The Duncan McKenzie Story
by Duncan McKenzie and David Saffer
Vertical Editions, £17.99
Reviewed by Mark O'Brien
From WSC 274 December 2009
Duncan McKenzie openly admits that his style of play divided opinions. There were those who saw him as a luxury player, while others considered him the sort of maverick who could unlock defences in an era, the 1970s, when men like Ron Harris and Tommy Smith would emasculate forwards as soon as look at them.
Despite three play-off semi-final defeats on the trot, the early 1990s were heady times for Merseyside's third team. Karl Sturgeon recalls
“Tranmere,” Johnny King once said, “will never be able to compete with Liverpool and Everton. They’re big liners like the Queen Mary, but I see Tranmere like a deadly submarine.”
Since they last met at Vicarage Road over a quarter of a century ago Swansea and Watford's paths have diverged. However, as they meet again in the second tier it is the visitors who are building an enviable reputation while the hosts look to be suffering a case of post-play-off syndrome. Huw Richards was there
Watford and Swansea are forever linked by the shared experience of the late 1970s and early 1980s when both rose in a few seasons from the fourth level to the upper reaches of what we then called (and still is, whatever its official label may be) Division One. There, though, their paths diverged. Watford stayed on at the upper end of the league and have spent only two of the past 30 seasons outside the top two divisions. Swansea, by contrast, returned whence they had come and have only this year escaped the bottom two.
Ian Plenderleith checks out online suggestions on how to survive Euro 2008 – avoid ticket touts and don't talk to Tina Turner
If you’re looking for something special in your Euro 2008 coverage, there are precious few sites around that are going to go the extra distance, especially with no home nations to justify added expense for a one-off tournament. With projected site visits down, and revenue from ads for those fantastic England replica away kits correspondingly low, you’ll likely have to be happy with standard results, stats, match reports and fantasy leagues. All in all, dedicated Euro sections at your favoured newspaper’s site, or at the reliable but dull portals at places such as the BBC and Soccernet, will fulfil your basic needs. Not that those are a recommendation.
Simon Tyers takes a look at Setanta Sports News, Sky's unthreatening rival
Watching Setanta Sports News, you are reminded of the scene in I’m Alan Partridge where, on being told by the BBC director of programming that the glut of regional police shows he has listed suggests there’s too many, Partridge suggests “that’s one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is, people like them, let’s make some more of them.” Sky Sports News is delivered by a combination of an authoritative father figure/elder brother type and a power-dressed blonde while information scrolls around them. Setanta has decided that the only way to improve on this is to have a go at it itself and hope nobody makes the connection.