Arrivederci Motson

The journalist and broadcaster Danny Baker once noted that the primary role of a football commentator is to make the exasperated television viewer shout "WE KNOW!" at the television screen during matches, to the extent that it famously used to drive his father to his distraction. Sadly, Mr Baker Senior passed away earlier this year - not quite long enough to be able to raise a toast to the retirement of John Motson, the veteran BBC commentator, who has announced his retirement from live commentary from the BBC following their failure to secure major television rights ahead of the new season. He will continue to turn up on "Match Of The Day", but it is the beginning of the end of an era for someone that has (rather too much, some might add) become an iconic figure within the modern game. For those of us that are British and are in our mid-30s, the majority of the faces and voices that we grew up with have either died or retired. The likes of Jimmy Hill, Ian St John, Barry Davies and Brian Moore will (for better or for worse) not be heard in our living rooms again, but Motson's departure from the scene is arguably the highest profile retirement from football broadcasting since Barry Davies retired in 2004.

John Motson's reputation was built in the space of one match - the FA Cup Third Round Replay between Hereford United and Newcastle United in 1972. The match had been postponed three times because of the weather, and its eventual Saturday afternoon scheduling meant that Motson was packed off to Hereford to cover what had been scheduled as a filler match between more important business from the Football League. As it turned out, however, Hereford (then of the Southern League) came from a goal behind to beat First Division Newcastle by two goals to one, and the match, complete with Motson's breathless commentary, was propelled up the food chain to be that evening's featured match. The BBC had taken drastic action to overhaul the image of its football coverage in the early 1970s, replacing Kenneth Wolstenholme with David Coleman in 1971, and Motson was the final piece in their new, revamped jigsaw, alongside Barry Davies, who had joined the corporation in 1969. Coleman would remain the BBC comentator for FA Cup finals until 1976, however, and Motson didn't cover a World Cup final for them until 1982. By then, however, Coleman had been shunted sideways wo concentrate on athletics, and Motson and Davies would go on to rule the roost for over twenty years.

Motson's reputation was built upon the near obsessive manner of his pre-match preparation. In an era in which a wealth of information was not at the fingertips of the watching audience, this was a critical part of his appeal. In recent years, however, this has become less important and, of anything, we have begun to notice his mistakes more and more, especially since the rise to prominence of the internet, which gives the viewer fingertip access to a range of information that Motson would have found bewildering when he was in his statistical prime. In terms of his actual commentary style, he has become a parody of himself in some respects. During the 2002 World Cup he became strangely obsessed with the fact that many of the matches were kicking off at very early times at home, and took to throwing in many references to breakfast into his commentaries. To say that it was a stylistic disaster would be something of an understatement. Matches were peppered with references to sausages and tea, culminating in him imploring the watching television audience to start smashing cups when David Beckham's penalty beat Argentina in England's second group match.

It's true to say that the current generation of football commentators that are coming through are much of a muchness and that a commentator with such personality will be missed, but it is difficult to arrive at any conclusion other than that John Motson had gone past his sell-by date to the point of being something of an anachronism. It says something that, in some respects, he is still the best of the lot, and the BBC have a responsibility to ensure that they do what they can in order to maintain the tradition of high quality journalism and idiosyncratic commentary styles that used to make watching the football there such a pleasure. With the likes of Jonathan Pearce now being likely to be the corporation's voice of live football, the long term prognosis isn't good, and you might just be pining for the likes of John Motson sooner than you might have expected.

Ceci N'est Pas Un Maillot Français

I woke up this morning and day had indeed turned into night. One of the small constants of the football world is that Adidas make the French national kit. Ever was it thus, and ever should it be. Indeed, such had the ties between the FFF (the French Football Association) and the German kit manufacturers that France have been wearing Adidas shirts since 1970. It was, I thought, set in stone. Well, it was until now. From 2011, France will wear shirts made by Nike, having signed a deal that will last for a minimum of seven years. The deal, perhaps unsurprisingly, involves the sort of figures that give me a nosebleed. It will be worth more than £240m over seven years - one of the biggest kit deals of all time - and this amount is more than four times the amount that the FFF currently receives. Following on from it's purchase of Umbro, it reinforces Nike's position as arguably the biggest players in a market that is continuing to expand in a year on year basis.

