Poles Apart

Poland is a country in thrall to the eighties in much the same way that Britain seems to venerate the 60s.
This is mainly due to it being a great era of hope and change, something that the casual visitor to Poland will pick as soon as he hears the 80s music streaming from every radio station.
However as I found out recently the love of the 80s also extends to football. Staying with relatives in the East of the country at Easter, I didn't need asking twice if I wanted to go along to a match on Saturday.
The game in question was LKS Lomza against Sandecja Nowy Sacz in League Two East, roughly equivalent to the English Football League One/Two.
To get me in the mood for the 80s we travelled the 25 km to Lomza in a tiny Fiat known as a Maluch, the Polish equivalent of the Skoda or Lada. We ditched the car on the outskirts of town, transferring to another vehicle as my companion for the afternoon Piotrek advised me that the sight of a number plate from a rival town might lead to vandalism.
Things got stranger when we arrived at the entrance to the ground which was simply a narrow pathway blocked by a phalanx of security guards. To gain entry we had to buy a ticket (pictured below) from a woman sitting a car. Entry was a very reasonable 15 zloty (about £3.50). The ticket was then torn apart by a steward whilst we were thoroughly searched. This caused a problem when Piotrek's water bottle was discovered and he was advised that they should really confiscate the cap in case we threw the bottle onto the pitch, fortunately the steward thought he could trust us so we were able to walk into ground.
If an English ground grader hadn't already broken into a cold sweat at this point, he certainly would have done once he'd walked down the narrow path to the ground.
Like most stadia on the continent it was based on an athletics track although this seems to have fallen into disuse. Neither end was in use. All the spectators were confined to an open seated terrace along one length of the pitch. There was a similar one opposite, which was empty, topped by a Lords style media centre.
The 80s theme was maintained by an eight foot fence in front of our accommodation complete with locked gates and fire extinguishers manned by yet more security guards who were augmented by a vehicle from each of the emergency services. It was clear that 80s style hooliganism was still a problem in Poland although there was no sight of it due to there being no away fans.
The game began with the away team adopting a bold 4-2-4 formation whilst the home team put ten men behind the ball. It soon became clear that this was rather a mismatch, literally men against boys, Lomza not having the necessary sponsor to pay players of the standard required unsurprisingly fell to a 6-0 defeat, not helped by having their smallest player in goal.
Throughout their 700 or so supporters urged them on with fanatical support, and an increasing number of flags and instruments which continued to arrive throughout the match. The songs were all English in origin with the words adapted to local needs. Their display reached a climax just after half time. With the fifth goal about to go in the fans gathered in the centre of the terrace to co-ordinate a fantastic red and white tableau.
This was all to no avail but everything seemed cordial enough at the finish with the Lomza players queuing up to shake the hands through the fence of their supporters who really had given them whole hearted support in a lost cause.

Planet Football

Stood in the rain at Braintree during a goalless and largely uninspiring first last week I did have one of those “what am I doing here moments”. This feeling was exacerbated by the fact that seven days previously I was watching another team in yellow beginning with B in rather more auspicious circumstances.
I’d taken advantage of London’s status as the capital of planet football to take a trip to Ashburton Grove to watch the International friendly between Brazil and Italy. Arsenal has been hosting Brazil ever since they moved to their plush new stadium over the railway from Highbury and the exalted setting of the Emirates certainly is worthy of the occasion.
Indeed in recent years London has begun to take advantage of its wonderfully rich mix of cultures and nationalities by regularly hosting international fixtures its neutral nature ensuring a good crowd of supporters from either side along with voyeurs like me.
With tickets cheaper than an Arsenal home game in the Premiership the opportunity to watch some of the best players in the world was too good to miss, and they certainly didn’t disappoint, both sides taking part with an attitude which suggested this was a friendly in name only.
This was reflected in the strength of the two teams with only injuries to stars such as Kaka preventing the best elevens taking the field. Reading through the pen pictures was like being given a roll call of the finest clubs in Europe, and Manchester City.
I sat back into my vast seat, (Arsenal seem to have taken on board the fact that the population is becoming more corpulent) and soaked up the fantastic atmosphere. Fans of both countries were unsegregated throughout the stadium and worked together to produce a carnival atmosphere in the run up to kick off. For once the scarves split between both teams seemed appropriate as they lined up for the national anthems, Italy strangely wearing white overcoats as though they wanted to acknowledge the stereotype of coming from a nation of ice cream salesmen.
Kick off saw both teams immediately revert to type, Italy fanning out in disciplined fashion carefully building from the back whilst on first reflection the Brazilians seemed to be going for the primary school model of all running around the ball. On further inspection, aside from two wide men it was clear that there was method in their madness, a circular pattern emerging which enabled virtuosos such as Ronaldinho to exhibit their silky samba soccer skills.
This tactic proved to be key to unlock the Italian back line, a defence splitting pass putting Elano through to clinically score past Buffon after thirteen minutes and put Brazil one goal to the good.
The key moment of the match came in the 26th minute. Pirlo the peerless Italian playmaker swung in a perfect cross from the right wing which his strikers did not make the best of. Brazil swiftly counterattacked and although Pirlo rang the length of the pitch to get back and defend he fluffed his clearance to enable Robinho to set off on a mazy run which ended with the perfect result to double Brazil’s lead.
The Italians came back into the game after half time but were left to vent their frustrations at the British contribution to the evening, the team of match officials led by Howard Webb who disallowed two Italian goals and ended up booking two of the Azzurri on a night that firmly belonged to Brazil.

