August
/ September 2003
News
This is the latest news
of all the players who appeared in the 1970-71
FKS Publishers Ltd
Wonderful World of Soccer Stars Album
September
Hollins
Returns
John
Hollins (Chelsea) has returned as the stand-in
manager at Stockport County following the sacking of
Carlton Palmer.
Player-manager,
Palmer had little joy as manager of the club. He resided
over a period that saw them relegated from Division One
to Division Two, and only survived relegation last
season, thanks to 4 consecutive wins in April. The club
finally finished in 14th place.
A poor
start to this season of just one win in the first eight
games led to the dismissal.
John first
joined Stockport as Carlton's assistant back in February
2003 as the club hovered around the relegation zone. A
lack of finances meant the post was not confirmed as
permanent. Though not listed as 'in post' in Sky Sports
Football Yearbook at the start of this season, the BBC
website reports he was the club's Director of Football,
when taking over the caretaker manager's role.
John will
be assisted in the role by the club's coach Kevin
Richardson.
John's
last job as manager was in 2001-2002 at Rochdale. He left
following the club after failing to agree a new contract.
See BBC SPORT Stockport Hollins set
for Stockport role
BBC SPORT Stockport Hollins to
stay at Stockport
BBC SPORT Stockport Stockport
sack Palmer
Supermac and Greavesie
Good to
hear Malcolm MacDonald and Jimmy
Greaves
on BBC Radio Five Live tonight (2 September 2003) on Sport
On Five (6pm to 10pm) essentially promoting their
respective books (more details when I know them).
Of special
interest to the 70-71 season was Jimmy commenting on the
infamous incident on New Year's Day January 1971 in the
FA Cup 3rd Round. West Ham United travelled to Blackpool
and the night before the match it looked as if the game
was going to be called off, so Jimmy went to a nightclub
with Bobby Moore, Clyde Best and Brian Dear.
Jimmy
absolutely insists that they only drank 2 pints that
night and that Clyde Best only had orange juice. Whilst
Jimmy accepts they should not have been out, he believes
that they were made scapegoats for the 4-0 defeat that
followed the next day, when the match went ahead. The
incident hit the papers and is often blamed for being the
beginning of the end for Ron Greenwood and Bobby Moore's
working relationship. Yet Jimmy felt this was largely
unfair and unjustified.
Jimmy also
played down the 1966 World Cup Final incident. Jimmy said
he was injured versus France and needed 14 stitches to
his shin. This is an area without much skin so it would
not 'knit-up' in time to be picked for the final. It was
not the cause of his alcoholism, he said, afterall he
scored 37 goals the next season for Spurs and won the FA
Cup !
One thing
Jimmy said that breaks my heart, as I agree with him so
much, is that he retired too soon.
Supermac
spoke in glowing terms of being an Arsenal payer saying
it goes into your bood. He also indicated that he never
got on with DonRevie saying that no-one outside the Leeds
United 60s70s side did ! Supermac described him as a
Jeckyl and Hyde character.
With luck,
the programme may be made available at http--www.bbc.co.uk-fivelive-listen-audioarchive.shtml
Further Commentator and Media Updates
Well the
new season has natrually brought some new Bob 70-71 stars
to the commentators page. Barry Fry (Bedford Town) is very often heard in the media, but his
expert comments on the Wycombe Wanderers v Sheffield
Wednesday match on the BBC's Radio Five Live, 1
September, 2003, is the first time this site has caught
up with him.
Later in
the same evening Harry Redknapp, who has been much quieter in
the media since becoming manager of Portsmouth, is back
again, offering comments on ITV's The Premiership On
Monday as one of a panal of four guests that also
includes, Ron Atkinson. Harry was in the awkward
positon of having to explain his first sending off in 25
years.
Harry
received his marching orders in the Portsmouth v Wolves
Premiership match (result: 0-0) 30 August 2003. It came
in the 61st minute, after he had approached the 4th
official, Lee Mason, to complain about the referee, Andy
D'Urso. The referee received Harry's criticisms for
ultimately booking five of his team's players. He
remained unrepentant during the televsion programme.
Whilst on
the subject, Harry was also one of three people featured
on the cover of the September edition of FourFourTwo.
The headline read: 'The Good... (Picture of Jermaine
Jenas of Newcastle United) The Bad... (Picture of Alan
Smith of Leeds United) And the Harry ' ! The magazine had
a 5 page feature with Harry as past of their 'One on One'
series where readers ask Harry questions. Pictures
included a small black and white of Harry in his West Ham
playing days, and another with brother-in-law Frank
Lampard (senior) in their management spell at
West Ham, whom he described as his best friend.
