Search: 'Paul Ince'

Gillingham have enjoyed a huge transformation since 1992. But getting out of the Football League is almost certainly beyond the limit of their resources, says Haydn Parry

If you had told me a decade ago that Gillingham would finish the 2000-01 season in a comfortable mid-table berth in the First Division, I wouldn’t have be­lieved you – or I would have thought you meant the first division of the Kent League. The past decade has been a golden age for the Gills. After a century of scraping about in the lower divisions (and worse), we’ve pack-ed most of the remarkable moments in the club’s his- tory into ten years. Yet we’re not so intoxicated by our own success that we fail to recognise what is now prob­ably an unbreachable financial gap to the Prem­iership.

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Two fans debate over whether Sol Campbell's controversial move from Tottenham to north London rivals Arsenal was a betrayal

Yes ~
The reaction of Spurs fans to Sol Campbell’s decision to join Arsenal has been taken as more evidence of our taste for whingeing. But I’d argue we have a point, and one that should concern all football fans. I’m not condoning the pond life who strung an effigy of Campbell up outside White Hart Lane. But while it’s important to get the reaction in proportion, it’s also vital to see why anger is a justifiable res­ponse to football’s own Shaun Woodward.

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Dear WSC
Alun Rogers (Letters, WSC 173) may well be right about Wales’ superior claim to Owen Hargreaves, but repeats the canard about how they “should by rights have Michael Owen”. Owen has two English-born parents. They moved to Wales, but close enough to the border that Michael James was born in a maternity hospital in England. He may live in and have been educat­ed in Wales, and took Deeside schools records from Gary Speed and Ian Rush, but chose the training set-up of, ahem, the land of his father, at an early age. While “Owen” clearly suggests Welsh roots, the player’s own comments when asked about this subject are that his nearest Celtic relative is a solitary Scottish grandparent, while he had three English ones. In which case, is he even qualified to play for Wales?
Philip Cornwall, Lewisham

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September 2001 marked the 20th anniversary of John Barnes's debut for Watford. We asked five other black players of the same generation to recall their problems with racism in the early part of their career and reflect on how things have changed since

Alex Williams
Debut for Man City: November 1979
Now: Football Community manager, Man City

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Dave Hill's book Out Of His Skin analysed the racial tension surrounding the arrival of John Barnes at Liverpool in 1987. In an extract from the introduction to a new edition, Dave Hill reflects on the reaction to his book

Ever since the watershed of the Taylor Report, an anti-racist climate has undoubtedly been fostered in British football. Vocal racist elements within football grounds find it harder to proceed as if they have a divine right to define and dominate the mood, to chant, threaten and generally get away with things that would not be tolerated in any other public place. A wide-ranging campaign has been mobilised against racism in a way that would have been impossible as recently as the mid-Eighties. Such is the optimistic reading of the story of racism in English football since Out Of His Skin was written. It has substance and deserves ap­plause. But any suggestion that racism has ceased to have a disfiguring impact on our football would be dangerously naive.

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