It is a decision that clearly makes business sense for the FFF, but my heart says that, somehow, the French national team won't be the French national team any more without the three stripes on the arms of the shirts with the tricolore cleverly worked into them. There is a case, however, for saying that Adidas have had this coming. In 1978, 1982 and 1984 they made three of the definitive international football shirts, but since then (the 1998 World Cup aside) they have been on a steady downward trajectory. All of this culminated (and there is a part of me that would like to think that it was this rather than the massive amounts of money being discussed that was the deciding factor) in this absolute travesty of a change shirt for Euro 2008. France reportedly wore red as a change shirt in 1906, so there's no great historical reason for this choice, and Adidas' relative silence on the subject is at odds with their usual rush to cite anything historical in the release of any new product, so it's probably pretty safe to assume that this design was based on some sort of focus group telling Adidas that "red will play well in the ABC1 demographic", or some such nonsense.

The fact of the matter is, though (and I like this no more than you like reading it), that Nike are making better kits than Adidas at the moment, and they have been for a few years. Consider, if you will, these two efforts. The US shirt is a simple, elegant design, which nods with deference to the history of the game in America, whilst that OM shirt looks, quite literally, as if it has been designed by a drunk - slurred, asymmetrical lines, disgraceful colours which break all of the rules on what combinations of colours should be seen together (and I'd go a step further and say that this particular shade or orange shouldn't even be seen on its own), and some sort of pattern woven into the fabric to give it the texture of a pair of curtains in an Indian restaurant from 1974. Adidas' most infuriating habit is their laziness. To this day, they have a tendency to design a template and re-jig the colours for all of their clients, no matter how big they are. Nike used to do this too, but one suspects that they have woken up to the fact that people are less likely to buy replica shirts if they suspect that they've been knocked up in five minutes. Nike have got to grips with referencing the history of the organisations that they're working with (Fulham, who went from consistently having the worst shirts in the Premier League to having amongst the best when they switched to Nike, have a kit that is based loosely on the design of their shirt from their 1974/75 season design, when they last reached the FA Cup Final).

A question that Adidas designers must often ask themselves is this: how difficult is it to get the three stripes design wrong? The answer to that question would appear to not be the one that they are looking for. Adidas have consistently got the shirt design wrong for a good number of clubs and countries, and they will continue to lose out on contracts of the size of the France one unless they stop designing football shirts with one eye seemingly on keeping costs down and one eye on teenagers will wear. The three stripes have been overtaken as the symbol of Adidas by the slurred line, severance with history and an almost sociopathic desire to ruin perfectly good designs with unnecessary baubles and trinkets.

Football Shorts 2

Gah. I was full on enthusiasm for going to a match this afternoon but, when push came to shove, an hour and a half up to Middlesex to see AFC Wimbledon play there and the same journey back was just too much for me after so many weekends away already this year was just a bit too far for me to travel. I've stencilled in their home match against the divisional whipping boys, Leyton, as a definite for next weekend, though. So, here I am, sitting on the sofa, watching Chris Kamara trying desperately to get as excited as Sky evidently feel that we should all be about Sunderland vs Wigan Athletic. Time enough, I think, to round up a few bits and pieces that having building up under my fingernails over the last week or so.

Ch-ch-ch-changes You may have noticed a new list of links on the right hand side of this page. I have decided to try and round up the very best of the independent club blogs and sites, so that you can find out what's going on anywhere at the touch of a button. If there are any independent club sites or blogs that you feel are worthy of our attention, let me know with a comment and I'll have a look at them. I've also had a clear out of the normal links section on here and have got rid of some sites that hadn't been updated in a while and added a couple which have grabbed my attention, so I'd suggest taking a gander at Dave's Football Blog (which covers every code of football), From A Left Wing, Midfield Dynamo and Soccerlens if you get a spare five minutes.

Vote For Me! (Part 136) I promised you constant reminders to vote for me in the Soccerlens football blogs poll, so here is another reminder. You can, should you be so inclined (and not have done so yet) vote for me here and here. Just close your eyes and think of how happy my little face would be. On second thoughts, don't do that.

