AThursday morning in July and tourists gather outside the birthplace of the Patron Saint of Football Snack Bars. There are seven such visitors in all – a family of four, a pair of bronzed pensioners and a lone lady in a floral bucket hat. She ponders a segment of paper, the family point at phone screens and bicker like starved hens, and the couple battle to open an umbrella as if calculating how...
Hull 0-0 Blackburn, Premier League (Dec 2009) The last train back from Hull to London leaves at about 6.20pm. Sitting in the KC Stadium media lounge on a chilly night, I was unaware of this. And so, despite a headlong dash to the station, I missed it. This was an age before hotels had been invented, and in any case I was new to this business and unwilling to test the company expense account. So I...
The Football Supporters’ Association has called for fans left out of pocket by the postponement of matches after the Queen’s death to be treated sympathetically. Malcolm Clarke, chair of the FSA, has urged rail companies and the football authorities to ensure supporters due to travel to away games this weekend do not lose out as a result of the decision to suspend the programme as a mark of...
In March 1950, an RAF wing commander and trained accountant called Charles Reep turned his eye for numbers to football. Reep, who had become interested in the sport in the 1930s and was fascinated by Herbert Chapman’s pioneering Arsenal team, had returned from the Second World War to find that the tactical revolution he’d witnessed before had stalled. Finally, at half-time during a drab Division...