The Comforts of Madstad

Berkshire may be many things but its certainly not a hotbed of football. Consider the evidence: it's not even an independent FA being merged with Bucks, and Maidenhead is the second biggest club in the county by a long chalk. Yet Reading is trying their hardest to change this state of affairs.
It's not too long ago that Reading were a professional version of the Magpies. They hovered around the lower divisions, lived in a lovable but tatty old ground, and all their greatest feats were in the dim and distant past.
Perhaps like York Road is today, Elm Park was somewhere you could go along with your mates every so often to one of the handful of big games in a season. It was cheap, accessible and required no commitment. How things have changed!
Over the last twenty years they have transformed into a bona fide big club, not just satisfied with consolidating a place in Football League Championship but settling for nothing less than a Premiership place.
Central to this transformation was the move to that modern equivalent of a statue of a Victorian factory owner, the Madejski stadium, known locally as the Madstad.
This shiny new stadium has attracted the local populace in numbers that were pre war memories at Elm Park. The burgeoning bourgeoisie of Silicon Valley evidently preferring the meal deals and antiseptic concrete of the Madstad to the smell of tobacco and stewed onions that would envelop Elm Park on any given matchday.
I witnessed all this for myself a couple of weeks when with York Road like most of the rest of the South of England snowbound, Reading v Preston North End presented virtually the only tempting football option.
However it wasn't simply a case of pitching up to the South Bank at five to three with a couple of quid as was the case at Elm Park. Detailed research showed that although tickets were available they could only be bought by members which could only be obtained by prior application (funny I thought football supporters stopped all that members only business twenty years ago). Fortunately there was plenty of space in the away end for anyone with £26.50 (to be fair it was about £9 cheaper in advance).
Once inside I resisted the temptations of the meal deal (£6 for a pie and a pint) and admired the basic functionality of the Madstad with its clean and sufficient facilities, including seats which provided a clear view of the action.
In the run up to kick off the Preston fans instinctively arranged themselves with people wanting to sit and watch taking the forwards whilst the youngsters who wanted to jump around and sing heading for the back. After kick off this was not good enough for the stewards who pointlessly wasted time pleading with people to sit before bravely dragging out a non compliant young girl whilst ignoring her burlier male peers.
The football was not dissimilar to what you would see at Conference South level. Two well organised teams largely cancelling each other out, with a yawning creativity gap preventing goals. The under soil heating whilst making the game playable had combined with the rugby to make the surface unhelpful to the lonely talent of Stephen Hunt, and a stalemate ensued.
For the most part it was Reading who showed the wherewithal to break this but after about an hour they seemed to lose heart and it was Preston who almost snatched it near the end, only for pub footballer John Parkin to blast a chance over from close range. Despite this opportunity Preston opted to play for a point taking the ball to the corners as the minutes counted down, their joy at earning a draw shown when captain Sean St Ledger gleefully threw his shirt into the crowd at the final whistle.
The most stunning statistic of the day was that the game was watched by 19,500. At the end some of them shouted “Premiership you’re having a laugh” at each other. Definitely right in terms of the evidence on the pitch, probably wrong in terms of the evidence off it.

Pointless

Some aspects of British sport seem to have little point to them but at the same time their demise would lead to an outcry by those who don’t actually have any real interest in them.

A list would include events like the Boat Race and County Cricket, and perhaps the lower divisions of the Scottish League. Watched by similar numbers to English non league football and dwarfed in scale by the Scottish Junior system, the clubs are nevertheless regarded fondly by many who could scarcely find them on a map.

