The Archive

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.

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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.

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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.

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Amazingly, not everyone in Europe has welcomed the proposed super league. WSC correspondents sum up reactions in three of the key countries

Germany
When the plans for a European super league were first presented in the German media, reactions were as vague as the proposals themselves. Most Bundesliga club officials grieved over the loss of morality in sport in a rather populist manner, knowing that the vast majority of German teams would be excluded from the feeding troughs of the ESL and may have their very existence threatened. But even for those who will be involved in it, the new era may bring about just as many problems as advantages.

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Even without their English based "stars" Jamaica triumphed in the annual Shell Caribbean Cup. Billy Mitchell witnessed the events in Trinidad

It’s been quite a summer for the Caribbean. Jamaica played in the World Cup finals, Dwight Yorke from Trinidad and Tobago (T&T) was involved in a £12.6 million transfer. Nevis threatened to secede from St Kitts and become the world’s smallest nation state (8,000 people). In amongst all that was the Shell Caribbean Cup.

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