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On Life, Football & Cosmetic Surgery
by John Ryan with John Brindley
Scratching Shed, £15.99
Reviewed by Glen Wilson
From WSC 281 July 2010

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"Just a lad from a Doncaster council estate", John Ryan made his money in cosmetic surgery, not as a surgeon, but as a salesman. As he himself says: "I've always seemed to have the ability to persuade people to do what I want." So we can all be thankful that he chose to channel his powers to resurrecting his hometown football club rather than becoming the world's first true super-villain. A life-long supporter, Ryan has taken Rovers from their lowest point to their highest, and all in little more than a decade.

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Dear WSC
In response to my letter published in WSC 275, Mark Brennan Scott accepts that we send someone to each of the weekend’s Premier League games, to commentate live, but not unreasonably asks whether Match of the Day commentators ever “re-record bits they are unhappy with”. Not exactly, but the beauty of an edit rather than a live game is there is scope for tweaking both the sound and visuals by transmission time. Every now and then, a commentator will, for example, misidentify a goalscorer and then correct themselves, in which case we have been known to remove take one in the edit. I’ve found a copy of a letter I had published in WSC 240 in which I said: “If a commentator gets something wrong at the time we may even spare him his blushes at 10pm by removing the odd word.” That remains the case, but most of the time the commentator’s natural reaction works best. If it takes a couple of replays before they identify a deflection or suspicion of handball, that will nearly always feel more authentic than trying to look too clever after the event. In shortening a game for transmission, we may occasionally “pull up” a replay or remove a few words, but would almost never re-record any section of a commentary unless there’s been a technical problem. Furthermore, in all cases the commentators go home after the post-match interviews and a producer back at base edits the pictures and sound recorded at the time. In early days of the Premier League, only two or three games had multi-camera coverage and commentators present, so there were occasional attempts to add a commentary to single-camera round-up games, for example, for Goal of the Month. However, not every commentator was a convincing thespian and one or two “Le Tissier’s capable of beating three men from here and curling one into the top corner. Oh my word, he has…” moments did slip through. With multi-camera coverage and a commentator at every game, that no longer happens.
Incidentally, call us old-fashioned but there was a degree of pride in this office in MOTD’s recent use of “crashed against the timber” as cited in Steve Whitehead’s letter. Better that – or maybe “hapless custodian” – than some unpleasant modern notion like “bragging rights”.
Paul Armstrong, Programme Editor, BBC Match of the Day

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As Martin Ling begins his second spell as Cambridge United manager in the space of a few weeks,  Matthew Gooding reflects on a bizarre sequence of events at the Abbey stadium.

Although it isn’t unusual to see a manager returning to his former club, it’s rare to hear of one going back to the job he left just a week previously. And when you also consider that Martin Ling’s first spell in charge of Cambridge United only lasted eight days, you begin to get a flavour of what a bizarre summer it has been for fans of the Blue Square Premier club.

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Tom Davis looks back at the League One season and reflects on how the division is becoming more and more seperated with each passing year

Ostensibly, there’s almost a case to be made that League One is taking on as lopsided and unequal appearance as the Premier League: increasingly a repository for badly run big clubs and smaller members who see a place in the top half as the peak of their ambitions. No other division boasts such a proportional gap between the crowds of its best and worst supported clubs, or such contrasting historical narratives. A decade previously, Hereford, Cheltenham, Leeds and Leicester were four divisions apart – this term they competed as equals.

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Dear WSC
The letter about spectators leaving games early (WSC 265) reminded me of a father and son who were regulars in the Enclosure at Fulham in the 1980s. They were quite an unappealing pair generally, prone to loud and unfunny abuse of both sets of players and especially of the match officials. The father would often attempt to get a slow handclap going when there was a stoppage in play. Without fail they would leave several minutes before the end of game, even if Fulham were on the attack and pressing for an equaliser or, more often, grimly hanging on for a draw. They’d always look immensely pleased with themselves as they edged along the terrace, as though beating the post-match rush was a major victory. They stopped appearing at games eventually so it must have occurred to them that the only guaranteed way to avoid getting stuck in traffic would be to not leave the house at all.
Rob Henderson, Cirencester

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