Search: ' St Johnstone'

Dave Jennings reviews a League Two season which proved difficult for a number of teams who started with point deductions whilst the teams at the top struggled to find consistency

Right from the beginning of the season, the League Two table served as a reminder of the ever-present economic perils at the humblest levels of English professional football. The three teams that would finish at the bottom appeared to have been effectively chosen by the authorities before the opening day. Luton’s cause looked hopeless from the moment their 30-point deduction for various monetary transgressions was confirmed, and it seemed a reasonably safe bet that they’d head for the Blue Square Premier in the company of either Rotherham or Bournemouth, who would surely struggle to overcome the 17-point handicaps loaded on to them for their financial failings. However, all three clubs managed to retain relatively strong squads, and the latter two both reached safety, Rotherham recording results that would have put them in the play-offs but for their points penalty.

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Brian Gibbs looks back to when Jimmy Hill guided Coventry City to promotion and Notts County had their worst ever season

The long-term significance
Jimmy Hill had been a reasonably successful player with Fulham, for whom he was top scorer in their Second Division promotion season of 1957-58. He was also noted for being the only bearded footballer of the era, which led to his being nicknamed “the rabbi” and “the beatnik” by team-mates. Hill became a national public figure through his leadership of the players’ union, the PFA, during its campaign against the maximum wage, which was finally abandoned in 1961.

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Neil Forsyth assesses the fallout from the Ferguson/McGregor incident and the somewhat muddled response of their superiors

The Scottish national team has a long, celebrated history of alcohol-fuelled moments of madness and it was about time another one came stumbling into view. After all, it’s been more than 30 years since the glory days of the 1970s – when a drunk Jimmy Johnstone stole a rowing boat during a Scotland camp and was rescued by the coastguard, then the Scotland career of Billy Bremner and two others ended after an altercation in a Copenhagen nightclub following a European Championship game.

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Dear WSC
In response to Huw Griffiths’s letter in WSC 263, I would like to apologise to David Lloyd, the extremely popular fans’ liaison officer at Bristol City, for the flippant remarks I made in an article about the club in WSC 262. Sorry, Mr Lloyd. I would also like to apologise to my father, a Bristol City supporter for 60 years and, like Messrs Griffiths and Lloyd, an avid admirer of Paul Cheesley, for implying in the article that he cross-dresses in his potting shed. To put the record straight: my father has never owned a potting shed. Sorry, Father.However, I would like to take issue with Mr Griffiths’s claim that I have given up neither time nor money to support and represent the club in the last 15 years. In 2002, I bought and paid for the previous season’s away shirt and gave it to a friend of mine for his 40th birthday. Until unwrapping the gift, the recipient was like an excited schoolboy and cherishes it to such a degree that he has, to this day, neither worn the garment nor, as far as I know, taken it out of the ­packaging. Further, in 2007, I attempted, albeit unsuccessfully, to obliterate a Bristol Rovers graffito on the lavatory wall in a public house in Berlin using nothing more than my house keys and a briefly rediscovered passion for the Boys In Red. If Mr Griffiths were aware of the willingness of Bristol City stayaways in Germany to jeopardise long-term friendships and to commit acts of criminal damage in the name of the club, he wouldn’t have made such an unfounded accusation in a poor attempt to add some much-needed gravitas to the WSC letters page.
Matt Nation, Hamburg

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Ian Campbell reviews the season in which Rangers broke Celtic hearts

The long-term significance
Rangers ended Celtic’s run of nine successive league titles, which had equalled a European record set a decade earlier by the Bulgarian army club CDNA (later CSKA) Sofia. Rangers went on to match this themselves between 1989 and 1997; Skonto Riga of Latvia are the current holders of the record, with 14 championships in a row up to 2005. This was the final season of an 18-team top level in Scotland. Concern about the gap in playing standards between the leading few clubs and the rest led to the creation of the Scottish Premier Division in 1975‑76, with ten teams playing each other four times a season. In 1998 this became the Scottish Premier League, whose current format involves 12 clubs playing a total of 38 matches.

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