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If fans want to enjoy football on their feet and can do safely, there is no need for draconian stewarding, says Michael Glenister

Travelling fans who hanker after standing areas in the all-seat era often mutter bitterly before grudgingly taking their seat. Around a hundred Cardiff City fans defied this habit and took part in a boycott of the closing stages of their fixture at Leeds United on October 30. Their gripe seems to have focused on the ejection of a number of their fellow supporters for persistent standing. At £36 a ticket, it is easy to see why Cardiff fans may have felt aggrieved that they were not allowed to enjoy the game standing up.

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Andrew Ward tells the story of the 1971 FA Cup tie between Alvechurch and Oxford City, which remains the longest match in the competition’s history

Forty years ago, in November 1971, Alvechurch and Oxford City played six matches in 17 days to decide an FA Cup tie. It was more a World Series than sudden-death. At Villa Park, at the end of the fifth replay, Aston Villa chairman Doug Ellis poured champagne for all the players, to celebrate their entry into the Guinness Book of Records. The record will never be broken.

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It might not have excited Manish Bhasin, but for David Stubbs this scoreless draw at Brighton’s corporate new ground proved to be an historic occasion

The first professional football match I ever attended was just over 40 years ago in September 1971. A treat for my ninth birthday, en route back from a late summer holiday at the Golden Sands Chalet Park in Withernsea. It was at Hull City, as it happens, at the old Boothferry Park. In later years, with Kwik Save and Iceland stores embedded into its queasy, dirty yellow structure, it cut a grim spectacle indeed (it was home to Hull until 2002) but back then, to my young eyes, it was a veritable Humberside Xanadu, wreathed in the alluring odour of fried onions, a mass plumage of hats and scarves, the floodlights towering with Wellesian awe like gigantic alien overlords at all four corners of the stadium.

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Positive action is required to back up anti-racism initiatives

If it is possible to gauge the extent of a problem by the number of organisations that exist to counter it, then racial prejudice is still a pressing issue in British football. Scarcely a week goes by without news of an anti-racism 
initiative somewhere. There are regular conferences on the subject, annual action weeks, supportive visits to schools by famous players, T-shirts, stickers, newsletters and banners unveiled at grounds. Every season spectators are evicted for racist abuse and barred for life by their clubs. Although, as most people who go to games on a regular basis will be aware, some stewards and police forces are more diligent than others in rooting out abusers.

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Dear WSC
In answer to Jamie Sellers’ enquiry (Letters, WSC 296), no, David Needham and I are not related, although I pretended he was for a while at junior school. Also, when I went to Forest games and the Trent End chanted “Needham! Needham! Needham!” during corners (he was renowned for nodding them in), I would step forward, raise a hand, shout “Thank you, fans!” and then do that breathing-on-the-fingernails-and-buffing-them-on-the-lumber-jacket thing that boastful kids were wont to do in the late 1970s.
Al Needham, Nottingham

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