To The Manor Reborn We touched on the subject of Ruislip Manor and the bleak outlook for their future way down at the bottom of the football pyramid here last week, and things have been moving on there apace ever since. The club, as you may remember, had reached such a state that, with their entire back-room staff having resigned, but a couple of developments there over the last few days seem to have offered them a temporary reprieve, after it looked as if their fate had finally been sealed. As this report in The Londonist confirms, the club were initially bailed out by their President, John Barnett, who had offered to fund them until the end of the season. Having been allowed to restart their fixtures, they played one match before Barnett offered the Spartan South Midland League the club's resignation. Fortunately, though, another new chairman has stepped in and taken over, and the club has confirmed that they can start their fixtures again. They're by no means out of trouble (another meeting has been arranged to discuss the thorny issue of funding), but their condition can probably be described as "stable but poorly" rather than "critical" now.

Is Adidas Having A Creative Nervous Breakdown? Take a moment, if you will, to take a moment and peruse this photograph. Quite asides from the ball being used (this is the ball that will be used at Euro 2008, and appears to be covered in the same small dimples that those footballs they used to give you to use at school were) looks like is has been exceptionally badly superimposed onto the pictures, take a look at those kits. That's a photo, believe it or not, from Wednesday night's match between France and Spain, with France in the red and Spain in yellow. We'll be rounding up all of the kits that you'll be able to see in Switzerland and Austria on here before the start of the summer (and, I have to say, there will be some absolute shockers on display), but I will say this - if these two monstrosities are anything to go by, you might be best off buying a second hand black and white television before it all starts.

And Finally... This is what Manchester United will be wearing for the match against Manchester City tomorrow in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the Munich Air Disaster. Kind of makes you wonder why they can't keep football kits that simple all the time, doesn't it?

First, As Ever, With The News

I'm only a month late on this, but the news that Adidas have released a ball for the upcoming African Cup of Nations in Ghana has only just reached me. If I was feeling particularly unkind, I'd describe it as "flamboyant", but at least you can't say that they're not radical. The flip side to this coin is that, well, it looks as if this will be exceptionally difficult for the players to even see. Not satisfied with having made the balls so light that they couldn't make them any lighter without inflating them with helium, Adidas appear to now be trying to camouflage them. Seriously - of all the colours of the spectrum, green would surely be one that you would leave off the design of a football. Still, it should make things interesting.

Why Statisticians Get It Wrong

It may surprise you to know that I am not a big fan of statistics. If you put a big table of facts and figures in front of me, my head starts to spin and a small bead of foam is likely to form in the corner of my mouth. I am greatly pleased that, in spite of the best efforts of the likes of shadowy-named companies like "Pro-Zone" and "Opta", football is still a game that can be enjoyed without having to have a reference book by one's side (for the purposes of elucidation, I should point at that, for writing this blog, I keep a copy of the complete Football League tables and Simon Inglis' still magnificent "The Football Grounds Of Great Britain" by my side - anything else is, frankly, superfluous) or an encyclopaedic amount of knowledge. I can only imagine how, say, an American getting into baseball for the first time copes with the telephone directory sized books which accompany that particular sport.

The work of statisticians is valuable for the purposes of archiving, but occasionally they wander into the realms of opinion, and suddenly all hell breaks loose. This is because the usual work of the statistician is concerned with absolutes - there is no question, for example, that Liverpool are the winners of the most League championships, for example, because, well, they have won it more times than anyone else. There is no doubt that England's record goalscorer is Bobby Charlton, because he scored 49 goals for them, and that is more than anyone else has ever managed. However, when they expand their remit beyond merely recording and start venturing into the altogether murkier world of what is the "best" and the "worst", though, the results make for strangely entertaining reading. Consider, if you will, this list, compiled by The Association Of Football Statisticians, which claims to give a definitive list of the 100 greatest ever footballers. Pele, of course, is number one, but you don't have to go too much further down it before things start getting very strange indeed. The Daily Telegraph, who reported it, were most amused by the presence of Gary Neville in it at number 86, but there else in it that makes one wonder whether the AFS spend so much time analysing their data that they don't actually bother watching the games themselves at all.

