireland and his back-up team have gone with him. Joe Jordan, Pat Jennings and Under-21 manager Chris Nicholl are all looking for new jobs.

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With Bobby Gould having resigned, Nigel Harris tells us why the Welsh nation is optimistic about the future with Mark Hughes

While England and Scotland endured the media spew that was the “Battle of Britain” and the Republic battled in vain with Turkey, Welsh football’s television delight was Wrexham v Conwy in a BBC sponsored trophy (Wrexham won 1-0, in case you wondered). 

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Cris Freddi takes us through the seasons he'd rather forget

We’re talking mainly postwar here, if only because there were fewer competitions before it. England had a bad season in 1928-29, beaten by a last-minute goal direct from a corner at Hampden and 4-3 in Mad­rid, their first de­feat by a foreign coun­t­ry – and 1901-02 was a bad one for everybody, especially the 25 who died in the first Ib­rox disaster. But ex­amples came thick­er and faster after 1945.

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Celtic and Ajax are making noises again about the possibility of North Atlantic League, but Ken Gall is not to sure about the whole idea

In his unjustly neglected 1911 classic The Devil's Dictionary, the great American satirist Ambrose Bierce accurately defined once as “enough”. Sadly, however, Bierce’s assertion that there can be too much of a good thing seems anathema to the individuals in charge of the big European clubs. 

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