While some stadiums are shut, others are furiously debated. Robert Shaw reports on problematic preparations for 2014
With the Homeless World Cup played in September in Brazil some of the country’s clubs might have felt entitled to stage their own version. The stadium-building and renovation programme for the 2014 World Cup has already left several clubs without a home ground as work begins in earnest to prepare the 12 venues.
Only minutes from the London 2012 site lies a very different sort of sporting venue. Ian Aitch visits the Old Spotted Dog
As any true football fan knows, even the sight of five ten-year-old kids playing three-and-in is enough to make you watch back over your shoulder as you walk across the park. So, as you can imagine, moving so close to a real football ground that an errant shot of Geoff Thomas proportions could end up in your back garden is the kind of thing that makes you divert the walk to the corner shop, just so you can admire the floodlights peeking up from behind the fence.
Simon Tyres rises early on a Sunday morning to review the football-related programming
Sunday morning television is an odd thing. If it’s not soap omnibuses or Tim Lovejoy operating a whisk, trying desperately to make out that this is how he saw his career going all along, it’s ethical debate shows in the old God slot featuring panellists chosen for their lightness towards universal tolerance. Turning on BBC1 to find Terry Christian taking the moral high ground, any moral high ground, makes you wonder if the last two decades of broadcasting progress were in vain.
Dear WSC,
I’m sending out a plea to WSC readers to see if they can tell me of a top goalscorer who was less popular with his own club’s fans than Bournemouth’s Brett Pitman? As Steve Menary’s entry for the Cherries stated in your Season Guide (WSC 283), he was always the first to be moaned at by the Dean Court crowd despite banging in 26 League goals last season (not to mention the 30 before that since making his debut as a teenager in 2005). Granted, Brett was hard to love. His body language was a combination of seemingly uninterested slouch with an unathletic, head-lolling waddle. His reluctance to jump for or chase down over-hit passes was an obvious crime in the eyes of the average football fan. I guess his arm-waving, sour-faced tantrums when not receiving the exact ball he wanted from team-mates cemented his distant relationship with the fans. I can’t recall a single chant about Brett – an astonishing feat when less talented strikers like Alan Connell (13 goals in over 100 games) were lauded on the terraces. Pitman had been at the club since he was 16 years old, scored spectacular goals ever since and never demanded a move – hardly the sort of pantomime mercenary or hapless donkey that usually attracts the ire he received. After signing for Bristol City, his valedictory interview with the local paper was not a fond farewell: “Pitman Fires Broadside At Cherries Boo-Boys” read the headline. So can any other readers suggest a less-loved goalscorer at their club? Not just one that left for a rival or did a silly celebration in front of his former fans when scoring for his new team – but one with a consistent record of excellence met with lukewarm indifference at best?
Simon Melville, London
No saviour arrived for Grimsby last season but Jack Johnson remembers the brief appearance of a goal-scoring international defender a decade ago
Ten years ago Division One strugglers Grimsby Town were in the midst of a defensive crisis. The club's only senior centre-backs – Peter Handyside, Richard Smith and Paul Raven – were all spending more time on the treatment table than the training ground, so Grimsby boss Lennie Lawrence decided to make a few phonecalls. The fans expected a rookie Premier League reserve or two; what they didn’t expect was a Chinese international.