Search: ' Stephen Ireland'

Simon Hart describes the scenes as Blackburn play their first match under the watchful eye of their new owners

There are three Robbie Savages grinning in front of me as I take my seat in the press box high in the Jack Walker Stand. The one-time Blackburn Rovers midfielder is appearing in a book-plugging interview on his former club’s in-house TV channel, playing on monitors suspended from the ceiling of the stand. The sight of Savage, very much a man of his time with blond highlights and perma-tan, is juxtaposed with the more traditional spectacle unfolding on the hill behind the Riverside Stand opposite. This Sunday lunchtime kick-off is still over half an hour away and supporters trail down the brown hillside before crossing a bridge over the River Darwen and filing into the ground. Today is very much about the old and the new.

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My life in red
by Ronnie Whelan
Simon & Schuster, £18.99
Reviewed by Stephen Adams
From WSC 302 April 2012

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Ronnie Whelan played for Liverpool in an era that has already passed into legend. The players, managers, trophies and the style with which they were won have all been celebrated by those who witnessed and contributed to the point where there is not really much left to tell.

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Dear WSC
Amid all the furore over the arrival of Kevin Keegan at Newcastle, I was struck by the fact Kev’s old mate Terry McDermott has somehow been kept on at St James’ Park in the ten years since KK’s departure. He usually sat among the coaching staff on matchdays with seemingly no specific role and was never mentioned by TV commentators when the cameras scanned the bench (as they often did during the later days of Big Sam’s turbulent reign). His insignificance was such that I wonder if he had been there so long that no one at Newcastle could actually see him any more. He was visible from afar, showing up on photographs and on TV screens, but up close he blended into the background. Terry has rematerialised fully now that his little mate is back in charge, although his exact role remains unclear – I’m guessing that it doesn’t extend much further than making tea and going out to get Special K’s copy of the Racing Post.
Ross Cannon, via email

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In the old days you had to wait for the Shoot! questionnaire to find out the likes and dislikes of your favourite players. Now, as Glen Wilson is alarmed to discover, such information is just a click away

Somewhere in my childhood, on a caravan park near Penarth, I kicked a ball about with a kid who told me his uncle was Clayton Blackmore. “Don’t ask my Nan about it,” he said pointing to the beige static home behind him, “she’ll tell you I’m lying.” Obviously I was impressed. As a child, perhaps due to one too many Hot Shot Hamish comic strips, I was convinced that footballers were some sort of super breed; bigger, stronger, more athletic than I could ever be. The fact that someone my age could know or be related to one of these people, even ­Clayton Blackmore, stunned me.

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Or, the mysterious case of the grandmother killer. But Stephen Ireland’s ever-changing excuses for pulling out of a game in Prague finally arrived at a genuine personal tragedy. Pat Daly reports

“So how did you feel when you found out you were dead?” That’s how the RTE radio host began his interview with Patricia Tallon, whose sudden demise had forced her grandson, Stephen Ireland, to withdraw from the Republic of Ireland squad on the eve of last month’s match in the Czech Republic. “Oh, it was an awful shock,” answered Tallon, who, careful readers will have deduced, wasn’t dead at all.

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