Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
A new football film is in production in Scotland. Geoff Leonard went along to see what all the fuss is about
The Arsenal Stadium Mystery, Escape To Victory, Sean Bean’s When Saturday Comes. The link? As I’m sure you know, all were attempts at football films which turned out to be trite rubbish. Robert Duvall’s new movie The Cup, however, promises to be rubbish on an altogether grander scale.
Captain Magpie tells us about Notts County well tanned chairman and the stand he modestly named after himself
Distinguishing features Always well tanned, accompanied by (considerably younger) blonde wife. Looks for all the world like a veteran Hollywood actor – Paul Newman, maybe, or Clint Eastwood – when dealing with bolshie agents or managers.
Updates from clubs in trouble including Chester City and Oxford United
Among the plausible candidates for this season’s spectacular calamity club are Chester City, where Kevin Ratcliffe’s resignation as manager after the first three games of the season has severely dented any optimism generated when Terry Smith, the former coach of the Great Britain gridiron team, took control of the club in July. Understandably, given the mess left by the previous administration, City fans have so far been prepared to give Smith the benefit of the doubt, despite his “colourful” past on the UK ice hockey and gridiron scene.
A brief guide to football in New York, told by Jack Bell
1626 Dutchman Peter Minuit plunks down $24 in trinkets and baubles and backs his group of settlers against a disorganised band of local Reckagawawanc Indians for the island of Manna-Hatta. It is a precursor to Holland’s Total Football, known locally as Total Rip-off.
Twenty years after the start of the Alliance Premier League, or Conference, Simon Bell asks if it was all a good idea
Good idea at the time: in a certain light it still does. When the “cream” of the English non-League game were brought together 20 years ago as the Alliance Premier League, the agenda was clear enough and the will firm. The annual farce of election and re-election had to end, giving way to meritocratic promotion from a single, national, non-League division comprising the best and best-run clubs outside the full-time game. At the same time the lower rungs of the non-League game set about a grand overhaul to form a “pyramid” with the Alliance (subsequently the Gola League and then the Conference) at its pinnacle. It was the way forward.