The Archive

Only minutes from the London 2012 site lies a very different sort of sporting venue. Ian Aitch visits the Old Spotted Dog

As any true football fan knows, even the sight of five ten-year-old kids playing three-and-in is enough to make you watch back over your shoulder as you walk across the park. So, as you can imagine, moving so close to a real football ground that an errant shot of Geoff Thomas proportions could end up in your back garden is the kind of thing that makes you divert the walk to the corner shop, just so you can admire the floodlights peeking up from behind the fence.

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Cameron Carter explores the absurdity of behind-the-scenes football coverage on television and shares his views on ITV's World Cup coverage

Football Focus’s obsession with going behind the scenes is becoming a little tiresome, like a small child substituting “poo” for every noun over the period of a year. When ITV were forced to focus on the Football League, they had Matt Smith prowling around terraces, boot rooms, the referee’s toilet – all to give the impression that ITV preferred to cover these divisions actually because this was roots football, not that phoney Premier League nonsense where you can only get to within 30 feet of the players if you have four wristbands and a very recent CRB check. 

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Tom Davies takes a look at the ever-growing issue of separating ground and club ownership

The pitfalls of separating ground and club ownership have been well documented in recent months, at Crystal Palace and Southend among others, and it’s causing anxiety at Yeovil Town too. The League One club agreed in June to hive off Huish Park and its surrounding land to a separate company, Yeovil Town Holdings Ltd, in order to “realise the development potential of the site”, according to the club.

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Patrick Kelly discusses the theatre production The Game, set in 1913, which is about football corruption in the North of England; an issue that still exists in the modern game

A corrupt business deal, a wealthy owner, a bribe to throw a crucial match. The latest production from renowned theatre company Northern Broadsides sounds like a contemporary take on modern football. Except that the script for The Game, which premieres in Halifax’s Viaduct Theatre on September 16, ahead of a national tour, was written in 1913.

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Players, managers and even referees are tweeting these days. Ian Plenderleith wants to hear more from the men in the middle

One day, when referees are interviewed after games to explain why they made certain decisions, people will ask: why didn’t this happen years ago? Like the introduction of goal nets, substitutes or a muzzle for Ken Bates, the most obvious ideas are often the best ones, but can take decades to implement. There are simply no good reasons to prevent referees offering their views, yet the momentum for changing the status quo is negligible.

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