Search: 'Emlyn Hughes'

John Williams fondly recalls one of the games great characters

I last saw Emlyn Hughes in the summer of 2004. He was working for the Football Association on a fans’ roadshow in Manchester as part of the preparations for Euro 2004. Emlyn’s job was to leaven the necessary talk about train times, policing and fan embassies in Portugal with some humorous and stirring England football reminiscences. He didn’t disappoint. On wobbly legs and occasionally slowing in speech, Yosser offered both barbs and bouquets for current England players, while recalling his own past battles for Liverpool and England. He, deservedly, had the audience glazed in utter admiration. The physical and psychological signs of the illness that finally claimed him were clear then, but it was hard to know whether the old fighter was winning his battle or bravely carrying on regardless. Sadly, it proved to be the latter.

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Is David Beckham "the most famous person in the world"? Perhaps the most ubiquitous, with his affairs in the papers, his official lookalike aiming for the charts and his sleeping body in an art installation. Barney Ronay tries to work out what it all means

A spell abroad at a glamorous foreign club, a Gucci-clad celebrity wife, Eastern-themed parties at their palatial home, a bogus kidnap scare, a series of hushed-up extra-marital dalliances – and finally a homosexual affair with Paul Scholes. Actually, this last detail appears to be the only major distinction between the lifestyles of Conrad Gates, blond-highlighted Eng­land skipper in the television series Footballer’s Wives, and our own David Beckham. While Conrad happily puts it about in the showers, Becks, we assume, has yet to swing that way. Although nothing, it seems, is to be taken for granted. Over the last month we have been confronted with a new version of David Beckham. Gone is the uxorious cultural icon who once inspired Julie Burchill to exclaim that in the face of his “breathtaking boldness and beauty… the clamour and loutishness of modern celebrity recede”. In his place we have a leering philanderer, a preening fraud and the possessor of a secret “mistress phone” on which he “lays bare his deepest cravings”. 

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In January the editor responsible for the creation of Roy of the Rovers, the most famous of all football comic strips, died. Neil Rose  looks at the life of Derek Birnage’s brainchild, while there have also been more recent developments in the industry

He lost his wife in a mysterious car crash, his left foot in a helicopter accident, eight of his team-mates in a Middle Eastern terrorist attack and in January Roy Race suffered further loss when the man who brought him to the world died, almost 50 years after Racey’s Rocket first slammed into the net.

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Al Needham  couldn’t quite believe just how poor John Barnes is working in television – and was even more shocked when he started thinking about all the competition and realised that Emlyn Hughes was quite good

He dealt with intense media scrutiny ever since the start of his playing career. He went on to become one of the most important players in the country. He played a major part in England’s 1990 World Cup cam­paign. He’s dabbled in TV adverts. As soon as he re­tired, he was snapped up as a pundit and before too long became a presenter on a terrestrial channel. So why is John Barnes so toe-curlingly bad at his new job?

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The internet has its critics, but after using it to spend his money on football games to make up for his deprived childhood, Harry Pearson  certainly isn’t one of them

My childhood contact with football board games was confined to gazing wistfully at the adverts in Jimmy Hill’s Football Weekly. They promised so much delight. Wembley was based on “The English Football Association Challenge Cup Competition” and boasted “the most gripping features and exciting uncertainties” recreated “with vivid and amazing fidelity”. Soc­cerama, meanwhile was thrillingly endorsed by Eng­land World Cup star Alan Ball.

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