Henrik Manninen explains how a raft of match-fixing allegations in the far north of Europre has swiftly ended an international experiment

“If I was wearing my cap the bet would be on, and if I took the cap off, there would be no business,” said Wilson Raj Perumal on his chosen method for catching the attention of players during a Finnish league cup game between Rovaniemen Palloseura (RoPS) and Jaro played on February 20 this year.

Read more…

While there is a certain inevitability about this home victory, it’s only August and these two clubs have very different expectations and requirements from a season in League One, writes Julian McDougall

Away, at Hillsborough. In the days leading up to and following this match, it is in the news again with speculation about relatives of the 1989 disaster victims getting access to crucial documents and Billy Bragg releasing a song about the phone hacking scandal called Scousers Never Buy The Sun.

Read more…

Chris Daniel has discovered that non-League clubs are making good use of previously owned turnstiles, scoreboards, seats and even bus shelters

It was a midweek trip to Northern League side Ryton that sparked my curiosity. With rain threatening in the Tyne Valley, I looked for cover – and the nearest provided made my night. Ryton’s ground contains seven former bus shelters, not quite the same height, complete with different route numbers still stuck on each. In non-League, strict ground-grading rules tend to require more seats and covered standing areas than average attendances. So recycling offers a cheaper way to satisfy the formidable ground grading committees.

Whether it is due to liquidation or upgrading, old stadiums offer rich pickings. One of the saddest sights of recent years has been that of Scarborough FC’s Seamer Road Athletic Ground (known as the McCain Stadium until the company removed every trace of their name the day the club folded). Demolition is finally being mooted for the “Theatre of Chips” after four years of neglect left it open to fires, squatting, vandalism and the activities of scrap metal entrepreneurs and bottle diggers.

Some parts of the stadium now furnish other non-League grounds. Wearside Leaguers Jarrow FC took the goalposts and nets. Ironically, Scarborough Town hit these nine times in two visits in 2009-10 as one of Scarborough’s two new clubs won the championship. Fans of the town’s other team, Scarborough Athletic, were also quickly reunited with a part of their old stadium as fellow Northern Counties East League (NCEL) side Nostell Miners Welfare offered a new lease of life to some turnstiles and 150 seats. Fellow NCEL side, the brilliantly named Askern Villa, and the North West Counties’ Runcorn Town also took 100 seats a piece.

On the first day of the season 15 years ago, those seats saw Boro defeat Cambridge United 1-0 in front of over 2,000. This season, the combined attendance at those three grounds probably won’t reach half that. This recycling is nothing new for Scarborians however. In 1969 they donated their floodlights to Tamworth when about to erect new ones. The latter’s Lamb Ground still boasts them today. Furthermore, those floodlights were already recycled – Boro had purchased the set from Hull City’s Boothferry Park.

The football hand-me-down chain saw Roker Park seats head north to Berwick Rangers and south to Doncaster Rovers. Then, when Doncaster’s Belle Vue closed, Blyth Spartans saved the turnstiles, Sheffield FC took the floodlights and Retford United found themselves with two (not so) new dugouts, and some of the ex-Roker Park seats made a second move with them. Leicester City’s former home Filbert Street provided Alfreton Town with more seats, as it did with 700 more for Peterborough United – who also took 300 from Millwall’s Den, while Godalming Town acquired the turnstiles.

Bangor City in the League of Wales added 1,000 seats from Ninian Park to their Farrar Road ground just 12 months ago, a move which allowed them to meet licensing criteria. They even got a mention and appeal through the BBC website for volunteers to help load seating onto transport from Cardiff to North Wales. With Bangor due to move in 2012-13, those seats may see a third new home in less than five years.

Devon village side Bickleigh’s ground is as picturesque as it comes – set among rolling hills with a changing rooms/pavilion complete with clock and a thatched-roof pub behind one of the goals. The club have recently installed their first seats – from Somerset CCC. Finally, there is Farnborough FC. The turnstiles previously saw service at Stamford Bridge, 1,100 seats are from Wembley conference centre (with a further 700 from Ascot Racecourse), the scoreboard used to keep count at the Britannia Stadium and, to cap it off, the floodlights are ex-Highfield Road of Coventry. Oh, and the club agreed to buy a 3,000-seat stand from Darlington’s old Feethams ground and now just needs to move it the 225 miles down the country before reassembling it.