One team which spent most weeks going literally pointless at the start of the decade was East Stirling. With no relegation from the bottom division, the 'Shire bounced along in the basement, with little hope or expectation of even reaching second bottom, with Chairman Alan Mackin imposing a maximum wage of £10 per week.

Naturally things gradually got worse and in 2003/04 the Shire found international notoriety when they went 23 games without a win. With bookmakers refusing bets on Shire to lose, a record equalling 24th match without a win was avoided on the last day of the season when Elgin City were beaten in the full glare of publicity.

This infamy prompted sportswriter Jeff Connor to write a fly on the wall book about "a season with Britain's worst football team". The offer of £2,000 gained Connor access to all areas of the club for the 2004/05 and his reflections form a mildly diverting read.

The reader is deluged by the farcical events Connor encounters which seem more like Carry on Football. We meet a septuagenarian director who vetoes everything to spite his colleague, a Chief Executive who insists he is the manager, a manager who believes this is the first step of a great managerial career, supporters who insist on travelling to all games by public transport whatever the cost and a host of players hoping to get their lucky break.

Weight is given to the Manager Dennis Newall's ambitions at least as none other than Alex Ferguson started in the manager's chair at Firs Park. He soon left to bequeath on the Shire the curse of the lesser talented brother as his sibling started a trend for names such as Durie and Rae to be signed.

Unsurprisingly Connor is not the only person lured to Falkirk by a morbid fascination for a moribund football club and he recounts the arrival of a succession of lads' mags to poke fun at the unfortunate shire. The value of being good at being bad does pay dividends when Littlewoods lavish the club with sponsorship but this rather queers the plot when Dennis Newall wins the manager of the month award for November. Coming in the wake of three months when only two points were earned this was some achievement for the cigar smoking Newall who at least shared with his illustrious predecessor Ferguson a penchant for the hairdryer treatment. Unfortunately despite being wheeled out virtually every week it had little effect and well you can guess where the Shire finished the season.

Although the prose would have benefited from a clearer structure, it is worth a read to dig out the anecdotal gems which any non league fan would recognise. As a postscript East Stirling finally achieved their aim to finish second bottom last season at the sixth attempt. Sadly this proved to be the last at their Firs Park home with its infamous Land of Leather wall at one end, due to the pitch no longer being big enough to meet SFA requirements. However the move into a groundshare with Stenhousemuir seems to have worked wonders with the Shire sitting in fifth position.

The explosion of free to air TV channels sparked by the fantastic innovation “Freeview” has enabled the traditional broadcasters BBC and ITV to seriously expand their sports output.
Whilst the BBC sticks to using their additional channels to extend their coverage of events such as the Olympics, ITV has also used ITV4 to air some of their archive material.
In football terms this has largely come in the form of “The Big Match Revisited”, quite simply a repeat of an episode of the commercial broadcaster’s response to the BBC’s Match Of The Day.
However rather than pick a variety of episodes across the life of the show ITV has elected to stick with a particular season.
The reruns started about a year ago, going back fifteen years to the 1982-83 season. Some variety was offered by the fact that the different ITV regions broadcast different shows. At the time this gave ITV an advantage over the BBC who were stuck with three games nationwide whilst ITV would focus on a couple of local games with the added bonus of goals from other parts of the country. Additionally it also meant if you lived near the border of two regions you could catch two highlights programmes if the schedules were friendly, although to my eyes whatever the time of year it always seemed to be snowing in Southampton when my Dad tried to tune into the TVS version.
Maidenhead was home to London Weekend Television’s The Big Match hosted by the doyen of commentators Brian Moore (pictured top right with Jim Rosenthal). When I started watching TV in the 70s Match of the Day was out of bounds due to its late night scheduling (no bad thing as presenter Jimmy Hill was the stuff of childhood nightmares) whilst Moore would appear in the living room in the aftermath of Sunday’s roast dinner.
Coming across as a friendly Uncle, Moore was a product of the 50s, prone to hysterical outbursts such as “here come the madcaps” as the crowd invaded the pitch as was the style at the time.
Seen through today’s eyes the highlights shows are very tame, the extended highlights are quite dull compared to the delights we are served up today. Certainly football and I suppose the UK was a lot more pedestrian and much less exotic than today. The weekly episodes presented 1982-83 as the season Brighton got to Wembley, and Fulham missed out on promotion to Division One when Derby fans invaded the pitch and got the game abandoned. Champions Liverpool barely featured so I guess they were mainly the province of MoTD that season.
The series started again at the turn of the year, this time going back to 1978-79, and already it seems to be rather more of a vintage year. The appetite was whetted by the classic Big Match theme full of brass, as opposed to the tinny electronica of 1983. This had an unfortunate Pavlovian side effect of making me salivate for Roast Beef which was sadly not forthcoming from the kitchen. Instead I was served up a football feast: Manchester United 3 West Bromwich Albion 5, an astonishing game of football which saw West Brom’s Laurie Cunningham silence Old Trafford with a stunning performance. Last week saw a big freeze with a studio debate about when games should be called off (plus ca change!), following Arsenal’s visit to Sheffield Wednesday which was most memorable for Pat Jennings being pelted with snowballs by the Hillsborough kop.
The series continues weekly on ITV4, with each episode shown on Thursday (twice) and Friday.
Further education:
http://educatedleftfoot.blogspot.com/

