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Search: ' grounds'

Stories

Up and under

Harry Kewell's hair might be pony, but after 32 years Australia are back at the World Cup and, as Mike Ticher reports, it's not just soccer diehards who are celebrating.

Some things are hard to forgive. For example: planning a ticker-tape parade to celebrate winning one World Cup qualifier, on penalties; inviting John Travolta on to the pitch and into the dressing rooms; 80,000 people booing the visitors’ anthem; banners and chants proclaiming “U R gay”; Harry Kewell’s double ponytail; playing Men at Work at full volume after the final whistle.

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Stand to reason

Fans who want a return to terracing are not content to sit in silence while they wait, explains Amanda Matthews

Memories of standing on the terraces are now fast fading in the Premiership. Young fans are more likely than not to sit in the stands and watch their team in near silence. But members of “Stand Up Sit Down” feel all-seat stadiums and being made to sit contribute hugely to the lack of atmosphere, and that that is increasingly influencing fans’ decisions to stay away.

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Welsh rare hits

TNS did Wales proud against Liverpool, but Carmarthen and Rhyl went one better, as Paul Ashley-Jones explains

You wait for ages for a European club success for Wales, then three come round at once. While TNS’s 6-0 aggregate defeat to Liverpool in the Champions League may look like a whitewash, the Welsh club did not disgrace themselves and the result would have been a lot closer had it not been for Steven Gerrard’s late goals. The real plaudits, however, must go to Rhyl and Carmarthen Town for their first preliminary round victories in the UEFA Cup.

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Dramatic licence

David Stubbs on how the AFC Wimbledon story has been brought to the stage

Written by Matthew Couper, a local government arts officer and sometime stand-up comedian, A Fans’ Club is a modest theatrical undertaking but a worthy addition to that invidious yet strangely resilient genre – the football musical. It tells the story of a group of four Wimbledon fans who look on in passive astonishment as their beloved club is snatched from them by the seemingly larger, inevitable powers of commercial interest and dumped in Milton Keynes, their wishes ignored “like a tramp’s coat”. In the second act, however, moved by the spirit of the club that still lingers and pull together to form AFC Wimbledon. Commentating on this heroic turnaround are two “footballing Gods”, Hun-Batz and Hun-Choen, one of the play’s better devices, the “monkey twins” taken from Mayan mythology, who add both levity and a sense of the wider world of events.

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Glentoran 1 Shelbourne 0

A North v South all-Irish encounter offers a rare and welcome point of Champions League intrigue in Belfast writes Robbie Meredith, but the slicker, more professional visitors win the day

Nestled alongside the Belfast docks and airport, the Oval, home of Northern Irish champions Glentoran, immediately transports the visitor back into history. The antiquated Main Stand is 50 years old and seems to have changed little over the years, while both ends of the ground are bracketed by crumbling semi-circular concrete terraces, where supporters are hemmed in by high steel fencing. Sitting in the Main Stand, I’m confronted by the sight of Sampson and Goliath, two huge and distinctive shipyard cranes which offer a glimpse into Belfast’s fading maritime past. When UEFA and the G14 dreamt up the Champions League to bring even more cash and glamour to Europe’s elite clubs, part of their rationale was to ensure that grounds like the Oval, and teams like Glentoran, were weeded out of the competition long before the armchair millions tuned in to see Milan or Manchester United.

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