The key problem with the list is the very way in which it has been compiled. The list is, as all bad lists of this nature are, hopelessly skewed in favour of the modern era. I can only assume that the inclusion of a large number of these players has come about because of their clubs' perpetual involvement in the Champions League (it would certainly account for the likes of Neville and Jon Dahl Tomasson). No goalkeepers make the top thirty-five, Ronaldo and Romario are "better" than Diego Maradona and Franz Beckenbauer. Ali Daei, the Iranian striker who scored 109 goals for his country, is ranked higher than Thierry Henry or Dennis Bergkamp. Bobby Moore doesn't even make the list at all. I could go on. The biggest single omission on the list is that there are no players at all from before 1945. It's almost certain that statistics from the pre-war era are considerably harder to track down than more recent statistics, so why, if you're going to carry out this sort of exercise, try to claim that this is some sort of definitive list. If your list can't be definitive, then why bother at all?

Ultimately, the Association of Football Statisticians made this list public to publicise their organisation, and it has become commonplace in recent years for these lists to be deliberately controversial in order to garner more column inches in the press (and I do appreciate the irony of my saying that). However, for an organisation which exists, presumably, to chronicle the game, it strikes me as strange that they should make public a list which demonstrates their shortcomings. Football is the world's most popular game in part because it is, by its very nature, transcendental. We can't prove it with facts and figures, but we all know that George Best and Eric Cantona were greater players than the likes of Gary Neville and Kanu. It says something about the very nature of statisticians that they can go public with this list when their methodology is so ridden with holes as to be practically worthless.

A Smart Bit Of Business

Here's a very quick trivia question for you: what one thing did the England 1966 World Cup winning team, the Liverpool team that won European Cups in 1978, 1981 and 1984, the Brazil team that won the World Cup in 1994 and the Manchester United team that won the 1999 European Cup all have in common? Give up? They all wore kits manufactured by Umbro, the Manchester-based football kit and sportswear manufacturers. There are barely any English or Scottish teams of note that haven't worn an Umbro kit at some point or another, and the company's success han't been limited to the UK - Flamengo, Lazio, Club Bolivar, Cruz Azul, Botafogo, C.A.Independiente, Finn Harps, Deportivo La Coruña, Olympique Lyonnais, La Universidad de Chile, Colo-Colo, Santos, Vasco da Gama, Atlético Nacional, Internazionale, Ajax, Celta Vigo, FC Twente, Málaga, CSKA Moscow, Hajduk Split, Dynamo Moscow, Torpedo Moscow, and Wisła Kraków (amongst others) have all worn the famous diamond at some point in the past.

I mention this now because (and this seems to have slipped under the radar of most blogs and web sites) a take-over of Umbro was agreed last week by Nike, the American giants. From a business perspective, it is a decision that would appear to make sense for both parties. Umbro, one rather suspects, have been punching above their weight for some time, and their fortunes have been on the wane over the last decade or so, as Adidas and Nike themselves have marketed themselves more aggressively across the football world. They lost United to Nike, Spurs to Pony (who made a spectacularly bad job of replacing them) and many more besides. They have, however, managed to hold onto the England contract, which is one of the most lucrative in world football. Meanwhile, Nike (who made their UK football kit debut in 1984, at Sunderland, of all places) have made inroads into the UK market (Arsenal and Manchester United both wear the Nike logo today, as well as producing the official Premier League match ball), but haven't got the sort of market share that their wider dominance in the leisure wear might suggest that they should have. Internationally, they are more successful - Brazil, Barcelona, Juventus and Inter all wear Nike - but they are still losers on the international stage to Adidas, who have had the all-important exclusive FIFA contract for nearly forty years. However, the Premier League is the current flavour of the month in global terms - a stronger market presence in the UK gives them a spot in the global marketplace.

From a design standpoint, it might not be such a bad thing. Umbro have produced some wretched designs over the years, and many of the current crop (as sported by the likes of West Ham United, Birmingham City and Blackburn Rovers) are uninspired affairs, blighted by over-use of the Umbro logo. Compared to this, some of Nike's recent designs (such as their current Fulham shirt, which nods heavily towards the shirt worn by them in the 1975 FA Cup Final) have demonstrated a sensitivity towards tradition not usually noted in American multi-national companies. A good comparison to make between the two companies would be the current USA shirt (which is loosely based on their 1950 World Cup design) and the dog's breakfast that England almost certainly won't be wearing at next year's European Championship finals. One is tasteful and relatively understated, whilst the other is covered in smears and pointless, unnecessary stripes.

