Search: ' grounds'

Is the Premier League the Holy Grail or the Emperor without his clothes, asks Gavin Barber

As I recall there have been two distinctively epiphanic moments in my life, on which the significance of an apparently mundane occasion has crept up on me unnoticed before revealing itself in a flash of enlightenment. The first was a few years ago when, at the age of 30, I bought and assembled a garden shed, and suddenly understood that the process of turning into my dad was inexorable and irreversible, and that I should embrace it rather than trying to resist. The second came at Portman Road on February 9, 2008.

Read more…

Andy Brassell looks at the fallout in Portugal four years after they hosted the European Championship

Fans may complain that the Swiss and Austrian stadiums to be used in Euro 2008 may be a little on the small side, with only those in Basel and Vienna having room for significantly more than 30,000 spectators. And you can imagine by how much those dissenting voices would have been amplified had England, or indeed any of the home nations, managed to qualify for the finals. However, there is at least little doubt over the sustainability of the grounds post-tournament.

Read more…

Al Needham has met a fair few footballers in Nottingham but the experience has been far from rewarding

Whenever a friend of mine gets into a pub argument about Manchester United (which is often), he relates the following story: when he worked in one of Nottingham’s trendier clothes shops in the early Nineties, the only place that had Timberland boots in stock, Roy Keane came in. After a nod from his manager, my friend mentioned the obligatory 25 per cent discount. “And he didn’t say thank you or anything, he just walked out the shop with the boots under his arm,” my friend says, his face screwed up in a righteous sneer, as he prepares to unleash the killer line. “And he had his fucking jumper tucked into his jeans, the… the twat.”

Read more…

Relegation to League One, administration, Kevin Blackwell – Luton and Leeds share quite a lot. So why not add the points, too, when the teams meet at a packed-out if still fairly charmless Kenilworth Road, asks Neil Rose

There is something exciting about having Leeds United in town. Irritating though the whole concept of clubs being “big” or “small” is, there is no denying that Leeds have an aura about them. It’s an aura that attracts by far the largest league crowd of the season to Luton, as well as more police than every other home game combined. It generates an edgy atmosphere at times, punctuated by the odd, quickly subdued fight at both ends.

Read more…

'King Kev' gives lovers and haters in the media something to talk about. And do they ever

We are caught in a vicious circle of Geordiedom. A set of media-driven archetypes have dominated the back-page reports of Kevin Keegan’s return – hailed by both the Sun and the Daily Mirror as God On The Tyne – and are vigorously embraced by the very people they patronise. The main thrust of this onslaught was gleeful, ridiculous hyperbole about the special nature of Newcastle. Kenny Dalglish, communicating via the Daily Mail’s Steve Curry, saw St James’ Park as “a thrill centre where the password is passion”. In the Daily Telegraph, Henry Winter quickly identified “Toon Army foot soldiers”, reading news of Keegan’s arrival “with such awe, like scholars feeling the Dead Sea Scrolls, touching the words to check if they were really true”. The People’s Dave Kidd told of his father-in-law cutting short a holiday for Keegan in 1982: “Take the tent down, pet, we’re ganning home.” A standard-issue Geordie tale, until Kidd breathlessly informs us that he wasn’t “one of those tattooed, topless-in-the-snow Newcastle fans either. He was a coroner.” Thanks for that, Dave.

Read more…