Search: ' grounds'

Tom Davies reports on three of the Football League's troubled clubs

The fight to secure the future of Wrexham at the Racecourse Ground (reported in WSC 208) has acquired a new urgency over the summer. Elusive chairman Mark Guterman has left the club, leaving the abrasive Alex Hamilton in charge. Hamilton, now revealed as the real power behind Guterman from the start, wants to sell the ground (which could fetch up to £25 million) and move the club to an out-of-town site, claiming that the sale would be the only way to stave off the lingering threat of administration and clear debts of around £5m.

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In case you've ever caught yourself totting up how many different grounds you've been to and thought you might be coming down with an obsession, Ian Plenderleith has found the sites of the true hard core

Most fans like to visit an uncharted sta­dium for the first time. A change of view and a new degree of toxicity in your half-time snack are the small paybacks for taking on an often unrewarding away trip. But there are people who take things a bit too far. Welcome to the world of groundhoppers.

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The FA enquiry into the Soho Square sex scandal comes to an end – but, seriously, who really cares?

Tradition has it that the Football Association is run by a bunch of buffoons. Not least on this issue when they have decided to announce their findings of their inquiry into the (gasp) Soho Square sex scandal on the day after we have gone to press.

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The World Cup has had to expand to the point where it can be too much of a good thing, believes Philip Cornwall, who thinks the European Championship is now perfection

It’s part of the calendar of the football fan’s life. One summer is dominated by the World Cup; then there’s a quiet year; but now the European Champ­ionship circus rolls in, in many ways a less cumbersome, more accessible (closer if you want to go; always in our time zone if you don’t) and so more perfect tournament than the global event. Euro 2004 offers a steady stream of daily matches stretching for a fortnight, then a less intense but more important final week, finishing on a Fourth of July that will be cele­brated so wildly in one country that visiting Americans will complain about the fireworks. The tournament’s rise, creating a two-rather than four-year cycle, has ensured the eclipse of the international friendly, making them training grounds for the games that truly decide coach’s jobs.

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As a teengager Neil Forsyth stood on a terrace which had seen European semi-finals and a final and where, amid the swearing, the snowballs and the cheers, it turned out that everybody knew his name

Where in Europe lies the road that plays host to two European Cup semi-finalists at two separate home grounds? The answer is Dundee, where Dundee’s Dens Park Stadium lies just 100 yards from Dundee United’s Tannadice Park. In April 1984, United raced to a 2-0 first-leg lead against Roma at Tannadice before capitulating in the return leg amid intimidation and appalling refereeing, leaving Liverpool to defeat the Italians in the final. And Dundee? Ach, who cares?

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