On a rare weekend when Tyneside’s sporting focus was not on football Harry Pearson saw Gateshead take on Cambridge United

It’s the Saturday of the Junior Great North Run. At Newcastle Central Station the usual hordes of stag and hen-nighters in identikit Abercrombie & Fitch T-shirts, nurse’s uniforms and pink cowboy hats with signs saying “sperm donor needed” have been temporarily displaced by mobs of enthusiastic tots in running gear, herded together by harassed adult helpers. (“Emma, man, if you drink any more of that pop before you set off you’re gonna throw up, I’m telling you.”)

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Dear WSC
Although I thoroughly enjoyed the article on footballing statues (Striking a pose, WSC 294) it did miss out one rather infamous example – the Ted Bates horror show of a few years back. This short-lived “tribute” to the former Saints player, manager, director and president was astonishingly inept, with legs roughly half the length they should have been. To add to the indignity, more than once a resemblance to dignity-phobic Portsmouth owner/asset-stripper Milan Mandaric was pointed out. The overall effect was of a top-heavy, inebriated and besuited dwarf waving at passers-by. Not really the ideal summing up a lifetime’s service to a club.
Keith Wright, Cheltenham

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Al Needham takes great delight in London’s footballing failure

Sometimes it comes early in the spring, with the unfurling of fresh leaves. Sometimes it comes as late as the very cusp of summer, while the musk of the first barbecues still hangs in the air. Every year you doubt that it will come at all, and every year, without fail, it does. It’s called Nottingham 2 London 0 Day, and it happens the day after the last London club has inevitably slunk out of the Champions League.

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While the other World Cup winners celebrated the competition’s first 50 years, England stayed at home, writes Neil Andrews

The Mundialito tournament – or Little World Cup – that kicked off in December 1980 was one of those rare occasions when FIFA managed to get everything right. Designed to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the first ever World Cup, all six previous winners of the trophy were invited to Uruguay, the first hosts in 1930, to contest the title of Champion of Champions. All seven games were to be played at the Estadio Centenario in Montevideo and the organisers were determined to set a celebratory tone. However, the English FA seemed to misunderstand this wave of nostalgia and declined to take part, just like they did first time around.

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Despite the 2010 World Cup the South African Soccer League is struggling to draw crowds, writes George Thomson

The Cape Town Stadium might just be the most spectacular football arena in the world. Perched on the ocean’s edge between upmarket Green Point and the tourist-friendly Victoria and Albert waterfront, the location was earmarked specifically by Sepp Blatter, who felt the dramatic backdrop of Table Mountain would provide the defining image of the 2010 World Cup finals.

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