The first, and some would say the best, of Give 'Em Beans! regular columnists ('some' being the Columnist With No Name), the anonymous one wrote his writ between issues 009 and 022. From this selection, we start with two instances where he was particularly on the ball...
The COLUMNIST with no NAME
• on ASSISTANT MANAGERS If ever there was a non-job, it would have to be assistant manager of a football club. It's one you never see advertised; it doesn't cause ripples if one is sacked or resigns. Nobody really knows exactly what they do and what responsibilities they have. It's usually just a job for the boys, a post created to keep some ex-player at the club in recognition of past services. Assistant managers rarely make the grade to manager proper and are only ever assistant managers at the club where they spend most of their playing days. One good example would be Graham Heathcote. He played the best part of his career at Altrincham and when those days were over he continued to go to the club every Saturday as assistant to John King. As he didn't have the nous to remain in football as a coach or physiotherapist a non-post was created to keep him on the payroll as assistant to his old mate Johnny King. He followed John King to Barrow and when King left, tried his hand at management. He lasted a matter of months and proved to be the most reviled Barrow manager in recent history. So I nearly choked on my Coco Pops listening to Alex Ferguson on the radio the other morning. He was saying he could well retire in a couple of years and that he planned to hand over his managerial reins to Brian Kidd! No, Alex, this would be a disaster for Manchester United. We at Barrow had experience of Brian Kidd's management skills (or should I say lack of them). Indeed, anybody who reads the interview with Colin Cowperthwaite elsewhere on this site won't be surprised by God's reply to the question "What was the lowest point of your career at Barrow?" Cowps said "The time Brian Kidd spent at the club has to be mentioned." For the record, Kidd took over the Holker St. reins in November 1984 after Peter McDonnell resigned for personal reasons. Barrow were well placed in the Gola League; in fact we were the last club to lose our unbeaten record that season. Under Kidd we couldn't win. After four months of sliding down the table Kidd left to become assistant manager at Preston. Brian Kidd will never make the grade as the manager of Manchester United. If Alex Ferguson's successor wants to bring in his own assistant I'm sure a position could be created for Kidd at Old Trafford. Assistant manager of the United Megastore is one that springs to mind. Issue 022 - May 1995
• on SCALLIES Most people like Scousers. They're usually colourful characters, full of life and with a good sense of humour. But they do have a seedier reputation as well. Indeed they pride themselves on a kind of borderline criminal opportunism and their term 'scally' is usually one of respect. Scousers have turned Social Security scrounging into an art form and pride themselves on all manner of scams. Only in Liverpool do nine year-old kids ask for a couple of quid to look after your parked car with the implied threat that failure to pay up will mean that your car won't be there or in one piece when you get back. In a nutshell, the Scouser is a lovable rogue but you wouldn't trust him with the family silver. With this in mind, I have been watching Stephen Vaughan's connection with the club with interest. A new director willing to put money into the club would usually be welcomed with open arms, but when a Scouse boxing promoter gets involved it begs the question 'What's in it for him?' If he thinks people in Barrow are a bit wet behind the ears and there's the chance of a quick buck to be made, he could be in for a shock. But if he has a love of football and wants to be a partner in fulfilling Barrow's potential then we should get on fine. We can only judge Mr Vaughan on his actions. The whole rugby merger affair would have been a smart piece of business for his company. For a mere £400,000 he hoped to own Craven Park and Holker St. Craven Park is worth around £1.5 million. Vaughan would have been collecting rent from the soccer and the rugby and could have sold Holker St. and made a nice profit of probably a million pounds. Realistically the offer promoted as a 'great deal for the town' was never going to be acceptable to the rugby club or the football supporters, although strangely (or perhaps not, bearing in mind that Vaughan was invited onto the Barrow board by Bill McCullough) the Barrow AFC board would have been quite happy to leave Holker St. How much would they have gained from the sale of Holker St? As shareholders they may own the ground in a legal sense, but the ground will always really belong to the thousands of supporters who over many years have given time and money to keep the football at Holker St., the best symbol of which is probably the Ray Wilkie Stand. Nobody with any love for the club would want to see it knocked down and replaced with another superstore. Interestingly, Vaughan pulled out of the deal on 14 February, after receiving unfavourable public reaction, mainly from AFC fans who didn't want to leave Holker St. Two days later at the RL supporters forum, the deal was still on the table. Bollocks to the soccer fans! Stephen Vaughan now says all his energies are going to Barrow AFC. To be fair he has backed up his words with cash. Let us wait and see. In the meantime, I won't park my car near Holker St, just in case. There may be some scallies about. Issue 022 - May 1995
