Search: ' Johnny Rep'

A Biography
by Steve Gordos

Breedon Books, £12.99

Reviewed by Jim Heath
From WSC 257 July 2008 

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Having started to support Wolves almost 40 years ago, I just missed out on the halcyon period between 1949 and 1960 when they won two FA Cups and three League titles. Recent retrospectives on captain Billy Wright and manager Stan Cullis have opened up a new dimension on the era and Steve Gordos’s biography of inside-forward Peter Broadbent, now stricken with Alzheimer’s, adds richly to that seam.

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by Ivan Ponting

Know the Score, £16.99

Reviewed by Roger Tiford
From WSC 257 July 2008 

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There are two types of obituary, the personal – written by someone who knew the deceased – and the professional. Ex-footballers tend not to have close friends or family who can offer a thousand finely wrought words at the drop of a chap so, for the benefit of readers of the Independent, Ivan Ponting has being doing this duty for the past 15 years. Given that newspaper’s circulation, this collection of obituaries will be fresh, yet timeless, material for the vast majority of fans.

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The Maestro
by Martin Plumb
Ashwater, £27.50

Reviewed by Neil Hurden
From WSC 258 August 2008

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You could rely on one thing at Craven Cottage in the 1970s. At moments of maximum desperation in the Fulham ranks, one of the denizens of the strange, non-Leagueish world of the Stevenage Road Enclosure would inevitably pipe up with the ironic refrain: “Bring on Johnny Haynes!”

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Dear WSC
The substitutes’ bench at a football stadium should be exactly that – a rickety, splintered wooden structure, also housing an elderly physio with a smoker’s cough, that players will be only too keen to get away from. Yet several Premier League clubs, including Newcastle and Spurs, have comfortable seats for the substitutes that look like something from the executive class on an aeroplane. These players won’t feel motivated to leave their padded headrests with optional vibro-massage function in order to run around in the wind and rain. What next – soothing music piped in through headsets? Treat them mean to keep them keen, for God’s sake.
Glyn Teasdale, via email

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A new DVD about spectators around the world could do with a touch more explanation, but Al Needham still finds the spectacle enthralling

If Danny Dyer’s Real Football Factories: International has taught us anything (apart from a couple of dozen new descriptions for men in Stone Island jackets running at each other with their arms out), it’s that Johnny Foreigner has left us in the dust when it comes to football violence. Even though you couldn’t shake off the feeling that each “firm” will have been reminding each other to get their balaclavas on straight so their mums wouldn’t notice, it was a timely reminder that people can still get worked up about football without a television company or marketing agency having to tell them to.

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