Search: 'Robin Friday'

Rob Hughes wonders why so many football-related dramas fail to strike the right tone, especially in their action scenes

Lord knows they’ve tried. Ricky Tomlinson as England manager. Sean Bean tanking around in a Sheffield United strip. Sylvester Stallone between the sticks. Even Adam Faith as pint-sized proprietor of – oh yes – Leicester Forest (from a script by Jackie Collins, no less). All of them as inept, unconvincing and downright embarrassing as each other. So just why is it that films about football never work? Certainly not through lack of an audience. It’s a sport, lest we forget, adored by millions the world over, one with its own in-built dramatic arc. A ready-made fantasy in which slumdogs really can become superstars. Never mind Mike Bassett or Jimmy Grimble. Where’s our Raging Bull, our This Sporting Life? Even a Seabiscuit would do.

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More Than Just Tricks
by Lee Trundle with Chris Wathan
Mainstream, £16.99
Reviewed by Huw Richards
From WSC 289 March 2011

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Lee Trundle always did trade in the unexpected. There is some surprise in a large publisher seeing sufficient demand in a book about a lower-division local hero, but a changing media landscape means that where Robin Friday and co were confined to Saturday night football editions and fan word-of-mouth, Trundle has reached wider audiences through YouTube and Soccer AM.

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Visits to exotic climes are nothing new for English clubs. Simon Hart charts a trailblazing trip a century ago

"The pioneers of football in foreign lands.” It sounds like a slogan dreamed up by some Premier League executive bent on selling the “39th game”. In fact these were the words of Everton director EA Bainbridge describing the ground breaking tour of Argentina and Uruguay jointly undertaken 100 years ago by his club and Tottenham Hotspur. The duo made history by facing off in Buenos Aires in the first  match played between two professional teams in Latin America.

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In May, St Andrew’s and the Madejski were cloaked in relegation doom. Now the hope of automatic promotion – with the play-off anxiety that accompanies that prospect – suffuses the meeting between the teams second and third in the Championship. Are they about to swap places? Roger Titford was there

Only an idiot or a football manager would say this was just another game, just another three points.  It stands like a giant sign post, the opening game of the second half of the Championship season, a potential turning point.  Birmingham City have occupied one of the automatic promotion spots from the off but they are beginning to splutter, trailing Wolves by six points. Reading are now only one behind the Blues. Both clubs were relegated from the Premier League last season and both are desperate to get back up before the parachute money runs out and they fall to parsimonious ignominy with a dull thud. It is second versus third in a three-horse race where only the first two get decent prizes and it is being run at an exceptional pace. We’re all off to witness and feel “momentum shift”. If I just wanted to see what happens I’d be better off at home watching it on Sky with my cough. But I’m making a rare away trip, despite Sky, because Reading will need every voice and body we can get in the stadium.

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Sunday 1 “As the beaten team, you think all kinds of sinister motives,” says Steve Coppell, one step away from blaming the CIA for Robbie Keane’s disputed penalty as Spurs move up to sixth with a 1-0 home win against Reading. DJ Campbell scores twice as Birmingham defeat Coventry 3-0 to go back into second in the Championship. Hearts beat Hibs 1-0 at Easter Road.

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