Search: 'Paul Ince'

Never mind the Champions League, here’s the Hellenic: the television claims that it’s showing live football – but 125 people in west Berkshire know better as Roger Titford witnesses

It is a dark, wet Tuesday. The leaves are coming down and the league tables are shaping up. It’s a big night at all levels. Manchester United and Arsenal are on ITV in the Champions League. My boys, Reading, are away in the Championship (on local radio) while the LDV parks itself into view. But my eye is caught again by the crude, A4, home-crafted poster on the town noticeboards; no hype or promises, just pure facts – Hungerford v Didcot, Hellenic League, KO 7.45pm.

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Yet another Ireland qualifying campaign has ended in a near miss and Brian Kerr has paid the penalty for some strikingly strange decisions, as Paul Doyle relates

What do you do when there are 25 minutes to go in your last qualifying match and your team desperately needs a goal to avoid World Cup elimination? If you’re Brian Kerr, you take off your country’s record goalscorer. Then, with just four minutes left, you replace your other striker.

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Thursday 1 “Toshack hates me, I can handle that,” says Robbie Savage, soberly conceding that his international career is over after being left out of the Wales squad and not called up when others pulled out. Northern Ireland drop Jeff Whitley and Phil Mulryne for going on an all‑day drinking session.

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Few players have made more impressive starts at a club than scoring 30 goals in half a season; few have then done less to earn their wages, writes Gordon Cairns

Marco Negri’s four years at Glasgow Rangers is one of the strangest episodes in the club’s history. Signed from Perugia for £3.5 million, the Italian striker scored 30 goals before Christmas in 1997-98, then barely made another appearance as he saw out the remainder of his four-year, £18,000-a-week contract.

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Two sides that met in the Premiership in 2001 are in the Championship’s bottom half and selling key players isn’t the way to get back to the play-offs writes Al Needham. Cue protests…

X On the face of it, laughing openly at the home team’s protest against their board while sitting in their end isn’t the prudent thing to do. “PLEASE HOLD THIS BANNER UP AS THE PLAYERS GO INTO THE HUDDLE BEFORE THE GAME, AND THEN AFTER THE FINAL WHISTLE,” it says. In actual fact, it is a sheet of A4 that looks as if it has been run through an office photocopier and I spend a good ten minutes arguing the toss with it.

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