Finally, I
read in a TV magazine that Bryan Hamilton
(Linfield) was also on duty as an expert
summeriser for Sky's sports's channel, British Eurosport.
The Channel is one for which only a regular extra fee is
required unlike Sky Sports 1, 2 and 3, for which
extra-extra subscription money is needed, or Pay per
view, where extra-extra-extra money is screwed out of the
willing customer.
August
George Best Headlines
News Of the World continues its pursuit of George Best making him front page news two weeks in
a row on 10 and 17 August.
Following their
'Best Back on Booze ... and he gets nicked in a pub punch
up' front page exposé in July, which made George's drink
problems the centre of national dicussion once again, the
paper revealed to us 'Best Dates Blonde', and
consequently, Alex has now sold her story in- 'Alex- My
Hell with Best'.
The story centres
around George's alleged flirtation with 25 year old Paula
Shapland, whom the paper describes as 'blonde' and
'jobless', and whom George reportedly described as
'intelligent and beautiful'. According to the paper the
couple met in the Chequers pub at Walton On the Hill, on
11 July 2003, the day before he hit the headlines with
the booze/punch up stories.
George allegedly
phoned Paula all the time, and met in secret in the local
woods !
Natrually, Alex is
non to pleased and the paper reports that she and George
are barely speaking on their holiday in Malta. Then come
the front page revelations that George cut Alex's hair
and covered her in ink whilst she slept, and had two
timed her as they were trying for a baby.
According to Heat
magazine, which does a table for such things, George was
the person with more newspaper column inches than anyone
in the UK for the last week in July, and the following
week he was still at number 2.
This no doubt led
(the national UK terrestial television channel) Channel 4
to run an update on 'Football Stories: George Best's
Body', their documentary of George's life story, told
through his body. Though the only addition seemed to be
to say alcoholism is a condition that never leaves a
person no matter how desparate their circumstances. (See Telegraph Sport Same story despite Best
intentions for a review
of it's first showing)
And visitors to
this website continue to reflect the mood of the nation,
as one pithy email stated whilst this news item was being
compiled...
Hi I'm a
Man U fan and a big Best fan, despite the fact he is
being a prat with his life
(er ... allegedly, Bob.)
Frank Worthington Column
Meanwhile another
famous bad boy, Frank Worthington, has started to write his own
newspaper column in the Huddersfield Examiner called 'To Be Frank'. You can
read his latest column by clicking to the online site (at
Huddersfield Examiner) and choosing 'Sport', then
'Columnists'.
In his 14 August 2003
column he bemoans the lack of goalkeeping talent compared
to his playing days, funnily enough a subject taken up
once by David Icke (See Goalkeepers).
TIM HOWARD emerged
as the hero for Manchester United in the Community
Shield and underlined one of my biggest concerns for
England right now.
It reminded me once
again, however, that as Sven Goran Eriksson
tries to get England through to the European
Championship finals, we don't have that many really
good keepers around to choose from.Britain has a
fantastic pedigree for producing the best goalkeepers
- and it's a worry that we don't seem to be producing
them as prolifically any more.
In my day, there
were people like Gordon Banks, Peter
Shilton, Pat Jennings and Ray
Clemence, who were all world class, top
quality performers. The save by Banks from Pelé
in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico has to be one of the
greatest ever sporting moments - time just stood
still as he dived across to scoop the ball away - and
people will always remember it.
I played in the
same team as Peter Shilton at
Leicester and his training routine had to be seen to
be believedHe was totally single-minded and worked
tremendously hard on every aspect of his art. Peter
wanted to be the best and he put in the effort to get
better and better.
Quite often, two or
three of us would stay behind after training and do
half an hour or 45 minutes of shooting with him. He
wanted to work on anything that would improve his
game - a wonderful attitude to have - and he deserved
every honour which came his way.
He then talks about a
celebrity golf tournement...
I'VE been playing
golf at the Forest of Arden this week, on the
celebrity tour which raises money for various good
causes.
Paul
Fletcher... took part in this week's
tournament, which was played on a lovely course and
in a glorious part of the world just south of
Birmingham. Tony Hateley and Gordon
Lee played, too.
It was particularly
good, though, to meet up with my old mate Tony
Currie. Tony was a great player, really
fantastic, and capable of doing things you only see
players like Thierry Henry, Dennis Bergkamp or
Gianfranco Zola try these days.Tony was my roommate
with England and I've always thought his initials
said it all.TC: Top Class
We had a very good
get-together and I got to sing Elvis again - very
badly!
