Dear WSC
At the time of writing it is Thursday, September 11, 2003. Last night I along with 8,815 others ventured to Windsor Park, safe in the knowledge we could finally put to rest the 11-game goal drought. After all, we only lost 1-0 away to Armenia and we hit the post and crossbar and we missed a few chances. Two hours later we had lost 1-0 again and we hit the crossbar and hit the post and missed a few chances. The media has generally chuckled at our plight, and who could blame them. BBC Northern Ireland is running a phone poll on whether or not we should scrap the Northern Ireland football team in favour of an All-Ireland -Team. This in itself is a quite ludicrous, deliberately contentious and politically loaded question from a supposedly public service broadcaster. I don’t recall a similar poll in favour of a British and Irish Lions team poll when the Irish rugby team lost to Argentina in a World Cup game. A plus point about the goal drought is that for the first time in years what little publicity we have received hasn’t been about problems with sectarianism and the national team. To an outsider it probably seems that Northern Ireland home games are a seething cauldron of bigotry and hatred.In fact, anyone attending a game without preconceived ideas would be surprised at how good the atmosphere is given the terrible ground, poorly performing team and crowd size. We are now just known as being useless, not useless bigots. I hope one day soon to look back and laugh about when we couldn’t score as Andy Smith nods another past a hapless Barthez on our way to automatic qualification for the World Cup in Germany…
Jim Lockhart, Banbridge, Co Down
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Stories
Reading fan Roger Titford believes that, far from going on to greater things, by leaving for West Ham Alan Pardew has turned his back on a chance to really make his name
“West Ham swoop for Reading’s Alan Pardew.” It seemed a clear enough story for the media: swoop, birds of prey, tasty morsels seized, law of the jungle and all that. Except, this time, the prey fought back and, for a few days, a “mouse bites eagle” story looked possible.
Monday 1 On transfer deadline day, Chelsea finally snap up Claude Makelele from Real Madrid for, ooh, £80 million or so. Everton fans might be pleased by the arrival of James McFadden from Motherwell, but possibly less excited by that of Kevin Kilbane and the return on loan of Franny Jeffers. Among other loan deals, Marcus Bent leaves impoverished Ipswich for Leicester and Portsmouth take Jason Roberts from West Brom.
Once, twice and once more (as a coach) an Evertonian, Alan Harper had a host of nicknames and collected several medals for Mark Tallentire to count
Alan Harper joined his team-mates in picking up the 1984 FA Cup while clad in an uncomfortably tight tracksuit top. It was almost as if he was underlining his bit-part status – Everton’s utility player had spent the final against Watford waiting patiently for the call which never came.
Neil Warnock’s love of Sheffield United has received plenty of publicity but the Wednesday are currently managed by a fan, too. Chris Turner has the job of rescuing the former Premiership regulars from Division Two and talks to Al Needham about how he plans to do it in these difficult times
Managers who have been successful elsewhere have struggled at Hillsborough. Was there a particular set of circumstances that made it a difficult place to succeed?
Very much so. Terry Yorath, Peter Shreeves and Paul Jewell were battling against the financial position. They had a lot of players signed during the Premiership days on high salaries who wouldn’t or couldn’t be moved on. From what I’ve heard from Terry and Paul, a number weren’t interested in playing or training. The difficulties they had were insurmountable. Peter Shreeves inherited a squad of players who had three years on their contracts who weren’t doing the business. While managers came and went, these players stayed. I was in the fortunate position of coming in at a time when something like 14 players were out of contract. So I didn’t have the worry of having to move these players on. That doesn’t mean the problem of high salaries has gone – we still have players here on high wages, certainly too high for Second Division football.