The play-offs have now completed 15 turbulent seasons of drama and, some would say, injustice. Csaba Abrahall, however, is a devotee. He looks back on the ups and downs of their history 

You may not know the name Martin Lange, but the chances are he will have given you reason to shed tears of joy or despair at some point since the late Eighties. For Lange was the man behind the introduction of the Football League play-offs, the end-of-season extra­va­ganza that has just completed a 15th successful season.

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Continuing our series about extinct competitions, Jim Heath glances wistfully back at the Texaco Cup, which briefly gripped parts of Scotland and the west midlands 

The Texaco Cup will always hold a special place in the hearts of Wolves fans whose team were its first winners, exactly 30 years ago. It marked the beginning of a very successful and eventful era for the club, one which only lasted a couple of years but was loads more fun than supporting them now.

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Gary Johnson was sacked as Latvia coach after a draw with San Marino. Daunis Auers explains what he was doing there in the first place 

Gerijs Dzonsons (or Gary Johnson as the English spelling would have it) bounced into Latvian football at the tail end of yet another doomed campaign for the national side, a respectable but ultimately unsuccessful attempt to qualify for Euro 2000. Johnson offered a colourful contrast to the grey, dour Soviet negativity of Revaz Dzodzashvilli, his Georgian predecessor, with his bubbly, upbeat, chirpy cockney (I could go on, but I think you know what I’m driving at) demeanour that had never been seen in Latvian football, or, come to that, anywhere in Latvia.

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Mike Ticher thumbs through some of the classics of ref literature and finds a world of egotists and backstabbers

One of the first referees to write his autobiography (assisted by Kenneth Wolstenholme) also had one of the best stories to tell. At 37, Arthur Ellis was the youngest Wembley Cup final referee when he oversaw Newcastle v Arsenal in 1952, ran the line in the final match of the 1950 World Cup in front of 200,000 at the Maracana and was in charge of the notorious “Battle of Berne” (Brazil v Hungary) in the 1954 World Cup.

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The job of refereeing is being made even more difficult than before because players and managers increasingly refuse to admit when they are in the wrong, says Philip Cornwall

Anyone who doubts how much pressure referees are under these days needed only to listen to David O’Leary explain just why his Leeds team had failed to qualify for next season’s Champions League, after they came up one point short of Liverpool’s total. It all came back to the fact that in the last minute of their match with Manchester United on March 3, with the score at 1-1, a Wes Brown own goal was disallowed for offside. “Those two points have cost us. One man’s decision has made a big difference to us.”

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