Search: ' Conference North'

by Ian Passingham
Pitch Publishing, £14.99
Reviewed by Jon Matthias
From WSC 351 May 2016

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The concept of this book is to help the reader “relive the finals as if they were happening today”. Broadly speaking it works, as Ian Passingham tells the story of the 1966 World Cup in modern journalistic style. That means lots of headlines, short sentences and picking the newsworthy angle out of the factual details. There are times when anachronisms grate, such as references to “WAGs”. “The Angels of the North” particularly stood out as a headline out of sync with the rest of the book, given the Angel was only erected in 1998. But minor quibbles apart, Passingham manages to make the source material fresh and interesting.

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by Steve Leach
Bennion Keaney Ltd, £11.99
Reviewed by Matthew Gooding
From WSC 329 July 2014

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Often erroneously likened to a fifth division of the Football League, the Football Conference could more accurately be described as a halfway house. Non-League’s top tier is home to a curious mix of teams; professional clubs who have fallen on hard times compete alongside new names making their way up the pyramid and getting a first taste of the big time.

Into this world steps Steve Leach, a Manchester City fan who, having grown disillusioned with the commercialisation and “over-paid prima donnas” of the Premier League, decides to focus his attentions on non-League instead. Conference Season is a diary of his travels around the country in the 2012-13 season, during which he takes in a match at every Conference club as he bids to “rediscover the soul of professional football”.

Throughout the book you get the impression that the author yearns for the days of his youth in the 1950s and 1960s, when top-level football matches were attended by thousands of working-class folk from their local community. Large crowds and red-hot atmosphere are certainly not in abundance in the Conference, and Leach’s wish to paint the league as a window to a glorious bygone era means he ignores the fact that it is a competition which is often as distorted by money and egotistical owners as the Premier League he wants to leave behind. As a result, Hyde’s tie-in with Manchester City, where they were paid to change their club colours to sky blue and remove the “United” part of their name, is briefly mentioned but not subjected to any critical analysis. Ditto an acrimonious boardroom split he encounters at Macclesfield, while the many battles for control of the author’s hometown club Stockport County, which sparked their rapid descent through the divisions from League One to the Conference North, are not touched on at all.

We rarely hear from fans of the teams involved. When Leach does engage them in conversation, it tends to be on matters of player selection and form, rather than looking at the joys of supporting a non-League side and the role their club plays in the community. As a result, the whole affair feels 
somewhat distant, and all we are left with are a series of clunky anecdotes and the author’s glib and often patronising observations; seasoned non-League supporters will enjoy his amazement at the fact that two sets of fans can co-exist in the same bar without resorting to violence, or that some games of football are played without crowd segregation.

Leach is a professor of Local Government, and it becomes apparent this is where his expertise lie as he describes the growth, and in some cases decline, of the towns he visits with passion and insight. It’s a shame that the football side of Conference Season rarely delivers either of these qualities.

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Gary Andrews explains how 3G pitches are becoming a more attractive option for non-League clubs, despite resistance from the FA

As the 2012-13 non-League season reached its climax, plenty of clubs will have envied Maidstone United. This wasn’t due to the Stones’ league position – they finished second in the Isthmian League Division One South and were promoted through the play-offs – but instead it was because of their 3G pitch, which registered just one postponement during the season. Non-League is more susceptible to bad weather than higher divisions but even allowing for the inevitable winter postponements, this year’s extended cold snap, snow and rain led to huge fixture pile-ups across the divisions, as reported in WSC 314.

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The third day of the WSC advent calendar and we’ve got three Kings for you.

The first is taken from WSC 187, September 2002. Haydyn Parry examined what Gillingham would do without their leading striker, Marlon King, who had just lost his appeal against a conviction for stolen goods which meant he would spend 18 months in prison.

The second is Harry Pearson on the King’s Road, so synonymous with Chelsea FC, in WSC 166, December 2000.

The third is this photo of the Greene King stadium, alternatively called De Montfort Park, home to Hinckley United of the Conference North. This 4,329-capacity stadium was opened in March 2005 and its record attendance is 3,411 – achieved against Leicester City in a pre-season friendly in July 2012.

This photo was taken at FootballFans.eu

Awarding spot-kicks from open play breaks the law of cause and effect, argues Ian Plenderleith

Since being appointed manager of Iraq last August, Zico has repeatedly made it clear that his principal aim is to guide the troubled nation’s football team to the 2014 World Cup finals in Brazil. Despite being well positioned to lead the 2007 Asian champions to the tournament in his homeland, the 58-year-old has discovered that winning over the Iraqi media is a more complicated issue.

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