Search: 'David Mellor'

Tom Bower, whose investigations helped bring down Robert Maxwell, turns to football in his latest book, Broken Dreams. It left Harry Pearson screaming …

A decade or so ago Paul Kimmage, who would later ghost Tony Cascarino’s autobiography, wrote a book about his experiences as a professional cy­clist. A Rough Ride told of systematic drug use by ri­ders in races such as the Tour de France. In Britain, where bike racing ranks alongside clay-pigeon shooting, Kimmage was rewarded with the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In Europe, where cycling is big news and big bus­iness, however, he was denounced by everybody from fellow riders to sports journalists as a fantasist and an embittered loser. The Irishman had predicted this would happen. There existed, he said, a code of silence within the world of cycling when it came to drug taking, extending from the mechanics to the upper echelons of cycling’s ruling bodies, from the team masseurs to all branches of the media.

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The European Union is expanding as rapidly as the waistlines of retired footballers. Al Needham puzzled over an event that brought the two together

The Europe United Masters tournament was held at the London Arena on a miserable October Sunday, wedged between the Disney Channel Kids Awards and Beauty and the Beast On Ice. It had a weird premise: the Foreign Office decided that the best way to mark the admission of ten new coun­tries to the European Union was to organise a kick­about for retired foot­ballers, some of them not exactly re­nowned for their Europhilia (one of the British Masters squad once said living in Italy was like being in a foreign country and another famously told Norway to “Fuck off”). Mind you, if you needed reminding that there have been worse ideas, we’re only a stone’s throw away from the Millennium Dome.

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Two fans debate over whether Sol Campbell's controversial move from Tottenham to north London rivals Arsenal was a betrayal

Yes ~
The reaction of Spurs fans to Sol Campbell’s decision to join Arsenal has been taken as more evidence of our taste for whingeing. But I’d argue we have a point, and one that should concern all football fans. I’m not condoning the pond life who strung an effigy of Campbell up outside White Hart Lane. But while it’s important to get the reaction in proportion, it’s also vital to see why anger is a justifiable res­ponse to football’s own Shaun Woodward.

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New Labour came to power in 1997 riding shamelessly on the football bandwagon. Steve Greenfield and Guy Osborn take a critical look at their record in office. 

Even before the Labour victory in May 1997, football had a prime position in the political landscape. The Labour Party had launched its Charter for Football in 1995, detailing how they would respond to what Tony Blair called “the critical problems now associated with the game”. The rise of the Premiership and the the prospect of Euro 96 had helped make football socially acceptable and many clubs suddenly found themselves patronised, often literally, by the great and good (as well as some MPs).

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Scotland's trailblazing fanzine The Absolute Game is making a comeback. But, wonders Tom Davies, has the printed word had its day as a tool for fans?

The welcome return of The Absolute Game seems bound to induce bouts of premature nostalgia in fans of a certain age and attitude; a throwback to the days of co-ordinated campaigns against ID cards and dodgy policing, to when the floor of Sportspages bookshop in London would be covered in inky outpourings of anger and calls to arms; to the days when jokes about haircuts and bad away kits really did seem like the cutting edge of radical humour.

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