As Newcastle United proceed with ambitious plans for becoming a multi-sports organisation, Ken Sproat explains why he'd prefer them to just stick to football

The things in football that cause Jimmy Hill to splutter with righteous moral fury include blatant obstruction, deliberate handball, on the field violence, niggly running battles and stop-start action. I can see his point. And rugby is the hideous manifestation of the these evils. It has no place in my life. Tuning in to Radio 5 to listen to the football, there is nothing worse than having to endure reports from rugby matches. When the Five Nations Championships are on, and the rugby replaces the football as the main commentary, I could weep. It is more boring than people telling you how many numbers they had on the lottery. I have never been interested and I never will be interested. This view is not typical of all football fans, but it is common enough. I am not the only one who wants to jail football fans who sing ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot’.

Read more…

Hull City had a narrow escape from bankruptcy last month and they're not out of the woods yet , as Andy Medcalf explains

“At least there will be one Hull team playing Wigan next year,” were the cheeky words of consolation from a similarly downtrodden Hull FC rugby fan following the Tigers recent crash-landing at the foot of Division Two. Barring a Spanish-inspired promocion, it looks increasingly as though this will be the case, if the club still exists in 1996-97.

Read more…

Leeds' determination to sign a striker from Parma has finally paid off. Worth a small tribute, we reckon

Get out the carpet bowls and rustle up a hearty chorus of ‘Ilkley Moor Bart T’at’, at long last, Leeds United are victors in Europe. The country’s favourite West Yorkshire yeomen have suffered more than most at the hands of tricksy continental opponents in recent years, but Howard Wilkinson has finally worked out how to take on the best foreign teams and persuade them to part with one of their best players.

Read more…

Sam Davies examines why Graham Taylor's much-trumpeted return to club football with Wolves was brought to an abrupt end

The glory days of the 1950s were a long way in the past when I first started following Wolves but my generation of fans grew up accustomed to the club being First Division mainstays. After the dark days of the early Eighties, the revival under Sir Jack Hayward’s patronage promised a return to glory days; but it seems to be going horribly wrong again.

Read more…

An insight to how everything within the English game revolves around entertainment and how it differs to the rest of Europe

Seen any good goals lately? Chances are you have. Several times over. Plenty of bad ones, too. Match of the Day dutifully catalogues all the Premier League goals and they pop up again – and again – on Sky’s live coverage. Divisions One to Three get the same treatment in Endsleigh League Extra in the early hours of Tuesday. It’s a great programme, sadly on too late for the BAFTA Award judges to see, alternating the spectacular and the messy – own goals lashed into the roof of the net by shaven-headed midfielders who’d dropped back to help out, mis-hit daisy-cutters that trundle through the legs of the on-loan keeper to the despair of the away fans huddled together, heads cradled in hands.

Read more…