• Please Gamble Responsibly
    Since when did I need to take a bet to enjoy the beautiful game? Yet it’s everywhere I look. Betting company logos splashed across players’ chests, scrolling endlessly on the hoardings pitch-side, occupying whole pages of match day programmes and constantly popping-up on live stream TV. Please Gamble Do I need some has-been actor, coach, […]
  • Live Streaming Away
    It’s not easy being a live streamer, not easy at all, when hapless camera crews seem incapable of following the ball or wiping rain drops from the lens while we can see nothing at all or zoom so far from the action we could be up a mountain in Nepal. It’s not easy being a […]
  • He’s got a Pineapple on his Head
    In the Forties and Fifties footballers looked like the thousands who watched from the terraces. Short back and sides; and Billy had a quiff. In the Sixties and Seventies styles changed, players set trends and the crowd followed, to the barbers for the latest trim; and something for the weekend. Georgie had a Beatle cut, […]
  • A Tasty Fixture
    The seagulls circling over Plainmoor are not bothered about the final score, don’t care we’re not in the Premiership, they’ve got their eye on a tasty chip. Three whistles signals the end of the match to fans but to gulls it means an easy catch. Like dive bombers they scream out of the sky to […]
  • #ComeOnYouYellows
    Standing at my sister’s bedroom window I used to watch half the match. Not a forty-five minute half, but half the pitch; the Warbro Road end. The old pop-side-terrace shed blocked my view of the rest. Now I see the match through a screen, sitting on my settee. That shed is long gone but with […]