Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.
Mansley Allen gives us a brief history of Brentford
1929-30 A Brentford team likened to“a well tuned Rolls Royce” break a League record by winning all 21 home games. Carried on doing the Charleston in Division Three (South) as there was only one up in those days – could explain the Depression.
Fans complain about being priced out of football, but what about the radio networks? As Haydn Parry reports, the BBC isn't too worried, for the moment
BBC Radio Five Live is facing competition for its commentary coverage from the national commercial station Talk Radio. Paul Robinson, Talk Radio’s general manager, has already persuaded the BBC to allow it to broadcast Nationwide League games, and securing European games is now part of a wider gameplan. The station can attempt to outbid Five Live for rights to a club’s home games in Europe because it’s up to the clubs involved to handle rights themselves.
ITV have launched a football preview programme with an old name and no new ideas, as Andrew Pitchford reports
I know it’s early days, but can there ever have been a football preview programme as stultifyingly tedious as the all-new On the Ball, ITV’s networked reanimation of the old Brian Moore classic? Since the demise of the Saint and Greavsie double act, the commercial stations have been toying with the idea of introducing another competitor into the pre-match routine on a Saturday lunchtime and, after years of pondering, researching and focus grouping (or maybe after one lunchtime meeting and several fat cigars), they have finally come up with a package which boasts as its unique selling points the very blonde Gabby Yorath and the occasionally blond Barry Venison.
It promised to showcase the best the third division had to offer, but instead the game was a throwback to the darker days, as Paul Mullen explains
Hartlepool fans had looked forward to their team’s first appearance in a live televised match, at Halifax, ever since it was announced at the start of the season. It will now be remembered for all the wrong reasons. What should have been a night of celebration so very nearly turned into a disaster and, as usual, the fans got the blame.
The world's greatest cup competition is being discarded by big clubs in favour of European riches. How long until it joins the cup scrapheap?
There is a certain inevitability about the way cup competitions acquire the smell of death. Clubs start putting out weakened teams, fans stop turning up to watch the early rounds, discouraging statements begin to seep from official sources and Chelsea end up with the trophy. We have seen it with the League Cup, which Liverpool lusted after so much that they won it four times in a row in the 1980s. Now the bookmakers are offering shorter odds on Manchester United and Arsenal winning the Champions League than the Worthington, because they know the top clubs see it as an inconvenience rather than a serious goal.