Ah yes, now that title - it is, of course a parody of all those alliterative titles that they give to the manager's column in the club programme, isn't it? Isn't it? What, it isn't - oh no!
JOHN's JOTTINGS
• on GROUND GRADING Torquay United, the 92nd club on the Football League (or I suppose more accurately the 72nd club in the Endsleigh Insurance League) must have spent the last few weeks of the season hoping that either Stevenage or Hednesford would win the Conference, and thus save them from the relegation that has otherwise looked inevitable since around last August. Of the leading clubs, only Woking, who this season have constructed a large new stand behind one goal, and Macclesfield Town had been accepted for possible promotion. The latter's Moss Rose ground has at last satisfied the League's ground grading inspectors, despite having presumably been up to the required standard when Chester City played there. Or is it just the League putting as many obstacles in place as possible - the old 'Closed Shop' in a different guise? Not that the Conference criteria are any easier to fathom out. Beazer Homes League leaders Rushden and Diamonds, who have had the use of large sums of money for ground building, and Hayes, from the Icis League, have met the required standard, along with a small number of other clubs, but that's it. Now one could understand that the Conference would only accept clubs into membership if their grounds met League standards, thus ensuring that the continuing embarrassment of having its own champions turned down for promotion would not continue. But this isn't the case; nothing against Hayes, they have done a lot of hard work this season to improve their ground, but with access only possible from one end and a stand that only seats around 200 (although the Non-League Ground book gives it as 400) can you imagine League football there? Or perhaps the truth is that the Conference want to recruit Southern sides, but not us Northern teams? Issue 026 - May 1996
• on HEREFORD UNITED Euro96 apart, the best match shown on television this year (or any year, come to that) was a re-run of an old Match of the Day from the 1976-77 season; a Division Two (in old money) game between Fulham and Hereford. Now I wouldn't normally encourage the use of such bad language, but this game was special; a well earned drubbing which helped send Hereford straight back down, relegated two years on the run back down to the Fourth (pity they couldn't make it a hat trick). With the Fulham team led by the superb Bobby Moore, the Cottagers cruised into a 4-1 lead, then started taking the p¡$$ out of their opponents. The Hereford defenders could only look on helpless as Rodney Marsh and George Best (didn't he once promise to come to Barrow but not turn up? Or was it twice?) ran rings around the full backs, then started to show how it should be done by tackling each other to win possession. And all with a smile on their faces; football was fun. Magic. It should be a compulsory Barrow morale booster before the start of each season. I've sent the video to Owen Brown already. Not that I've got anything against Hereford, of course. Nothing that relegation half a dozen seasons on the trot wouldn't cure. Issue 028 - November 1996
• on METRICATION This column is dedicated to the traditional values in life. Degrees Fahrenheit, Barrow in Lancashire, six foot something forwards, that sort of thing. So it was something of a culture shock when reading a recent Brentford programme to see that the players' heights and weights had all been converted - in mid-season, if you please - to metres and kilothingies. It was like reading a foreign language; an obscure Eastern European one perhaps, something in the Cyrillic script. Take our six foot something forward, for example. At the start of the season Robert Taylor was 6'1" and 13st 8lbs. You knew where you stood with him. Now he is 1.85 metres and 86.2 kilothingies. Means sod all to me. Is he an overweight short arse, or what? Is he as big as the six foot bloke that's marking him? Can't tell. I can just about cope with metres, after a struggle. When they first came out they were easy, a yard plus VAT, but then they reduced the VAT rate but didn't make the metre any shorter. And as for the odd bit of height after the decimal point, well, a millimetre is too short to worry about, so our man can't be much more than four feet six or so. I think. Now, I've nothing against the metric system... for Johnny Foreigner. But we're British, dash it. We've lived quite happily with good old imperial measures since time immemorial, but now we are faced with numbers that mean nothing. Mind you, I reckon it's a FIFA trick, backed by the Yanks, who reckon after the World Cup over there a couple of years ago that the game would be improved by having bigger goals. FIFA agree, sort of, that it would be a good idea because goalkeepers have grown since the size of the goals was first determined, and can make correspondingly more saves. Sounds a bit iffy to me. Your metric goalkeepers might have grown, but I don't think, our feet and inches ones are any taller than they used to be. But if they go metric, they might be. We wouldn't be able to check. It was in the pub before the match, though, that the true daftness of the metric system was brought to the fore. The good old British pint measure has been preserved, but only for beer; all other bevvies must be sold in metric units. This conversation, between a customer and the landlord, I swear is true... Customer: A pint of bitter and a pint of shandy please. Landlord: (serving the bitter) Was it a large shandy or a small one, sir? Customer: A pint, please. Landlord: Sorry sir, we can't serve pints of shandy any more, only large ones or small ones. Customer: How big is a large one? Landlord: It's a pint. Don't you feel like giving up in despair? Issue 025 - April 1996