It might also make a difference on the pitch. Nike have been criticised for the amount of control that they hold over the Brazil team (those rumours concerning Ronaldo and the 1998 World Cup final just won't go away), and there is a case to be made that the kit manufacturers have a degree of control over which players go to which clubs. Ronaldinho is Ronaldinho of Barcelona, Brazil and Nike. Wayne Rooney is Wayne Rooney of Manchester United, England and Nike. I've heard it said that Oliver Bierhoff went to Milan some years ago primarily because Opel Cars and Adidas (Milan's kit manufacturer) wanted a German player in the Milan team to boost the club's profile in Germany. In the modern environment, in which sponsors wield incredible power, such decisions are very possible indeed. Such things are largely conjecture, of course. No sponsor would be stupid enough to be explicit about holding such a motive behind a transfer, but to assume that this sort of thing is impossible is to misunderstand the nature of the modern game.

Burns Night

Tomorrow afternoon at 4.00, England will kick off at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow against Russia and, in case you have been living under a rock for the last few weeks or so, it has an artificial pitch. If you've been reading the mainstream press over the last few days, this pitch will be give Michael Owen third-degree burns and cause John Terry's knee to explode and cover everyone present with (so far unnamed) "fluids". Yum, indeed. The truth of the matter is, however, that most British journalists' experience of artificial turf is limited to the brief fad for ripping up the grass and replacing t with the peculair bouncy carpet which blighted the game in England during the 1980s, and the fact of the matter is that the technology involved has moved on quite a bit since then. It is, therefore, a very apt time to take a review of the history of something that was once heralded as the future of football, and might yet prove to be the "pitch of the future".

Artificial surfaces, you won't be very surprised to hear, came from the USA, and the first Astroturf pitch (that particular name is a brand name, although it has gained a more generic usage since then) was installed at the Houston Astrodome (from whence Astroturf took its name) in 1967. It was a common sense application of science in its first incarnation. The Astrodome had a roof, making it almost impossible to maintain a grass surface, and artificial grass was an ideal solution. As any groundsman will tell you, grass pitches require an awful lot of maintenance and, by the 1970s, artificial pitches were starting to spring up at outdoor stadia as well, fitted by teams that were attracted by the new fad's low maintenance costs and durability.

There was something inevitable about the spread of artificial pitches to football. Anybody that has watched a match from the middle of winter in Britain in the 1970s would be able to tell you that the vast majority of pitches lost their grass by the middle of October and became little more than mud baths. They weren't helped by the clubs themselves, who appointed groundsmen whose idea of groundskeeping seemed to be to sprinkle some grass seed every once in a while and hope for the best, whilst coping with frost by shaking salt or grit over the grass to make it defrost, and who treated waterlogged pitches by applying liberal amounts of sand to them. Wembley stadium's once-fine pitch was converted into a pretty accurate recreation of Southend beach every spring in the late 1960s, with tonnes of sand being poured onto it every March after "The Horse Of The Year Show", rendering it close to unplayable. Other clubs such as Fulham suffered from their location - the desire to have a flat, green pitch hadn't been very high on the list of priorities of those who chose Craven Cottage as the location for their stadium, and the ground's close location to the Thames gave it terrible drainage, meaning that it usually resembled the Fields Of The Somme (circa December 1915) by the end of September. Clubs simply didn't seem (as with, with the benefit of hindsight, so many other things) care. I remember one edition of "Match Of The Day" in the early 1980s when the whole show was taken up with very extended highlights of a drab match between Manchester City and Stoke City, because City had under-soil heating, and everyone else was either frozen or rained off.