• on CUMBRIAN LEISURE PURSUITS After reading about the protests from our cousins north of the Lancashire border over Colin Cowperthwaite's selection as Cumbria Sports Personality I was not particularly surprised. They have no real interest in football and would no doubt choose a sports personality from one of their own peculiar leisure activities which have arisen after years of geographical and cultural isolation. Four of their more ethnic sports that come to mind are gurning, Cumberland wrestling, fell running, and putting ferrets down the insides of your trousers. Gurning is the art of pulling an ugly face. The main problem with this is deciding who is actually a gurner or a non-gurner as most people from this part of the country are pretty odd looking as anyone who has ever visited, say, Cleator Moor will know. This problem is cunningly overcome by making competitors wear a horses harness so they can be easily distinguished from those who are mere onlookers. Not much of a sport though - and certainly no competition for Cowps' goal at Wembley. Cumberland wrestling consists of buying a pair of combinations (vest and long johns combined), taking them home and embroidering them, then turning up at various sports days in the area and trying to out bear hug your opponent. This sport was totally discredited recently when a female competitor, in an otherwise all male sport, was banned - because she was beating the boys! No doubt her embroidery wasn't up to scratch, either. Fell running is fairly admirable - I couldn't do it. However, due to the nature of this sport it is more a case of a personal achievement than a spectator sport. Anyway, with the advent of mountain bikes, why run at all! Or even easier, go the long way round by car - quicker and more comfortable. This leaves us with keeping ferrets in your trousers. This consists of wearing a pair of baggy trousers, lowering several ferrets into the crotch area and then keeping very very still for as long as possible. I have the ultimate admiration for this sport. Its champion should most definitely have been Cumbrian Sports Personality of the Year. I have even written a letter to the International Olympic Committee, suggesting that it should be included in the next games. Issue 012 - September 1992
• on FOOTBALL MOVIES I was interested to see that the Boxing Day afternoon film on BBC1 was the football picture 'Escape To Victory', starring Sylvester Stallone and Bobby Moore. Little wonder that Boxing Day football matches broke attendance records nationwide! This film is pure garbage. But seriously, it's amazing that despite being our national sport there are so few films made about football. Compare this with America where there seems to be a new baseball film every month. We did have 'The Arsenal Stadium Mystery', made in the thirties, in which a player is murdered when Arsenal play amateur side Pegasus, but I can't think of any others. But fortunately, the video has changed all this and the 1990 FA Trophy Final is a classic featuring great football action, crowd scenes at the end worthy of Cecil B de Mille, and yes, like 'Escape To Victory', a guest appearance by Bobby Moore! • FOOTBALL MOVIES - the Online Ed chips in with his twopence worth Since the anonymous one wrote this, more films about football have been made. But one he missed is 'Yesterday's Hero' - a real millstone in the history of British cinema. In comparison 'Escape To Victory' is a masterpiece of realism. The 'hero' is Ian McShane (Lovejoy) as a George Best character who is struggling to shake off alcoholism and make a comeback. Not unpredictably, he does so, by scoring the winning goal in the cup final for a team identified only as 'the Saints' against (wait for it...) Leicester Forest. Most of the action, though, is centred around sex, discos and boutiques, which will come as no surprise when you learn that the whole sorry mess was scripted by none other than Jackie Collins, a woman whose command of the English language is surpassed only by the average... erm, excuse me while I go and look up the number of a good libel lawyer! Issue 015 - March 1993
• on LANCASTRIAN PRIDE The worst aspects about following Barrow away from home are not the long journeys, the almost inevitable defeats, or even the extremes of weather we have to endure. No, what gets my gall is being referred to in the programme and over the tannoy as a Cumbrian. Let's get one thing straight - anyone born in Barrow before April 1975 is most definitely a Lancastrian. Cumbria is the invention of some Whitehall clerk who drew a line on a map to include Barrow in Cumbria, when geographically, historically and culturally Barrow was, is and always will be a part of Lancashire. Being forced to link up with the simple-minded dullards from Cumberland was a complete insult. By the way, the Post Office doesn't recognise Cumbria. Barrow's postcode is LA14 - that's Lancaster - and if you address your letters to 'Barrow-in-Furness, Lancashire' they get here just the same. The best way to deal with anyone who calls you a Cumbrian is to pour a pint of beer over them; this usually gets the message over quite effectively. Issue 008 - November 1991
