Truro City, the Cornish big shots aim for the league. Josh Widdicombe reports
Until recently, the only time Truro City had spent outside the South Western League was when they were relegated in 1975 because their ground had been demolished to widen a road. This summer they find themselves with a Wembley victory to brag about, are odds-on favourites to win the Western Premier Division next season on the back of two successive promotions and have plans for a new multi-million-pound stadium.
Update on clubs in crisis, Tom Davies reports
How do you solve a problem like Leeds United? Reeling from relegation, fans have spent the subsequent weeks wondering who will control their club in League One. After much wrangling, Ken Bates has secured the 75 per cent backing needed from creditors for his newly formed company, Leeds United Football Club Limited, to take over and bring the club out of administration, though the deal will not be finalised until the Football League are satisfied that all “football debts” are met in full. Other creditors stand to receive just an eyebrow-raising 1p in the pound.
The Burns Report changes are finally implemented at the FA. Bruce Wilkinson reports
Almost three years since Lord Burns was asked to put together a report into the structure of the FA, 21 months after it was presented and seven since it was ratified, the governing body’s shareholders have finally voted for the changes. When Burns originally looked at the governing body he immediately realised that its Byzantine structure made quick and incisive decision-making almost impossible. He declared that the FA Council was not representative of the diverse interests of the game and was out of touch with modern thinking. The author also highlighted a number of conflicts of interest among voting members.
Simon Tyers watches the 2007 FA Cup final coverage
As the song says, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. Watching the FA Cup final coverage threw into sharp focus what has been lost from interminable final build-ups over recent years. We no longer get intimate films of footballers at play in Essex hotels, with Gerald Sinstadt interviewing players by the tennis court and voicing-over footage of the squad in their bedrooms and holding angling competitions. Once upon a time ITV would put a camera on board the coach; now we’re not even invited to check on its progress via helicopter every couple of minutes before it climactically files into the stadium. It was de rigueur for a reporter to grab players inspecting the pitch and ask them what they make of it and whether they’re confident of victory, like they wouldn’t be, whereas this year’s sequence of players milling about glancing downwards, showing off the suits and looking pensive lasted about 30 seconds and kept a respectful distance. The captains fronting Meet the Teams has long since passed on, only two new interviews filling the two hours and 40 minutes of build-up.
Ryan Giggs is a Manchester United legend, but did he really deserve the five-star treatment in Cardiff when he called time on his Wales career? Huw Richards doesn’t think so
John Toshack is clearly more of a sentimentalist than he looks. His decision, born perhaps of his years in Spain where such tributes are a regular feature, to take off Ryan Giggs just before the end of the European Championship qualifier against the Czech Republic allowed Giggs a solo ovation from the crowd for his last appearance for Wales. It fit with the mood of elegiac acclaim that had filled Welsh column inches and airwaves since Giggs had announced his international retirement earlier in the week.