Kenny
Dalglish was there as well and someone said
his house and property is that big there's a Little
Chef on the driveway!
See icHuddersfield for a printable unedited
version of the whole article.
Commentators Update
I'm always keen to know
if any of Bob 70-71 Players are commentating on football,
so please let me know if local radio in your area has a
voice known to this site.
Now the new season has
started David Pleat (Peterborough United) has already been heard on ITV
2 as pundit to the Real Madrid Beckham Tour matches.Alan
Mullery
and Lou Macari (Celtic) have been spotted on Sky Sports
News Saturday coverage.
Jimmy
Armfield is still there on BBC's Radio 5 Live, and Norman
Hunter
is did his best to cover-up his latent Newcastle United
bias on the Leeds United v Newcastle United season opener
on Radio Leeds.
The Radio Solent
reports that Alan Ball currently does the pre-match
phone-in, and Dave Merrington (Burnley)
continues to do the match expert comments to Southampton
matches.
And of course Ron
Atkinson is still to be found as chief pundit to ITV,
talking of which...
See Commentators
Ron Atkinson on Patrick Kielty Almost Live
To herald the start of
the new season, Big Ron Atkinson appeared on BBC1's guest
interview show, Patrick Kielty Almost Live on 15 August
2003. The show based in Belfast in Northern Ireland had
Ron share the sofa with, Jack Osbourne.
Jack is the f****** son
of Ozzy, who as lead singer of Black Sabbath had a huge
hit with Paranoid in August 1970. The song reached number
4 of the UK singles chart and stayed in the charts for 18
weeks of the 1970-71 football season !
On the Patrick Kielty, Almost Live homepage run by BBC Northern
Ireland, they offer the following profile of Ron...
Ron was born in
Liverpool on 18th March 1939, but he grew up in the
West Midlands. "My parents lived in the
Midlands. My mother, Anne, was from Liverpool and my
dad, Fred, was from Birmingham. But mum wanted me to
be born in Liverpool, so she went up to the house of
one of my aunties to have me."
Ron's footie career began when he first joined Aston
Villa as a teenage wing-half. He was working at the
BSA cycle factory and reached Villa's reserves even
though he was only an amateur.
Ron became professional with League newcomers Oxford
Untied, where he enjoyed a long playing career (more
than 500 appearances) before leaving in 1971.
Ron's first managers job was at Kettering Town and he
stayed there for three years. The came spells at
Cambridge United and West Brom before taking over the
ropes at Manchester United.
In 1981 Ron smashed the British tranfer record to
sign £1.5million Bryan Robson. Bill Shankly,
who Ron frequenty turned to for advice, was pivotal
in the Robson transfer "Shanks was in my office
at Old Trafford and it was probably the first time I
thought the Robson transfer wasn't going to happen.
It had stalled. I said to Shanks 'Tell me what you
would do' and he said 'Son, pay whatever it takes but
get him!'
Ron is a huge Sinatra fan "Sinatra could light a
fag better than anyone else, let alone sing. The man
was a genius. I saw him at the Albert Hall in 1984
when people said he was past it. I wish I could be
that past it. He could still work a song."
Ron was fired
from Manchester United to make way for Alex
Ferguson (who it was thought could finally
bring a league title to Old Trafford). When the axe
fell Brian Clough said, "That
Ron Atkinson, what a failure! Never out of the top
four, two Wembley wins, Europe every season. Blimey,
I wish I could "fail" on such a consistent
basis!"
In 2002 Total Football magazine readers declared Ron
"the best television pundit ever".
Ron is fondly thought to be football's most
charismatic commentator. He has created his own
dictionary of football terms that has been dubbed
"'Ronglish". For example: Lollipops
(step-overs); Giving it the eyebrows (a player
indicating he's unmarked); A reducer (a tackle so
hard it reduces the effectiveness of the player).
Ron is also famous for his one- liners, which he take
a good natured ribibng about. Classic comments
include:
* 'There's nobody fitter at his age (39-year-old
Gordon Strachan), except maybe Raquel Welch.'
* 'Well, Clive, it's all about the two Ms - movement
and positioning.'
* 'Well, either side could win it, or it could be a
draw.'
* 'Woodcock would have scored but his shot was too
perfect.'
* 'I never comment on referees and I'm not going to
break the habit of a lifetime for that prat.'
Thankfully Ron was not
called upon to sing... Whilst visiting the Patrick Kielty, Almost Live homepage, you may want to play
the vidio clip of George Best talking about his Liver
operation and women !
Further August / September
2003 news can be found at ...
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