• on the ULVERSTON BY-PASS Supporting Barrow around the country over the past few seasons I can say with some certainty that the worst road in the country must be the A590. Even Merthyr Tydfil has a dual carriageway to its doorstep. What is annoying about the A590 is the piecemeal way that the improvements have been made. Instead of improving the whole road we just get tinkering here and there. The Lindale by-pass... great, but then going towards Barrow, a roller coaster ride down to Newby Bridge, no doubt behind six caravans and a couple of Brady lorries. We got the Dalton by-pass after about thirty years or more of talking about it. So now let's talk about an Ulverston by-pass. When will this materialise? The only answer is a dual carriageway from the M6 all the way to Holker St. Not only will this cut journey times to away matches, but it will be safer and visitors and industry may start to take Barrow as a town a little bit more seriously. Issue 016 - April 1993
• on the WORLD CUP in WINTER Are FIFA unaware that football is a winter sport? Football was invented in England and is meant to be played between September and April in a variety of conditions. As inventors of the game we were quick to realise that a sport that involves a lot of running around is best played in cool or even cold conditions. Indeed, as long as the pitch is playable, football can be played in almost any conditions - wind, rain, sub-zero temperatures and even snow. So why on earth do FIFA insist on playing the World Cup in semi-tropical conditions in June and July in such heat that players are unable to run and move as they should. This just goes to undermine the whole philosophy of the game. And in the USA this year the situation was made worse by mid-day and early afternoon kick-offs in such places as Orlando, Florida. Here tourists are warned to wear protective headgear or even just to stay indoors out of the midday sun. But most World Cups are played in inhospitable conditions. Italy (1990) in the middle of summer is savagely hot, Mexico (1970 & 1986) is semi-tropical and Spain (1982)... well, it's well known that people flock there from all over Europe just to be in the sun. It's no coincidence that the last time the World Cup was played in a cooler climate it was won by England. That was of course, in England in 1966. The next tournament though will again be another scorcher... France in 1998. The average temperature in Marseilles in July, for example is 25°C. The solution is obvious. The World Cup must be played in the middle of Winter. Let's start the ball rolling by declaring this Boxing Day's Barrow v. Morecambe fixture as the unofficial Winter World Cup Final. I hope it snows. Issue 020 - August 1994
• on YORKSHIREMEN As a rule I have little time for Yorkshiremen. I generally find them insular, parochial and ignorant. Whereas Lancashire has looked out towards the world and welcomed peoples, ideas and cultures through the port of Liverpool; Yorkshire, sandwiched between the Pennines and the North Sea has looked out towards Scandinavia. Indeed a thousand years ago Northumbria, as Yorkshire then was, was reluctant to join the rest of England and the Archbishop of York appointed a Viking with the unlikely name of Eric Bloodaxe as their king. And while Lancashire Cricket Club have welcomed foreign cricketers and have been well served by the likes of Farouk Engineer, Clive Lloyd, and more recently, Wasim Akram, Yorkshire CC, despite a massive immigrant population waited until last year before they appointed an overseas player. Another example of their misguided self righteousness as personified by the Harry Enfield character, the Yorkshireman who 'likes what he says and says what he bloody well likes!' Despite this, I've always had a sneaking admiration for those little Yorkshire mining teams such as Frickley and Emley. These sides reflect their social environment - hard, dour, unsophisticated... but very competitive. When the latest round of pit closures was announced towards the end of last year I was dismayed to see Frickley on the list. But I particularly admired their reaction to this death blow to their community when a group of miners made the 250 mile round trip from Yorkshire to Michael Heseltine's home in Oxfordshire and dumped a ton of coal in his driveway with the message... 'COAL NOT DOLE. FRICKLEY N.U.M. UP YOURS!' Not only that, but Frickley briefly went top of the HFS Loans League. Good luck to them. Issue 015 - March 1993
• and finally, on VICKERS TOILETS I have it on good authority that Give 'Em Beans! is well read in Vickers with issues passed round widely and generally read in the bog on a Monday morning. Well, if you're looking at this in a Vickers cubicle(!?)... enjoy your crap! Issue 011 - April 1992