The first club in Britain to take the plunge was, of course, QPR, who dug up the pitch at Loftus Road in 1981 and replaced it with a green carpet made by a company called Omniturf. Almost immediately, it was heavily criticised, and not just by what one might describe as "traditionalists". Managers and players queued up to criticise the stress that it put on potentially fragile joints like the knees and ankles, and there were numerous reports of players picking up serious burns after being hauled to the ground and/or skidding across it. Coupled with this, the football played on it was absolutely rotten. The ball's bounce was too true and too high, and high bouncing balls would more often than not pick up speed off the surface, fooling even the most experienced of defenders and goalkeepers. QPR, perhaps unsurprisingly, adapted to it very quickly (as this thrashing of Middlesbrough from 1982 demonstrates neatly), and they won promotion to the First Division in 1983. Several other clubs (from memory, Luton Town, Oldham Athletic and Preston North End) also installed them, but they were banned by the Football League in 1988.

Artificial pitches started their revival in 2003, when SPL club Dunfermline Athletic had one installed at their East End Park stadium. Dunfermline's pitch had been fitted by a company called XL, and was light years ahead of the pitches used in England during the 1980s. There were, however, still considerable complaints from other SPL clubs (most notably Dundee United, Rangers and Celtic) and, in 2005, they were banned in Scotland. Most notably (and this was quite possibly a significant factor in the decision), Dunfermline's defence seemed largely one of self-interest - they cited savings made on training and maintenance, as well as the reduction in postponed matches as being the biggest single reason why they should be allowed to keep it. This wasn't the sort of argument that was going to bring the chairmen of other SPL clubs round to their point of view.

FIFA and UEFA, who both initially banned artificial pitches just after the FA did, have started to allow matches played on recommended artificial pitches again. Borussia Monchengladbach, in Germany, have one and, most notably of all, there is now one in the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow. Considering the harsh climate in Moscow during the winter, it's understandable that they should have one. However, the decision to allow them to use an artificial pitch for the match between Russia and England is a controversial one. More notably still, all this talk of the 2008 European Cup final being played on plastic is nonsense. For one thing, UEFA are still concerned that the Luzhniki doesn't have the electronic turnstiles that would have prevented much of the chaos at last year's final in Athens, and have said that they might yet reverse the decision to play it there. For another thing, the UEFA website confirms that a grass pitch will be laid for this match.

So, do England have anything to worry about? I have myself played on both types of artificial pitch, and there is no question that the new generation of pitches are a massive improvement on the pitches of the 1980s. The blades of "grass" are longer, and the pitches have a sub-layer of sand and rubber which lessens the bounce of the ball. If you didn't think about it, you'd almost imagine that you were playing on grass. And here lies the rub - if England are beaten by the pitch tomorrow night, it won't so much be the pitch itself that does the damage as the players' psychological reaction to playing on it. Will a couple of players pause for a second before making that vital tackle? Such reticence could cost them the match. Theoretically, a better pitch (and the majority of Russian players don't have much more experience of it than England's players) should suit better footballers. In this respect, it's down to England's players to prove that they can overcome their concerns over the pitch and demonstrate that they are "better footballers". Their multi-million pound contracts would seem to indicate that, in theory, they should be. I wouldn't wish to be drawn on whether they actually are or not.

Six Of The Worst

Some of you may recall the post that I put up on here last week listing my six favourite football kits of all time. On his excellent blog Pitch Invasion, Thomas Dunmore commented that he finds it easier to recall truly awful kits than it is to remember the great ones. With this in mind, I am using this space to humbly submit to you the six most execrable outfits that spring to my mind. It's worth pointing out that the the "six worst football kits of all time" is a considerably more competitive category than the "six best football kits of all time" could ever be. At some point in the mid-to-late 1980s, a kind of collective madness overtook football clubs and sportswear designers. This coincided (somewhat unhappily for the fans) with the rise to ascendency of the football shirt as something which was vaguely acceptable to wear in public places and the growth of sponsorship to every area of a club's existence. These days, a typical club with have at least three adornments on their shirts - for example, Brighton & Hove Albion currently wear sponsorship for Coca-Cola on their arms, Skint Records on the fronts of their shirts and local cheap and cheerful Italian restaurant Donatello's on the base of their shirts and their shorts. This may seem excessive, but club kits on the continent have often come to resemble little more than mobile advertising hoardings nowadays, with ads plastered everywhere. It's only a matter of time before a star player takes the pitch with the logo for a fast food company tattooed across his face. Anyway, here's my selection.

