It promised to showcase the best the third division had to offer, but instead the game was a throwback to the darker days, as Paul Mullen explains
Hartlepool fans had looked forward to their team’s first appearance in a live televised match, at Halifax, ever since it was announced at the start of the season. It will now be remembered for all the wrong reasons. What should have been a night of celebration so very nearly turned into a disaster and, as usual, the fans got the blame.
We've all got used to hearing about wing-backs and players who sit in the hole, but there are several other technical terms known only to football insiders. Here are explanations of just a few them
Consolationist Shakes his head sadly and pats arm of opponent who has just been sent off
ITV have launched a football preview programme with an old name and no new ideas, as Andrew Pitchford reports
I know it’s early days, but can there ever have been a football preview programme as stultifyingly tedious as the all-new On the Ball, ITV’s networked reanimation of the old Brian Moore classic? Since the demise of the Saint and Greavsie double act, the commercial stations have been toying with the idea of introducing another competitor into the pre-match routine on a Saturday lunchtime and, after years of pondering, researching and focus grouping (or maybe after one lunchtime meeting and several fat cigars), they have finally come up with a package which boasts as its unique selling points the very blonde Gabby Yorath and the occasionally blond Barry Venison.
Fans complain about being priced out of football, but what about the radio networks? As Haydn Parry reports, the BBC isn't too worried, for the moment
BBC Radio Five Live is facing competition for its commentary coverage from the national commercial station Talk Radio. Paul Robinson, Talk Radio’s general manager, has already persuaded the BBC to allow it to broadcast Nationwide League games, and securing European games is now part of a wider gameplan. The station can attempt to outbid Five Live for rights to a club’s home games in Europe because it’s up to the clubs involved to handle rights themselves.
Davy Millar remembers the drubbing of Belgium and the shortest, most successful international career of all time
November 1977 and Windsor Park is looking less than inviting on a cold, grey Wednesday afternoon. Northern Ireland are rounding off another unsuccessful World Cup campaign with a game against Belgium, themselves trailing far behind group winners Holland. The Irish have staged one of their textbook qualifying bids, starting with a splendid draw in Rotterdam before going on to lose in Iceland. Small wonder that George Best has packed it in again. Enraged by such inconsistency, he’s decided there are better ways to spend a bleak, winter afternoon than casually humiliating some hapless Belgian.