Month: May 2007

It goes like this: I was a roadie for a fat lad called Humpty who had a NWOBHM type band at the time. They were quite good if your idea of music is the sound of amplified buzz saws and a shouting bear. He was booked to play a heavy metal pub gig. We unloaded…

Given that it is the 1930s, and that we are in a faraway country containing people of whom we know nothing, it would be easy to jump to conclusions about this photo: And are those mounted policemen, or troops? Still, at least the crowd is putting a brave face on whatever’s going on: Indeed, there…

One of the trends I’ve remarked on here in the past has been the growing involvement of fans in the running of their own clubs. AFC Wimbledon and FC United, Clubs in Crisis… MyFootballClub is an exciting new development of this kind. John Sinnott has the details. 9 of the 15 clubs being voted for…

A truly beautiful tribute to Indian hockey – and an opportunity to build on any schadenfreude that the previous film of Jesse Owens might have given you. If only pre-War football had been filmed so well. [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyRkunEfa5Y]

From a great distance, and in Spanish, but it’s the great man nonetheless: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KK8Hd1w16s] This film by the Nazi Germany tourist board is unwittingly highly sinister, but gives a hint of just what Owens found himself up against: From sinister, to profoundly upsetting. Vienna, 1938:

I think it was Patrick Crozier who coined the phrase “safety is dangerous.” This isn’t what he meant, but this film reminds me of it in an ironic sort of way nonetheless: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fTAOvgA0oo] It puts Murray Walker into some kind of perspective, doesn’t it?

Well, not, not really. Regular readers will know that I’ve been on something of a quest to find the earliest colour film of football – of sport in general, still or moving. It’s a cliche that we see the past in black and white, that colour comes as a shock where it exists. The BBC’s…

It’s being reported as a dire game. But for those of us who weren’t looking to it to “prove to Europe” something or other about the Premiership, it was both tense and compelling, spoiled only by ad breaks at insultingly-chosen moments. (We even went to ads between the end of extra time and the start…

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