James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
The England team have an excellent disciplinary record. Only ten players have seen red since 1966 – eleven red cards altogether, as David Beckham now has two in his trophy cabinet to put alongside his 107 caps. It’s a tiny sample, so these are only “fun” stats. Of eleven red cards, seven have gone to…
There are so many bad decisions in the first two minutes of this clip that I really don’t know where to begin: [youtube=http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=4xH2ueGntDM] I’d started school the previous January. My grandmother and her sisters had attended Clapham Road Lower School too, seventy years before. It had been brand new then; by the time I was…
He wasn’t first choice: that was Jimmy Adamson of Burnley. And when the job offer did come, he didn’t agree straightaway. Alf Ramsey had enough about him to negotiate, and, courtesy of those elocution lessons he always denied, the voice to do it with. In 1962, these words were not blindingly obvious: I think an…
In May 1957, England came up against the Republic of Ireland at Wembley and won 5-1. Within two years, one in four of the players on show would be dead. Tommy Taylor, Roger Byrne, Liam Whelan died in the Munich crash of February 1958 and Duncan Edwards succumbed to his injuries shortly afterwards. But it…
There was a period in the early 1980s when the great clubs of England’s industrial cities gave way to smaller clubs from quieter places. Southampton, Ipswich, Norwich, Watford and Luton all had their great days between Clough’s first European Cup and the end of the Falklands Conflict. To this south-eastern boy, they were home teams,…
There was a period in the early 1980s when the great clubs of England’s industrial cities gave way to smaller clubs from quieter places. Southampton, Ipswich, Norwich, Watford and Luton all had their great days between Clough’s first European Cup and the end of the Falklands Conflict. To this south-eastern boy, they were home teams,…
TV’s football coverage, even on terrestrial television, has never been so thorough. Match of the Day thirty years ago didn’t show every game as it does now, nor were there the extraordinary FA Cup coverage marathons that we now get. But older readers will have lived through, and lived beyond, the time when TV was…
There was a period in the early 1980s when the great clubs of England’s industrial cities gave way to smaller clubs from quieter places. Southampton, Ipswich, Norwich, Watford and Luton all had their great days between Clough’s first European Cup and the end of the Falklands Conflict. To this south-eastern boy, they were home teams,…
There was a period in the early 1980s when the great clubs of England’s industrial cities gave way to smaller clubs from quieter places. Southampton, Ipswich, Norwich, Watford and Luton all had their great days between Clough’s first European Cup and the end of the Falklands Conflict. To this south-eastern boy, they were home teams,…
I never thought I’d read anything like this ever again. But it was in today’s Times. So touched was I – so deeply moved – by the decision of the England team to return to India after the terrorist attacks, that I willed them to win. When England’s young opening batsman Alastair Cook read out…