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The Archive

Articles from When Saturday Comes. All 27 years of WSC are in the process of being added. This may take a while.

 

Plastic fantastic

wsc303With synthetic surfaces being considered again, Oldham fan Dan Turner looks back at their controversial heyday

Sliding tackles were very big in the 1980s everywhere but Boundary Park. Every other week we were treated to the same spectacle. The opposition enforcer would turn up and launch into his “reducer”, no doubt hoping to render one of Oldham’s more creative players lame. Five seconds and half a yard of skin later, the visiting hard man would return gingerly to the perpendicular with a few doubts about his likely effectiveness over the remaining 80-odd minutes. The plastic pitch had claimed another victim.

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Full-time job

wsc303Sepp Blatter causes a stir with his views on part-time refereeing, writes Steve Menary

When Sepp Blatter announced that referees at all World Cup finals from 2014 onwards must be full-time, he caused consternation among many ambitious match officials. “Some people say there’s not enough money to pay them, but there always seems to be plenty in the professional leagues,” said Blatter. This prompted particular concern among Germany’s part-time officials. When Blatter recently clarified his position he did not back down, insisting that German football association must “establish a system in which the referees are its employees”.

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Turf wars

wsc303Visiting teams complain about the pitch, but the Luzhniki Stadium deals with the Russian weather, writes Sasha Goryunov

In May 2008, Chelsea and Manchester United contested the Champions League final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. There was something unusual about the playing surface: it was grass. For one match only, turf was brought in from Slovakia. In fact, this was the second set of imported grass. The original failed to take root and had to be replaced just two weeks before the game. John Terry might wish they hadn’t bothered.

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From Sao Paulo to Surrey

wsc303Andy Ollerenshaw on the non-League club in Surrey with a South American connection

That club is Corinthian-Casuals. Formed in 1939 following the merger of two English amateur sides, they are the highest-ranked amateur team in the English pyramid, playing four levels below the Football League.

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Get off the ground

wsc303San Lorenzo fans are mobilising to ask questions of the dictatorship that turned their stadium into a supermarket, reports Joel Richards

Barely three hours after the Mothers of the Disappeared finished their march, San Lorenzo fans filled the Plaza de Mayo in Buenos Aires. According to the organisers, there were 100,000 of them. Just like the Mothers, San Lorenzo were demanding justice for crimes committed during the 1976-83 dictatorship in Argentina.

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