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Stories
Thirty years ago a west London club very nearly won the title – and it would have been a popular success, too. Graham Dunbar recalls QPR's finest 42 games
It is April 17, 2006, Easter Monday, and Queens Park Rangers lose 3-2 at Norwich in the definitive meaningless and mediocre end-of-season game. Two teams playing second-rate, second-tier football in what could be the worst five-goal affair anyone has seen; a match with no significance beyond reminding both clubs that the Premiership is a distant dream.
Rupert Lowe has seen a lot of defeats on the pitch of late, but fared rather better in court. Neil Rose examines the implications of the Times’s defeat for journalists and fans
London’s libel courts are well known as home to the rich and famous, so it’s no surprise to see the football fraternity make themselves comfortable, too.
It was time for a new kind of reference work on the game. One that celebrated the culture of British football and did not just record the facts and figures. And, to celebrate the launch of our Half Decent Football Book, what better to serve as a taster than a look at food? And meet John Gregory, art critic
Pre-match meal
Food has always been a controversial subject in football. The pre-match meal was once the only occasion during the season that a footballer’s dietary habits would come under any great scrutiny. Steak and chips, egg and chips and roast beef have all been favoured at various stages in the game’s development. Bill Shankly is reported to have abandoned his players’ strict pre-match steak diet in the early 1960s, after which meat was absolutely prohibited at lunchtime on a match day; this even extended into Shankly sending “spies” along on train journeys to away games to monitor whether players were loading up on ham rolls from the buffet trolley.
Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but Simon Tyers isn't too impressed with the coverage copycats
As usual, it’s Sky’s fault. Not for everything, of course, but as soon as they come up with a new way of approaching football coverage it gets copied by the terrestrial channels using a heavily smudged blueprint. They bring us Andy Gray and his computers, eventually we get the Tactics Truck. They invent the top-corner screen display, Five run with one that seems at times to take up a quarter of the screen.