Howay The Mags

The renaissance of Blyth Spartans’ FA Cup ginatkilling form will rekindle memories of Maidenhead’s trip to the North East almost eight years ago.The occasion was the last 32 of the FA Trophy, the furthest the Magpies in the competition to this date and in this case literally the furthest the Magpies have ever travelled to a game ever.The Trophy remains something of a Cinderella competition, lacking the glittering prizes of the Cup but nevertheless providing a real chance of worthwhile glory for the higher echelons of non league football.The 2000-01 season was Maidenhead's first in the Isthmian Premier, and rather like last season, United were struggling to establish themselves after promotion.The Trophy provided something of a distraction from league woes. In the first round old enemies Hampton were summarily despatched 4-1at the Beveree thanks to a superb second half display from the much maligned Lee Channell who after missing a first half penalty went onto hit a second half brace to put United in front before setting up goals for Steve Croxford and Freddie Domingos to secure victory.Next up were Enfield and after two postponement, United prevailed by a single goal from Joe Nartey. Unfortunately the game was marred by a double sending off Andy Morley and Nartey both seeing red with the consequences being felt two rounds later in Northumberland.Round three was played just five days later, with Nartey again proving to be the difference, this time in deepest Essex as he hit a late winner at Braintree after Obi Ulasi had levelled the scores.So the scene was set for a 650 mile round trip to Blyth on Saturday February 3rd, and with some trepidation due to the wintry weather, coaches and hotels were booked for a weekend away.The team left on Friday to stay the night in Newcastle, with the supporters gathering at 6am at York Road to hit the north. A trouble free
journey saw the Magpie fans arrive in good time to have a pre match pint and catch up with fellow fans who had sought alternative means of transport.The teams took to the field in front of a bumper crowd of 902 on a stereotypically icy winter's afternoon in the north east.The Magpie contingent earned their spotters badge early on when a Byker Grove extra informed us that we were Cockney unmentionables and spirits were lifted further when Matt Glynn gave United the lead with a stupendous goal after 21 minutes.The scheming midfielder struck a sweet volley from just outside the box which flew into the top corner, striking the stanchion enroute, giving a glimpse of a talent which promised much but sadly delivered little.Spartans struck back before half time but Maidenhead stuck manfully to the task before the game ended with a tragic denouement which sums up cup football. Four minutes were left on the clock so a draw looked favourite but Maidenhead pressed hard for a second winning a corner. Croxford rose highest to head goalward only for a Spartan to clear off the line and set up a counter attack down the left wing.The cross was too hot for Richie Barnard to handle, the ball falling invitingly for a Blyth player to fire home the winner from close range.So a day that promised much ended in frustrating defeat, but rather than wallow in defeat a strong cohort of Magpies elected to stay over in nearby Whitley Bay. After being given a standing ovation on leaving the Blyth club house the Magpies boarded their coach for the short trip down the coast, time enough for a quick game of room bingo.Then it was out for a night on the town, ignoring the snow blowing in horizontally from the North Sea which ended in a bar hosting the overdue final of Miss G String 2000. One individual got a bit carried away, using his black and white scarf to snare unsuspecting young ladies. To protect the innocent he will only be known as Mr Logic.

Voodoo Economics

Away from York Road, finance or rather lack of it seems to be the prevailing theme in non league circles this season with a number of our Blue Square South rivals in reportedly serious difficulties. With some clubs in the Blue Square Premier also facing problems it already seems inevitable that relegation issues will yet again not be sorted out on the pitch.As with society as a whole football’s free market model of a super rich class trickling down their wealth to the supporters seems to be conforming to George H. W. Bush’s label of “voodoo economics”. Undoubtedly the next season or two will see a bit of a sorting out as clubs find their financial equilibrium. Will this lead to an era of fiscal sanity? Well I’m not holding my breath but as the amateurs of Fisher showed on Saturday who needs money!