6. York City (2002/2003): Okay. The York City home shirt of the 1970s was a pretty nifty design, in maroon with a big white "Y" across the front of them. It was bold, and had the good fortune to coincide with the most successful period in their history. By 2002, though, they were thoroughly in the doldrums, and at the point of extinction. Enter stage left racing driver John Batchelor, who was presumably behind this atrocity. Even if you can see past the hideous chequered flag arm, take a closer look at that badge - yes, that's York City Soccer Club. The Minstermen's doughty supporters managed to dislodge him and these shirts, but were still left playing at... KitKat Crescent. Lord help me.

5. Doncaster Rovers (1992-1994): If you think about it, most football kits shouldn't be difficult to design. Very few consist of more than three colours, and most clubs have at least one "classic" design, which makes older supporters allow their eyes to glaze over at its mere mention. Take a bow, then, Doncaster Rovers, whose alarming design from 1992 looks as if it might have been designed by Peter Sutcliffe after a heavy night on the mescaline. Worse still, in an era when everyone changes their shirts every season, they contrived to keep this one for two seasons.

4. Newcastle United (1990-1993): Funny company, Umbro. They're the most successful British football kit manufacturers of all time and have supplied the England team, Brazil, Manchester United, Arsenal, Everton, Spurs and Chelsea, amongst others. I don't know whether this breeds complacency, with they have been responsible for some sartorial disasters. This Newcastle United shirt marked the end of a fairly lengthy relationship. Again, you'd think that it wouldn't be too difficult to get black & white stripes, but Umbro managed it by trying to mix two different widths of stripes on the same shirts. Maybe the designer just got confused.

3. Mexico (1998 World Cup): Look, I'm all in favour in of maintaining tradition and heritage. I fear any sort of change, after all. You can, however, take these things to far, and I think it's fair to say that Mexico did this at the 1998 World Cup Finals in France. That face... is it looking at me? Is it staring at me? Is it laughing at me? Based on the Calendar Stone, this is possibly the only football kit I've ever seen that actually gives me the creeps.

2. Chesterfield (1892/1893): Now, there's a small part of me that still wishes that Chesterfield still wore this kit. I don't know the whys and wherefores of how this magnificently, umm, patriotic kit came about, but it only lasted one year before they changed it to an altogether dowdier white and black affair, before experimenting with various combinations of green & white,black & white and red and blue before settling on the blue shirts and white shorts that are now reasonably familiar.

1. Celtic Away (1991/1992): The only away shirt in this list but, my word, what a startling little number this is. I have a mental image of how this shirt came to be hatched (I was going to say "came to fruition" there, but "hatched" seems more apt, given the reptilian look of it). At some point early in 1991, the man that designed the aforementioned Newcastle shirt for Umbro was called to a sales meeting to discuss its plummeting sales. In his rush to get to a meeting at Celtic Park, he picked up the sales graph rather than his actual design and rushed off, handing it in by mistake instead. The Celtic board, amid many red faces, agreed that it was a "revolutionary" design and okayed it. Seriously, it's the only way that it could have happened.

If In Doubt, Write A Different List

I thought I'd break the monotony of the players list with another list this evening. The Guardian's Sports Blog decided to break up what has been a rather flat sort of a week, football-wise, by listing their favourite six football kits of all time. Rather than risk the wrath of some of the goons that post on there and put it up over there, I thought I'd post mine up on here. Feel free to mock my utter lack of fashion sense.

6. Enfield - 1982 FA Trophy Final (no picture available - at least, I couldn't find one on the internet): May 1982 was a particularly good week to live in my little corner of North London. On the first Saturday, Enfield beat Altrincham 1-0 in the FA Trophy Final, and a week and a half later (on account of the replay) Spurs beat QPR in the FA Cup Final. Enfield wore a special kit for this match, made by Le Coq Sportif and a bit like the Spurs home kit of the time, only a lighter blue (Enfield wore white and royal blue rather than white and navy), and with thin horizontal pin-stripes. Most significantly, it had their badge on it. They'd clearly arrived in the big time. They only wore it for the one match, and went back to their normal kit for the start of the next season.

