No, you haven't picked up Roy of the Rovers by mistake. A kid on holiday has really signed for Mallorca after a scout saw him having a kick–about, as Neil White relates
Not since Steve Norman and Martin Kemp moved from Spandau Ballet to Melchester Rovers in the early 1980s has there been as unlikely a transfer as the one that took 18-year-old apprentice mechanic Jimmy Stevenson from Alloa Athletic to Real Mallorca.
Tom Bower, whose investigations helped bring down Robert Maxwell, turns to football in his latest book, Broken Dreams. It left Harry Pearson screaming …
A decade or so ago Paul Kimmage, who would later ghost Tony Cascarino’s autobiography, wrote a book about his experiences as a professional cyclist. A Rough Ride told of systematic drug use by riders in races such as the Tour de France. In Britain, where bike racing ranks alongside clay-pigeon shooting, Kimmage was rewarded with the William Hill Sports Book of the Year award. In Europe, where cycling is big news and big business, however, he was denounced by everybody from fellow riders to sports journalists as a fantasist and an embittered loser. The Irishman had predicted this would happen. There existed, he said, a code of silence within the world of cycling when it came to drug taking, extending from the mechanics to the upper echelons of cycling’s ruling bodies, from the team masseurs to all branches of the media.
Jimmy Hill has been at the forefront of the evolution of post–war British football. Barney Ronay reviews the Hill effect
Picture the scene: four middle-aged men are seated around a mahogany-effect dining table. Beyond them a window looks out on to trees and green fields, but on inspection it turns out to be just a large photograph on the wall. One of the men has glasses and a protuberant chin; across the room from him a complacent-looking man with extravagantly bouffant hair says: “Well Jimmy. It’s certainly been a busy weekend for referees.” A deep lethargy descends.
Wednesday 1 Arsenal stay five points clear but only after a nervous last few minutes in which Chelsea score twice before losing 3-2. “I like to win games like that when you’re tired,” says Arsène, making an excuse even though he doesn’t need to. “It was like watching the tide coming in,” says Howard Wilkinson as Man Utd score two late goals to beat Sunderland 2-1 having trailed for 75 minutes. Liverpool drop down to seventh after a tenth winless match, a 1-0 defeat at Newcastle, but Gérard sticks his chin out, sort of: “I don’t want to commit suicide before the end of the season.” Several fixtures are postponed due to bad weather, and one, Reading v Leicester, is called off at half-time due to a waterlogged pitch.
In the first of a series on aspects of how the game is played today, Philip Cornwall considers how the improvement in defensive coaching has taken away much of the sting from corners – unless you're lucky enough to be playing West Ham
My earliest knowledge of the hazards of corners came playing for Maids Moreton C of E, back in the 1976-77 season. After a sound spanking by Padbury, Mrs Benson told her primary school charges that rather than pass across the face of our own goal, it would be better to put the ball out for a corner.