Ian Plenderleith reports on the unexpected legal fallout from Notts County's first round FA Cup match against Cambridge
The webmaster of a small, non-profit making Notts County website was surprised to receive a robust letter from the Football Association recently. His crime was to feature a video highlights clip from the FA Cup first round match against Cambridge United. The FA were not happy at all.
Saturday 1 England draw Argentina, Sweden and Nigeria in their World Cup group, with France the likely opponents should they reach the second round. Ireland get Germany, Cameroon and Saudi Arabia. Sven offers a thin smile: “I hope we have more luck in the matches than we had in the draw.” “I must have run over a lot of black cats,” sighs Colin Todd as Fabby misses a penalty for the second successive week, allowing leaders Liverpool to sneak a win at Derby through a Michael Owen goal. Sir Alex pretends to throw in the towel again – “I don’t think we can win the title now” – after Man Utd’s 3-0 home defeat by Chelsea leaves them eight points off the top. Alan Shearer’s contentious dismissal during Newcastle’s 1-1 draw at Charlton has his manager hopping mad: “It’s an insult to a player who has graced the game.” Burnley return to the top of the First Division, beating Palace 2-1. Brighton lead the Second by three points, Plymouth hold a four-point lead in the Third, where Bristol Rovers are now just two points off the bottom after defeat at Rushden. Luton face a possible three-point deduction after calling off their trip to Kidderminster due to a flu outbreak. League investigators will visit the club with a coughometer.
Steve Parish remembers Manchester City’s 1967-68 season
Nineteen sixty-eight was my last year at school. A-level revision had to be fitted in around the end to Manchester City’s best postwar season, when they played ten matches in six weeks. The run-in began with an amazing night at Old Trafford when George Best scored first but City cruised into top gear and beat title rivals United 3-1. I’ve still got the little reel-to-reel tape, recorded off the radio, of a Radio 4 documentary called More Than A Game, with vox pop interviews before, during and after the match, and roars, singing and cheers throughout.
Roger Titford remembers Reading's 1994-95 season
Reading have only spent 11 seasons out of the lower divisions since we joined the League in 1920. For ten of those 11 seasons our main preoccupation was to stop falling back into the lower divisions. For one season alone we walked with the giants and might have replaced someone like Aston Villa or Everton in the Premiership. It was 1994-95 and Reading went famously from “2-0 up and a penalty” to lose to Bolton in the play-off final.
Phil Ball remembers Grimsby Town's 1979-80 season
There’s pleasure in purgatory. Thus speaks the Grimsby Town supporter, a strange creature stuck out in the wilds of north-east Lincolnshire, miles from anywhere, in a cut-off place with a cut-off mentality to boot. If you are handed the burden of following this club from an early age, you very soon learn that you are likely to spend the rest of your life having the piss taken out of you, a curious state of affairs which nevertheless hardens you and makes you all the more determined to face things out – to go into the world, as Val Doonican might have put it, walking straight and looking at your adversaries in the eye.