Search: 'rugby union'

Steve Menary describes the row ensuing between British and French broadcasters over Manchester United’s Champions League tie against Marseille

Anyone hoping to listen to the second leg of Manchester United’s Champions League tie with Olympique de Marseille on French radio is in for a disappointment. In a dispute that perhaps says a lot about the Premier League’s unwritten policy of never knowingly being undersold, French radio broadcasters plan to boycott the March 15 game at Old Trafford 
en masse.

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Cameron Carter describes how English television is coping with losing a World Cup bid

No one came out of the World Cup bid very well. BBC, ITV and Sky News presented the visit to Zürich of David Beckham, David Cameron and Prince William as if it were a modern-day nativity play: three revered men (bear with me here) travelling east on a semi-religious quest to bring England home advantage at a future World Cup. On December 1 the BBC showed the three, plus a more-than-usually irrelevant Alan Shearer, self-consciously networking at what could have been a Lutheran non-alcoholic cocktail party.

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Graham Hughes recounts the only season of English League football to have been played during war time

The long-term significance
This was the only time that a full English League programme has gone ahead during wartime. Since its formation 26 years earlier, the Football League had been growing in membership and popularity. It now faced its first real setback, with a barrage of criticism over the decision to play on while Britain’s young men were being asked to go to war.

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Several football grounds now double up as venues for professional rugby. Roger Titford suggests that competition from another sport is becoming a problem for clubs that are already struggling

Once upon a time, about 130 years ago, football and rugby sat happily enough alongside each other as almost alternative flavours of the same basic sport. Then came professionalism, division, social change and a century or so of estrangement, with each finding security in its own territory. Times are changing again.

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Stockport supporters have been taking action to highlight the crisis that has gripped their club, as David Meller reports

On a freezing Wednesday morning late last December around 300 Stockport County supporters gathered outside Edgeley Park and downed shots of whisky and hot water to keep warm. After eight months of administration we were preparing to march to the club’s administrators in Manchester city centre, to raise knowledge of a club moving towards liquidation and those responsible for doing so. The question was whether the march would yield anything constructive.

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