Ian Plenderleith takes a look at football on the internet
At the website Poems for Football Fans there is a versified view of football where the scribes range in age and talent, but share a common muse. Founded on the work of the Stroud Football Poets, a collective of Gloucestershire round-ball rhymesters, the site welcomes new talent and showcases a sprinkling of fine work such as the above, by Marcus Moore.
Steve Field appreciates of I See It All by Gil Merrick, the former Birmingham City and England goalkeeper
This book has a curiously casual approach to games and events long since regarded as seminal. You would expect some acknowledgment that 23 England appearances in goal – all between 1952 and 1954 – was, for a Second Division player, rather an unusual record. Or that setting up the Nat Lofthouse strike which confirmed the “Lion of Vienna” legend was a notable achievement, or even that the 6-3 Wembley defeat against Hungary in 1953 actually took place. The explanation probably lies somewhere between Gilbert Merrick’s famed coolness and a clearly hurried printing deadline hot on the heels of the World Cup campaign which ended his international career.
None of Devon's three clubs can claim glorious, trophy-laden histories, yet one seems to attract more than its fair share of attention, says Nick House
Some years ago, Harry Pearson wrote a wonderful book about football in the north east of England. By calling it The Far Corner he unwittingly paid a compliment to football west of Taunton Deane services by not labelling Devon as English football’s outpost. Unfortunately, others continue to do so, portraying Devon football fans as wretched individuals who spend Saturdays travelling to Old Trafford courtesy of Taw and Torridge Coaches.
Ian Plenderleith looks back to the late 1970s, when Lincolnshire buzzed with football enthusiasm – for Nottingham Forest
Where is Lincolnshire? It’s the second biggest county in England after Yorkshire, but you’d be surprised how few people know the answer. Even some of the people who actually live there. A similar sense of bafflement can be seen etched on the face of anyone who might be asked the following: name three professional football clubs in Lincolnshire? And what have they ever won?
Piers Pennington takes on the mysteries of the Didcot triangle, with three teams that lurk around the periphery of the big time
Look at a map of England, go left from London and you’ll come across a footballing desert stretching across Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Somerset. Only three oases of league football offer succour to the parched lower division journeyman and many a camel towards the end of its career has found refreshment in Oxford, Reading or Swindon. In the middle of the three lies Didcot, the railway junction which links them, and this has persuaded some to call this area the Didcot Triangle.