Dear WSC
With League clubs’ financial departments having been brought back from Planet Zog – thanks to the generosity of ITV Digital – and the Conference’s introduction of a salary cap, one might have thought the days of mismanagement were over. Not in south Essex they’re not. How exactly have Hornchurch, who pull in 400 punters on a good day, been allowed to sign upwards of a dozen full-time pros? Latest rumours have them offering £100,000 for Chester’s Daryl Clare and a contract worth almost £3,000 per week. How do Weymouth feel now about their investment in Steve Claridge when the stakes have been raised to ridiculous levels in Conference Two? From Chelsea to Hornchurch, the practice of deliberately running clubs as loss-making concerns remains football’s biggest problem. Someone needs to sort it out, but I don’t suppose they will.
Alan Dawson, London W10
In case you've ever caught yourself totting up how many different grounds you've been to and thought you might be coming down with an obsession, Ian Plenderleith has found the sites of the true hard core
Most fans like to visit an uncharted stadium for the first time. A change of view and a new degree of toxicity in your half-time snack are the small paybacks for taking on an often unrewarding away trip. But there are people who take things a bit too far. Welcome to the world of groundhoppers.
They may scrape the barrel raw, but each day club sites draw in more and more people like our writer. His name is Sean Kearns and he's a Reading World addict
The headline leaves a lasting impression – like Dave Jones’s eyelashes or Peter Schmeichel’s speech pattern: “Bas gets on his dancing shoes and performs the moonwalk!”
From being a park footballer to making his international debut in a few months, Luton's new terrace hero has enjoyed an amazing rise, as Neil Rose writes
There are few park footballers under the age of 40 who do not secretly harbour the schoolboy dream of being spotted by a canny scout and thrust into a starring role at a League club, before graduating within months to the national team.
What was your club's never-to-be-repeated greatest moment? For Limerick fan Emlyn Begley it was almost beating Real Madrid, as he recalls in the first of a series
There was a time when Real Madrid didn’t spend £40 million on a galáctico every summer. There was a time when Limerick FC were not bottom of the Irish First Division. There was a time when these two sides met.