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With synthetic surfaces being considered again, Oldham fan Dan Turner looks back at their controversial heyday

Sliding tackles were very big in the 1980s everywhere but Boundary Park. Every other week we were treated to the same spectacle. The opposition enforcer would turn up and launch into his “reducer”, no doubt hoping to render one of Oldham’s more creative players lame. Five seconds and half a yard of skin later, the visiting hard man would return gingerly to the perpendicular with a few doubts about his likely effectiveness over the remaining 80-odd minutes. The plastic pitch had claimed another victim.

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The problem with all-seater stadiums is that you have to stand up, argues Huw Richards 

It was nice of Arsenal to provide the away fans with padded seats, if somewhat less charitable to retail them at £35 a shot. It was too bad that the only time we were able to sit in them was during half-time. Swansea’s first trip to the Emirates earlier this season epitomised what you might call the all-seater paradox. The theory behind all-seater grounds, compulsory in the top two divisions since 1994, is that they stop people standing. In practice, particularly if you are an away fan, everybody stands.

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A late rally cannot prevent a deserved defeat for struggling Hereford United, as Paolo di Canio’s slick Swindon Town team edge closer towards promotion from League Two, writes Taylor Parkes

I am from the Welsh end of the Midlands – barely 40 miles away – but Here­ford is a mystery to me. A town that can only be reached by train from London via Abergavenny, it is one of those places everyone has heard of but no one knows that much about. A rather olde-worlde town centre; some tasty estates round the edge, most probably. Cider and cattle and Mott The Hoople, or were they from Ross-on-Wye? This part of the country is a strange place, anyway, lacking the South’s self-confidence, the North’s reflexive pride or even the cheery irreverence of the West Midlands proper. It is very pretty in parts, but – as I recall – prone to a quiet pessimism, a sense of being nowhere in particular. Especially here; especially today.

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Scott Sloan on Zambia’s Africa Cup of Nations triumph from inside the country

As I lay in bed in downtown Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, a lonely vuvuzela pierced the night. It would only get worse. As each game progressed, the nightly noises would build to a crescendo: whistles, singing, dogs howling and horns honking. Lusaka was quiet before each game, but after the final whistle, the city would exhale as tensions lifted. Another game over and an even greater belief that anything is possible.

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Dear WSC
Gavin Duenas asks why WSC readers want standing areas in football grounds (Letters, WSC 300). My reasons are purely selfish. Maybe then the people stand in front of me and my two young boys “because you can only support your team properly from a standing position” will go to the terraces and leave us to sit and enjoy an unobstructed view from our expensive seats.There should be a choice for all supporters between sitting and safe standing. Yet as a frequent away supporter in “all-seater” stadiums, the choice of sitting doesn’t actually exist. You are forced into unsafe standing in seating areas if you want to to see anything of the game. Woe betide you if you point out that if everybody sits, everybody sees. Oh for the joy of Huish Park and London Road, where thanks to the terraces you can still sit in comfort.
Andrew Bartlett, Kenilworth

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