At the moment it is said that the used car market is booming while the new car one is slowing. The same can be said in non-League. Hand me downs are the way forward – add in some local voluntary labour and you’ve got yourself a bargain.

From WSC 296 October 2011

Mark Sanderson describes how Southampton’s former home has been replaced by flats but their fans have fond memories, and vivid imaginations

Ten years have passed since The Dell was demolished. My memories of watching Southampton play there are based on just how close supporters were to the pitch. I remember being in the front row of the East Stand, as Liverpool’s Steve Nicol prepared to take a throw-in, realising I was only an arm’s length from yanking down his grey shorts.

Read more…

Glen Wilson examines at a new online TV venture which looks set to maintain the general trend towards manufactured controversy

We have all received emails that though provoking initial interest, we know to be bad news. We are tuned in enough to realise he is not really a retired Nigerian general, that millions of single women are not actually waiting online specifically for us and that, ultimately, despite the “scientific proof”, it is unlikely to add two inches. In July I received such an email, this time from a “brand new TV sports channel”, and it proved another which promised a lot and delivered only disappointment.

The email came from Sports Tonight Live, an online TV channel set to launch at the start of the Premier League season. “We will broadcast from 7pm-11pm every night and will discuss, debate and deliberate over the big sporting stories of the day.” This sounded promising enough, but things went downhill rapidly. “We are aiming for an opinionated and entertaining discussion show, led by presenters which include Mike Parry.” And kept going. “The new channel is being backed by a group of city investors, including Kelvin Mackenzie.” Some sales pitch.

It landed in my inbox because Sports Tonight were in the process of recruiting fan representatives of each club to appear on the show. “We’re looking for someone who is eloquent, opinionated, informed – controversial but clean cut,” read the email though the appointment of Parry would suggest that two out of five would ultimately suffice.

“Ideally they would also need a bit of banter” – banter of course having become a quantifiable commodity since professional footballers began referring to people as “tweeps” and hanging out with James Corden – “and a thick skin as we aim to be controversial, with Parry at his outspoken best.”

It is often suggested there is too much football on television. Perhaps a better argument is that there is not enough actual football in relation to the coverage which surrounds it. This is an argument that Sports Tonight, having outlined three aims, to be controversial, opinionated and entertaining, only further enforces. Would it pain Sports Tonight that much to strive to be informed, or accurate instead, or perhaps seek a presenter who is lauded for being intelligent rather than outspoken?

But this is the direction in which much football reportage continues to stumble, with the game itself increasingly subsumed beneath opinion masquerading as fact. Coverage of the sport is becoming less about the game on the field and more about what is happening around it, all delivered in basic cliched rhetoric. “Football programming” of this level is akin to going to the local cinema only to find that instead of screening films they are just dishing out copies of Heat magazine. Here you go, flick through that. I know it is the artistry of cinematography you really enjoy, but have you seen George Clooney’s new beard?

Increasingly, and disappointingly, football comes down not to knowledge, but who can shout the loudest. Earlier in the year Sports Tonight recruited staff for its new venture with adverts featuring the line: “You will be ambitious and almost certainly yet to be discovered. Sport will be your drug and you have plenty to say but until now nobody was listening.” Would it not perhaps be wise to examine why no one was listening to these undiscovered twitching football dependents? I mean, there is a bloke who sits a few seats away from me at the Keepmoat Stadium who has plenty to say and nobody is listening, but I (and anyone within ten seats) would sooner see him sectioned than behind an exciting new television channel.

The email also featured a familiar line, one which I see regularly in correspondence I receive: “We will not be able to pay people for appearing on Sports Tonight Live, but… we’ll happily acknowledge and advertise your fanzine.” Football bloggers are being increasingly looked on by those at the top of the media tree as freelancers with an emphasis on the “free”. And yes it may be our hobby, but if Parry is being paid to trot out soundbites and be “at his controversial best” about clubs he knows little about, why should comparative experts be expected to give their time and insight for free?

Speaking to the Guardian in May, McKenzie described the venture as “Sky Sports News meets TalkSport”. I cannot think of anything the game needs less and so, as you have probably guessed, I declined my invitation to be involved with his “exciting new programme”. Besides, the exposure it would have brought my fanzine is nothing compared to the investment I have recently been promised in a much more encouraging email from an exiled Ugandan prince.

From WSC 296 October 2011