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Plans for Ashton Gate include installing rail seats but Bristol City will not benefit unless the law changes, Joe Sharratt writes

The Football Supporters’ Federation’s (FSF) Safe Standing Campaign aims to persuade the government and football authorities to allow trials of standing areas in the Premier League and Championship. It took a big leap forwards in August with the announcement that plans had been submitted for a £40 million redevelopment of Bristol City’s Ashton Gate stadium that would incorporate two areas of rail seats. The rail seats – which can be easily converted from seating accommodation to standing and are common in several European leagues including the Bundesliga – would take the capacity from the 21,500 now to 27,000 in all-seat mode, or 29,000 with the seats locked back allowing fans to stand, and would occupy the lower sections of the Dolman Stand and a new Wedlock Stand.

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Both Cambridge clubs United and City have seen their requests for new grounds denied, writes Matthew Gooding

Earlier this year Cambridge City Council did a U-turn on plans to build a two-metre high statue of a Subbuteo referee on Parker’s Piece, a common near the city centre. An artist had been commissioned to design the work to commemorate Cambridge’s role in the formation of the laws of football; it is thought that the FA’s Laws of the Game were based on rules drawn up in the park in the 19th century by students from the city’s university.

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by Terry Curran 
with John Brindley
Vertical Editions £16.99
Reviewed by Andy Hockley
From WSC 317 July 2013

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The blurb on the inside cover of this book ends with the words “Warning: Terry Curran’s story may offend the politically correct”. This, coupled with the dreaded word “Maverick” in the title, meant that I approached the book with trepidation.

Happily, I can report that in this case first impressions are wrong. Terry Curran is an engaging story-teller, who chooses to focus on a few interesting periods of his career rather than just launch into a tedious retelling of the whole. He’s perhaps best remembered for his spell at Sheffield Wednesday and especially for his role in the legendary 1979 “Boxing Day Massacre”, when a record 49,309 turned up for a Third Division match at Hillsborough to see top-of-the-league Sheffield United dispatched 4-0, in a match which Curran dominated, scoring one and setting up another. But ultimately he was a journeyman, playing at 16 different clubs in his all-too-short career. Twice he even managed what few do once, transferring between bitter rivals – from Nottingham Forest to Derby County and from Wednesday to United.

Such was his promiscuousness that he ended up playing under a virtual who’s who of late 1970s and early 1980s management. Brian Clough, Tommy Docherty, Lawrie McMenemy, Jack Charlton, Howard Kendall and a considerable number of others had what would appear to be the dubious pleasure of attempting to get the best out of the talented but lippy Curran, the self-styled “poor man’s George Best”.

In many ways this is where the book succeeds – providing a glimpse into the experiences of playing under all those managers with their vastly different playing styles and approaches to man management. The chapter on Clough is particularly rich and it’s clear that Curran had a huge amount of time for him. This didn’t stop the headstrong (sorry, maverick) Curran walking out on Forest just when they got to the First Division. Other former bosses are described significantly less positively, most notably McMenemy.

Curran is not averse to listing his mistakes, though since most of the titular regrets are related to walking out on clubs where he felt he was not getting enough playing time, it is notable that he never really addresses the question of why that might have been. You didn’t necessarily have to be a top manager to find him a frustrating player at times.  

In case you were wondering about that initial warning, it’s actually quite difficult to know what exactly we are being alerted to. I can only suppose that it relates to Curran’s womanising and “PC” is being used to mean “prudish”. But there’s nothing here that could be described as offensive, even to those of us with a sensitive disposition.

It’s hard not to warm to Curran, despite his admitted failings, and by the end of the book it’s gratifying to find him happy and fulfilled and working as a youth coach at Doncaster Rovers, musing on England’s lack of success. Rather than, say, following in the footsteps of the real George Best.

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Manchester City are the new champions but, as Tony Curran explains, their unethical hoarding of players has tarnished their Premier League victory

Harry Dowd was a goalkeeper who played for Manchester City during their glory years of the late 1960s and early 1970s.  He was a reasonable keeper but apparently an excellent plumber. Legend has it that he used to negotiate job offers with crowd members behind his goal, offering competitive rates for bathroom re-fits when play was at the other end.

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The official story of the team that transformed United
by Ian Marshall
Simon & Schuster £18.99
Reviewed by Joyce Woolridge
From WSC 307 September 2012

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“He’s only tiny; he’s got ginger hair – you’ll probably have a bit of a laugh. But he can’t half play.” Thus Brian Kidd prepared Eric Harrison, Manchester United’s celebrated youth team coach, for the less than auspicious arrival of the young Paul Scholes at the Cliff training ground. Scholes’s success and longevity is perhaps the most remarkable of all the luminaries of the 1992 FA Youth Cup-winning side, which also included Giggs, Beckham, Neville, Butt… and Robbie Savage.
 
Scholes’s hair colour proved no great problem, but he was tiny, suffering from bronchitis and Osgood Schlatter’s disease which gave him bad knees, and had no real pace and strength. Despite his abundant and obvious skills, just one of these disadvantages should have been enough to ensure that he joined the ranks of the 500 or so boys joining Premier League and Football League clubs at the age of 16 who, according to the PFA’s Gordon Taylor, are out of the game by the time they are 21.

That he was taken on and made it into the first team is testament to the patience and foresight of Harrison, Kidd, Nobby Stiles and Alex Ferguson, though even they would probably have rejected Lionel Messi for being too small.

Few things are as intoxicating for a football fan than the promise of youth. Last season, stories of the emergence of another brood of Fergie’s Fledglings generated the traditional, heady expectations of more “golden apples” among United’s support, providing a welcome distraction from the head-splitting absurdities of Glazernomics.

Ian Marshall’s account duly begins at Moss Lane, Altrincham this January, wondering, with appropriate caution, whether the current crop can follow in the footsteps of their illustrious predecessors – the Busby Babes and the “Class of 92”. Subsequent interesting chapters detail how Stanley Rous inaugurated the Youth Cup in 1952 and how United’s youth “system” pre-dated the war and Busby, who became youth’s most high-profile promoter.

An official United book for sale in the club megastore is hardly going to be shot through with radical revisionism and searing comment, but nevertheless Marshall handles the material skilfully, interweaving the fortunes of the 17 players who made up the squad with a match-by-match account of the 1992 campaign.

Only four of these players dropped out of professional football without making a senior appearance, a remarkable statistic given the high wastage rate which persists in England and demonstrated by an instructive comparison with Crystal Palace, United’s opponents in the final. The ones that got away are inevitably more intriguing, none more so than “local hero” and crowd favourite, Salfordian George Switzer, whose name has become a pub quiz staple.
 
Concluding chapters take those who survived through to the present, whether to the Treble, global superstardom, down the divisions, into coaching and management or career-ending injuries, revealing a little of the darker side and the many scandalous cruelties of youth football in this country lurking beneath every glittering tale of triumph.

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