Dear WSC
Your piece on the delights of terracing in Germany (WSC 171) provided a stark juxtaposition with the book I am currently reading, Nick Varley’s Parklife, where remorselessly he denies the reader any escape from the fact that Hillsborough is the pivotal moment of modern English football. For a moment I bathed in a tide of nostalgia, wistful for the excitement and overwhelming passion of terrace culture. Seats were for spectators, not fans. I also recalled the crush amidst the Tottenham fans at the Leppings Lane end in 1981 referred to in Varley’s book as the disaster that nearly happened. Last month I watched another semi-final, this time sitting in the Stretford End with my children. I’m proud they share my undiminished enthusiasm for the game, but we would not be together, either at Old Trafford or in the Members end at White Hart Lane, if we had to stand. We go to every home game in perfect safety and the view is excellent. Earlier that day they had for the first time been exposed to a fraction of the experience of the old days, and the famous adage that clubs never learn. Several thousand fans arriving for the official coaches formed an orderly queue round the ground. Well past departure time the random arrival of coaches, no stewards, no information and only three police meant that we joined everyone else roaming up and down the High Road. The best informed copper had not been told where the coaches would pull up and advised us to wait and “scramble for a seat”. The club were sufficiently organised, however, to open up the club shop from 5am. Thanks to the fans there was no trouble. My kids were bewildered at this lack of organisation because their experience of supporting their team is so utterly different, and I am glad this is the case. They already know about the contempt with which football treats the fans (left home 4.30am, back home 12.45 am). The game remains indifferent to Hillsborough and the Taylor Report in so many ways, but if terraces return we will still be sitting down.
Alan Fisher, Tonbridge
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Stories
The Football League's verdict on charges of financial irregularities against Chesterfield has thrown the Third Division into confusion. Hartlepool fan Ed Parkinson is among those left unimpressed
In a confusingly dishonest world full of spin, deceit and greed it is usually possible to gain some respite by indulging an obsession with lower division football, a reasonably plain-speaking sporting backwater still dominated by traditionalists and mercifully free of prawn sandwiches. The recent events involving Chesterfield would suggest that this rare pool of comparative sanity is in danger.
David Rocastle died of cancer on March 30, aged 33. Sean Hanson looks back on the life and career, both all too brief, of the Arsenal and Engalnd star
It was on the fields of Beckenham Place Park in south-east London, playing schools and park football, that the young David Rocastle began to shine, and anyone watching knew he was going to be something special. A few years later, he was signing schoolboy forms at Arsenal, a contemporary of Tony Adams, Martin Keown, Michael Thomas and Gus Caesar.
Dear WSC
After hearing for the umpteenth time that 2001 is Tottenham’s year for the Cup (based on the well known logic that they always net the trophy when the year ends in “one”), it occurred to me that it is now ten years since Nottingham Forest let Brian Clough down royally in an inept Cup final display. If Tottenham fans think they’ve had a rough time in the ten years since, they should spare a thought for the eternally depressed Forest faithful who have seen their team slump from being a regular top-ten inhabitant in the top division, to being a penniless First Division club with nothing to look forward to apart from the semi-realistic possibility of Derby County joining us in the First. Sadly, the Nottingham public have no great passion for football and one can’t help wondering if the current situation would be different if we had the kind of committed support that the likes of Newcastle, Sunderland and Manchester City can claim.
Marcus Hesketh, via email
The sports minister reopens the debate on safe standing
There used to be a sign over the stairs leading out of the away end at Upton Park urging supporters to “Remember Ibrox” and leave without pushing. It seemed pretty rich, back in the Eighties, when spectators would struggle to get out of that tangle of unforgiving fences and barriers in one piece.