Friday 1 David Moyes is to sue the Daily Mail over claims that Wayne Rooney said he was “forced out” of Everton by the manager. Bristol City’s Bradley Orr and Scott Brooker and a former team-mate, David Partridge, now at Leyton Orient, are jailed over a nightclub brawl last October.
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Stories
Friday 1 Manchester United are fined £1.6 million by the Office of Fair Trading for price-fixing replica shirts. One of the other ten businesses to be charged are… the FA who will have to pay £158,000 for selling overpriced England shirts on the internet in 2000-01. Tangled web-weaver John Fashanu says he has resigned as chairman of Barry Town, though there is some doubt whether he ever really held such a position. Jody Craddock leaves Sunderland for Wolves, who are also to sign Senegalese striker Henri Camara and Spurs’ Steffen Iversen.
Tom Davies explores the role supporters are playing in saving their clubs
The supporters’ group that has assumed control at Exeter City is facing a sizeable battle to keep the club alive over the summer. Their relegation from the Football League on the last day of the season was swiftly followed by the arrest of chairman John Russell and vice-chairman Mike Lewis over allegations of financial irregularities. The pair, who were bailed to return to police in September, promptly stepped down, leaving the club’s reported debts at more than £2 million with creditors closing in.
Dear WSC
Until recently I have always assumed your articles to be generally well researched. However, your feature on the east midlands (WSC 160) falls somewhat short of the mark. The fact that Simon Tyers thinks “the heightened sense of local rivalry that exists between the west midlands clubs isn’t replicated further east” shows he has neither spoken to many supporters of Forest or Derby, nor, it would appear, has he ever been in attendance when the teams have met.To fans of both Forest and Derby the rivalry is as intense as any in England. The common media fallacy that “east midlands fans are not passionate” is both boring and untrue. Equally lazy is the suggestion that there isn’t sufficient “geographical closeness”. A visit to the area would reveal that Nottingham and Derby are more or less joined by an ever growing urban conurbation and a fluid workforce.The writer tries several times to compare unfavourably the traditions and rivalries of the east midlands with that of the west, particularly Wolves and West Brom (perhaps betraying his loyalties). He also tries some spurious argument about levels of support being related to the amount of heavy industry in a region. However I would suggest that the trophy cabinets of the east have had far more use than their Black Country counterparts over the last 30 years – and The Hawthorns doesn’t seem to be packed to the rafters with 30,000 foundry workers every fortnight, does it? As a Notts-born Forest fan, who has lived in Derby for 20 years, it is ironic that I find Derby supporter Alistair Hewitt’s view closest to the truth. He at least recognises the rivalries that exist. But then local knowledge will always be better than drawing on media misinformation and the same old predictable references. Who knows, maybe someone, someday will write about the east midlands without feeling the urge to keep referring to Brian Clough.
N Salmon, Stretton
Dear WSC
The article in WSC No 144 about the strange man who looks after the FA Cup reminded me of another story involving the same trophy. Back in 1980, I was working on Record Breakers (look, we’ve all got rent to pay) and I suggested we do an item about football that involved getting all four major trophies (the League, the Charity Shield, and the FA and League Cups) into the studio. Come the day the championship trophy and the Charity Shield were delivered by Securicor from Liverpool. Both were in highly polished wooden boxes as you would expect. The League Cup was delivered from Molineux, also by a security firm and also in its own polished wooden box. The FA Cup, however, was delivered from West Ham in a black cab – wrapped in a pillow case. To cap it all, the cabbie turned out to be a right miserable bugger. Handing me the pillow case he said, “I’m a West Ham fan and this is the first time I get a call to go there. Do I pick up anyone involved in the club? No, I get a fucking pillowcase to deliver.” I didn’t tell him what was in the pillowcase. It’s always given me great pleasure to think that there’s a London cabbie out there who’s missed a great opportunity to say, “’Ere, you’ll never guess what I had in my cab the other day…" One of the carpenters in the studio was a West Ham fan. Heartbroken at the way his club had treated the FA Cup, he built a mahogany box for it. The Cup was returned to the Hammers in the box. Ten years later, Spurs won the cup and it was brought into the LWT studios where I was then working. It was still in the box built by the BBC carpenter.
Robin Carr, Chesham