Torquay's chairman challenges cheats. Nick House reports
The hint had been made in his programme notes. For the first time since primary school, Torquay’s new chairman Chris Roberts turned off Match of the Day rather than watch “the antics of these overpaid, scruple-less prima donnas”. What had begun as a “trickle of reprehensible incidents” had now turned into “a torrent driven by around a dozen Premier League players”.
Wednesday 1 “You cannot coach a player to score from five yards,” says Arsène as Arsenal squander a sackload of chances in a 0‑0 draw with CSKA Moscow. Man Utd lose to a late Marcus Allback goal in Copenhagen. Celtic crash 3‑0 at Benfica. Former Portsmouth owner Milan Mandaric makes a bid for Leicester City.
Dear WSC
I was on the Kop for the Liverpool v Manchester United FA Cup game and inadvertently found myself slap in the middle of a News of the World headline. As reported by that paper on the following Sunday, SICK and DISGUSTING fans brought SHAME on Liverpool FC by singing a celebratory lyric regarding John Arne Riise breaking Alan Smith’s leg to the tune of a recent popular record (I can’t remember its name, but it has Ooh-Ahh in the middle and the 11 to 16 age range love it). I would like to make three things clear to the News of the World journalist who reported this incident. First, it was a loud but small minority of fans who belted out the offending song; most ignored it, while others were shaking their heads sadly in disagreement with the sentiment expressed. Of course, shaking your head sadly, even by a group of people, can’t be heard across a football stadium. Second, there was no mention of Smith being applauded off by the Liverpool fans. This was a bit of an oversight, which I would put down to the tabloid practice of not letting detail or nuance interfere with damning judgment. Thirdly, I was only reading News of the World because I was hungover and couldn’t face the small writing in the broadsheets. As a postscript, the bloke who started the song off originally was only one seat to my right, one row behind me. I may already be being hunted down as an agent of SICKNESS and DISGUSTINGNESS by police who have trawled through CCTV footage of the crowd. And I didn’t even boo Gary Neville.
Rob Lawrence, via email
The decline of three o’clock Saturday football has claimed another victim, to Peter McParlin’s regret
On Saturday December 17, 2005, 110 years of Tyneside tradition came to an end when the last edition of The Pink, the Saturday evening results paper published by the Newcastle Evening Chronicle since 1895, rolled off the presses. The paper has become obsolete in an age when mobile phones can deliver instant goal alerts from hundreds of miles away. Who needs a late edition for the results when that little piece of gadgetry in your pocket can even replay the goals on its mini LCD screen? But to those of us of a certain age, new technology can never replace what The Pink, and its like elsewhere in the country, used to add to Saturday nights.
Barney Ronay and his friends spent many a happy hour following football on Ceefax, but teletext is firmly on the retreat thanks to the digital revolution
The disappearance of a defiantly non-interactive, distinctly uncool and often misspelt page of blue-and-white text might not seem such a big deal in the grand scheme of things. But so far the imminent demise of Ceefax seems to have gone pretty much unnoticed. No public protest, no online petitions, no angry letters to national newspapers. Not that it’s happened yet, but it will. Ceefax, Teletext and the vaguely knocked-off looking versions that have recently ceased appearing on Channel Four and Five are all about to be sacrificed for good at the altar of digital communication. The government’s plans to replace all existing analogue TV signals with digital (the Big Switch Off, in irritating New Labour speak) get into gear later this year. The first transmitters will be junked in 2008, with Scotland’s Border region leading the revolution from above.