• on PREMIER LEAGUE WAGES Now that the football season is with us we can put all the glorious achievements of England's summer sportsmen behind us. Welcome back to the world of unknown foreigners, mysterious refereeing decisions, Ian Wright and inflated transfer fees. In the 1995-96 season English clubs spent £250m on transfer fees. Of this, £93m, or 37%, went on foreign players. That's £93m lost to the game in this country. And that's without allowing (allegedly) for a decent bung or two to the multitude of agents through whom these negotiations are transacted. Clubs in the lower divisions and in non-League rely on transfer fees for their survival. But buying foreign players means that the money no longer goes to strengthening the roots of the game in this country. Unless Italian, French or Scandinavian clubs start buying Second or Third Division players. Which is unlikely. It is said that, post-Bosman, overseas players can be signed for a lower fee than their UK counterparts. You wouldn't believe this looking at some of the amounts paid out by Premier League clubs. The players, reasoning that the clubs are not paying out as much as they could, decide to grab a slice of the financial cake for themselves and demand sky high signing-on fees plus wages to match. And as the clubs cave in to these demands, wage bills rocket; just under £300m for the Premier League in 1995/96. Arsenal have to find £15m for their players compared to the £600,000 which they paid their championship winning squad just six seasons ago. Even Derby have a wage bill of £5m. Which is fine when the bottomless pit that is BSkyB is picking up the tab. But TV money can't cover all this expenditure. The figures mean that somewhere in the region of £20 per supporter per match goes just to pay the players' wages, never mind all the other overheads of running a club and staging a game. No wonder ticket prices are rocketing. Not to worry. Send off a hundred quid for a season's worth of pay per view, stick the card in the slot on the box, grab a can of the sponsor's lager and settle back and watch. Football won't be free for much longer. But it's not just the cash rich Premier League where the wage bills are increasing. Other players see the riches on offer at the senior level, feel their aspirations of playing in the Premier are being thwarted by the influx of foreign stars and so demand larger and larger pay packets. And this is money that clubs bereft of transfer fee income can ill afford to pay. Forced to spend money they haven't got to try to buy promotion, Football League sides are running a high-risk strategy. Fine, if successful, but will the price of failure be the folding of a club? And what will the long term effect be on the England team of all these overseas players? Every foreigner in the Premier League means one less opportunity for an Englishman. Glen Hoddle does not look outside the top flight for his players, so potential England internationals are stopped from playing at the peak of the game. Look what's happened to our cricket team since overseas players were allowed. The selection policy for Test Matches is in disarray, new players fail miserably on their debut and the established men look like rabbits caught in the headlights of a car. Now none of this is to say that the Premier League should concentrate on being an insular and jingoistic competition. Undoubtedly players can improve by plying their trade alongside the best in the world. But are Premier League clubs buying the world's best players, or the cheapest? If it's the latter, it's a very short-sighted policy. Issue 031 - September 1997
• on REALLY STUPID NAMES Another sport where the marketing men are ruling the roost is Rugby League. Not content with re-naming Bradford Bulls (what was wrong with Bradford Northern?) and Halifax Blue Sox (not even the Queen's English, that one), the Super League have told, sorry suggested, that Wigan change their name to Wigan Warriors. And Warrington, known to generations of supporters as the Wire (note no 's') will in future be known as the Wolves. Traditional nicknames, the origins of which are often obscured or lost in the mists of time, are being discarded willy-nilly just so the marketing men can sell the game as a product. It makes you want to throw up. So in that spirit, how about some new names for teams in the UniBond League? How about the Marine Moaners? Or the Guisley Groaners? Or the Lancaster Laughs? Accrington All-Stars should attract big crowds; if they had any stars that is. Chorley Chumps would be certs for relegation with Droylsden Donkeys. Runcorn Rubbish trips off the tongue. As does Witton Wubbish for the verbally challenged. And Hyde Horrors. How about Workington Wimps from UniBond Division One? Knowsley United could be renamed after their crowd as Knowsley Nobodies. And last years' champions could become the Bamber Gascoignes. It sounds more interesting than Bamber Bridge. And they might even get a starter for ten to save them from what is already looking like certain relegation at the end of this season. As you can see, the possibilities are endless. Next time you're a bit bored on the terraces, try making up your own. Issue 029 - January 1997
• on the STEELWORKS END Now that the new grandstand is in place, the ex-Bradford City shelter to be raised over the reinstated Steelworks End terrace, a new roof promised for the Holker End, and the Ray Wilkie terracing to be extended back down to pitch level, the ground will be in its best condition since 1972. Barrow versus Hartlepool on 3 April that year was a sad occasion; true, we won 2-0 (goals from Mick Hollis and Steve Calvert) but nevertheless, it was farewell to the Steelworks End. The roof had gone, most of the steps had been demolished, but we could still stand there, for the last time, on the terrace behind the goal. The steelworks themselves have gone, along with many other icons of Barrow's proud industrial past, never to return. But the Steelworks End will rise again as a tribute to all the toil and labour that went into making Barrow what it is. Long live the Steelworks End. Issue 026 - May 1996
• on YANKS REWRITING the RULES I've been doing a bit of thinking of late (that must be a first for a contributor to G'EB! Ed.). About the erstwhile British Empire. Or at least India, New Zealand and the penal colony south east of Indonesia. The bits of the Empire that we taught to play cricket, that is. And I've come to the conclusion that the American War of Independence happened at the right time. Otherwise we might have had the Yanks running the game to their own variation of the rules. My worry really emanates from the World Cup held in the States in 1994 when the American TV companies were concerned that the format of two halves of 45 minutes each way didn't really suit their advertising schedules. Now it seems that the ruling body of football (BSkyB - hands up anyone naive enough to have thought it was FIFA?) have taken note of the Americans' concerns. They are seriously considering dividing the ninety minutes into three half-hour, er, thirds, I suppose. The reason is, of course, to fit in more adverts. Football is big business. But the spectator is the one who loses out. Never mind the sport, just go out and buy the products. Issue 029 - January 1997