Stories | When Saturday Comes

Professional foul

Employment status is a major factor in non-League success. Andy Ollerenshaw witnessed part-time Altrincham’s relegation

It was relegation decider day for part-time Conference Premier club Altrincham FC. A larger than normal home support poured through the turnstiles to witness the crucial end-of-season encounter with Eastbourne Borough, bringing with them the familiar tensions that saturate these occasions: the nerves, the nail-biting, an atmosphere fuelled by a heady mix of expectation and trepidation. A whole gamut of emotions that would, towards the end of the game, peak in several minutes of high drama.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Cash converters

Gary Andrews bids farewell to some contentious champions and their suitably controversial manager

Even after cantering to the Conference title, Crawley’s manager Steve Evans was still taking potshots at his nearest rivals. “I did expect the players of Luton Town to give my players a guard of honour onto the pitch at the start of a wonderful night, but obviously they were told not to do that,” he complained following their first game after securing the title. This minor spat over a bigger occasion sums up Crawley’s championship triumph neatly.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Plain sailing

Nick House doesn’t mind that little has changed at Torquay Utd’s home ground and thinks plenty has improved in the last 25 years

If 1986 was one of English football’s low points, it’s even more starkly remembered at Plainmoor where Torquay United were in the process of finishing bottom of the pile for the second year running.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Cottage transformation

While Fulham are now established in the Premier League, Neil Hurden has fond memories of older matchday customs, despite the prevailing chaos at the club for much of the 1980s and 1990s

Happiness is such an awkward bastard to pin down, isn’t it? We are told that think-tankers, politicians and philosophers spend countless hours of valuable research time pondering why we’re not as happy as we were in 1948 when we now have about ten times more food to eat, infinitely more sources of entertainment to occupy us and clothes that are startlingly less beige.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - Book reviews

Austerity measures

Continuing our anniversary series we look back at how the spectator experience has changed in the last 25 years. David Wangerin was fascinated with English football in the 1980s as everything was so different to his native US. Times have changed

I was unlucky, I suppose, that both of the first two English football matches I ever saw ended without a goal. But what I remember most about my first trip to Villa Park, on the first Saturday of February, 1984, wasn’t the score, the weather, or even the opposition: it was all the empty seats.

Tuesday, June 21st, 2011 - The Archive