Search: ' Third Lanark'

With ground criteria set too high for Falkirk and rivals Inverness, the Scottish First Division champions could be going nowhere this summer, reports Neil White

As soon as the Scottish Cup third-round draw handed Hearts a trip to Fal­kirk’s dilapidated Brockville Park, the tie was flagged up as a possible shock. The Edin­burgh side sat third in the Scottish Prem­ier League, but this was their first game back after the win­ter break. Falkirk were leading the First Division and in fine form. More im­portantly, the tie was at Brockville, the sym­bol of their ongoing struggle against the footballing elite.

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Airdrie have gone bust and Motherwell almost suffered the same fate. Ken Gall reports on the financial troubles besetting Scotlands's middle-ranking clubs

After more than a century, Airdrieonians FC have, to all intents and purposes, ceased to exist. A few miles down the road, their not-much-loved Lanarkshire neighbours Motherwell – following an initial panic that they were headed for the same fate – entered interim ad­ministration, slashing wages, sacking staff and can­celling players’ contracts. All in all, then, the grim­­mest few weeks for Scotland’s domestic game since Third Lanark went out of business in 1967.

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Foreign players were effectively banned before 1978 but, as Matthew Taylor discovers, there were ways for a select few to ply their trade

Before the arrival of Ossie Ardiles and Ricardo Villa at Tottenham in 1978, foreign players were rarely seen on British football pitches. A mixture of xenophobia and sheer arrogance convinced the authorities that there was little need or desire to import players from abroad. The British – mainly the English – clung to an assumed role as footballing masters who had nothing to learn from their continental pupils, especially on home soil. Even so, the British game was never com­pletely insulated from the outside. The place of for­eigners in our domestic football did not suddenly emerge as an issue in the wake of the Bosman judg­ment, or even in 1978. There had, in fact, been a trickle of foreign footballers into this country for almost a century before the present flood.

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Revolutionary times at Fir Park, where the board has been cutting prices and attracting bigger crowds. David Innes reports on their crazy, madcap schemes

Motherwell FC are not a very fashionable side. We have the dubious honour of having lost more Premier League games than any other team, due to the fact that we have avoided relegation narrowly in the majority of seasons since we were promoted in 1985.

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Dear WSC
For those readers who may have heard York City chairman Douglas Craig spouting off on a Radio One/Radio Five programme about the Fabian Society’s ‘Football United’ report, please permit me to fill in a few background details. Mr Craig is the former chairman of the York and District Conservative Association and close friend of Tory MP and club president, John Greenaway, a self-confessed Arsenal fan.  He remains the only Football League chairman not to endorse the CRE ‘Kick Racism Out Of Football’ initiative and describes City supporters who campaign for the club to back down and sign as “interfering left wing do-gooders”.  Who better, then, to comment on a report by a socialist organization? The BBC confirmed when I spoke to them that Mr Craig was only used because they knew they’d get the desired negative response.  This may be all well and good for the purposes of the feature but it is infuriating to hear someone express such myopic opinions without the chance to refute and counter some of their comments. To hear a man who tells his own club’s supporters to stay away if they don’t like what they see on a Saturday afternoon, belittling the report because he claims the authors don’t realize that football is “a business”, is just laughable. But then everybody loves a clown…
Odge, Scarborough

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