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.

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David Montrose remembers West Ham United's 1985-86 season

August, 1985: the omens were ominous. West Ham had ended the previous season just clear of relegation, and Paul Allen, Hammer of the Year, had since de­camped to Spurs under freedom of contract – a tren­chant vote of no-confidence. Few thought jockey-sized Mark Ward, ex-Oldham, would prove an adequate suc­cessor. The acquisition of St Mirren’s Frank Mc­Aven­nie, meanwhile, aroused more mystification than an­­ticipation. Who? Even his position was uncertain. Striker, midfielder?

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The blueprint for the European Cup was laid down in pre-war Budapest, Vienna and Prague. Cris Freddi recalls the mayhem and magnificence of the Mitropa

The name derives from Mittel Europa (central Eur­ope) and the Cup was the baby of Hugo Meisl, international referee turned secretary of the Austrian FA and manager of the national team. After the Second World War, it couldn’t compete with first the Latin Cup, then UEFA’s three major club competitions and, al­though it staggered on in one form or another until 1992, ended up no better than an Intertoto.

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Is women's football is due to make a big breakthrough on to the UK sport scene? Two writers have conflicting opinions

Yes ~
“Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but it is hardly suitable for delicate boys.” So said Oscar Wilde. If the women’s game continues to develop at the pace wit­nessed during the past decade, this observation could soon gain common currency.

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In a brief spell at Middlesbrough, he won the hearts of the fans and the local TV celebrity, if you believe the gossip. Harry Pearson recalls a German cult hero

No doubt there are many players whose careers illustrate Rupert Pupkin’s maxim “Better a star for a night than a schmuck for a lifetime”, but on Teesside none illuminates the point quite so brightly as a former Germany Under-21 international who was brought in from Kaiserslautern by Bryan Robson.

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