5. Coventry City - 1982-1984: I'm sure that this was one of Jimmy Hill's "brilliant" ideas. Incorporate the Talbot Cars logo into the shirts. This had the effect of making TV companies very funny about turning up with the cameras at Highfield Road, and they ended up having to have another kit which was used solely when they were on the television (which still had a "T" design on it, but was marginally more subtle).

4. Crystal Palace (1979-1983): Palace had two versions of this kit - the first made by Admiral and the second was made by Adidas. The white with a red and blue diagonal sash was pretty exotic at the time, I think, which kind of matched their "Team Of The 80s" hype. The kit lasted about two years longer than the nickname did.

3. Southampton Away (1982-1984): Another black and white one, I'm afraid (though there's a colour one here . I just think that the design of those Southampton shirts (home and away - the home one was, of course, red & white) was really quite stylish. Nothing too profound there.

2. Nantes (1983-1985): I spent quite a few of my childhood summers in France, and grew up thinking that French football was great. I still do, as it goes. Nantes had consistently great shirts between about 1977 and 1986, but this one was the first French football shirt that I bought, so it gets a place in my top six. I was so taken aback my those massive sponsors' logos (and I'm still not completely sure what it is what "Europe 1" actually do or did) that they might as well have had "HELLO IAN - WE'RE WATCHING YOU" printed on them.

1. Spurs (1980-1982): This has to be the high watermark of football kit design, doesn't it? It's brilliant. It also happens to be the first football kit that my parents bought me. I've still got the shirt, somewhere (it doesn't fit any more). The yellow away kit (as seen in the 1982 FA Cup Final against QPR) was pretty nifty, too.

Posts & Nets: My Magnum Opus

Of all the paraphernalia in and around a football pitch, nothing grabs my attention quite like the goals themselves. There. I said it. There is something indescribably aesthetically pleasing about goal posts and goal nets. They add completeness to a football pitch. A football stadium during the summer, when the posts have been taken down so that the pitch can be re-seeded, is a peculiarly empty place, less so even than during the winter, when you that the entire place will be transformed in a few hours or days time. If I go past a field of park pitches on a train, they only look right if the goals have nets on them (which they very seldom do).

First of all, though, a bit of history. As familiar and reassuring as the shape of a goal post looks today, it took nearly two decades for the FA to bring about any uniformity amongst its members. Prior to 1863, different local associations and clubs played by different rules and the width of the goals was down to the clubs themselves. The FA was formed and immediately unified the laws of the game, setting the width of the goals at eight yards (for, so far as the records indicate, arbitrary reasons). Rather than a crossbar, a tape was put across the tops of the goals. The FA's own rulebook, though, couldn't really be enforced and some local associations continued to tinker. One of the more influential local associations used a goal that was nine feet high and four feet wide with a crossbar, but the FA didn't permit the use of a crossbar officially until 1875, and finally made them compulsory in 1882. It was dissatisfaction with the new laws, by the way that led to the formation of the Rugby Football Union - Richmond, still a top class rugby team today, played in one of the first demonstration matches for the new Laws, but switched codes with the formation of the RFU.

The story of how nets came to be attached to these posts can be more specifically attributed. In the early days of the game, it was exceptionally difficult to gauge whether the ball had even gone into the goal or not. As crowds grew, spectators started to stand behind the goals, and it even became commonplace for shots into the goal to bounce back into play off those standing behind it. It was an engineer and referee from Liverpool by the name of J.A. Brodie that first came up with the idea. After a couple of trial matches (during one of which nets were used on one goal, presumably so as to offer up some sort of direct comparison) the FA gave their approval, but to this day the use of nets is, strictly speaking, optional (even the current edition of The Laws states that "nets may be attached" - my italics), though more all less all leagues, right down to the very bottom of the amateur game, make their use compulsory. The use of stanchions on goals came about for two primary reasons. Firstly, the kept the nets out of the way of the goalkeeper. Secondly, the posts weren't always terribly secure when left free-standing, and stanchions helped to anchor the goals.

Until the 1920s, the posts were square-shaped, before clubs started using a somewhat less predictable elliptical shape (the most famous crossbar in history, though - the one that failed to give a definitive answer on Geoff Hurst's goal for England against West Germany in 1966 - were round). Most English clubs switched from using wooden goals to aluminium goals over a period of time, though the older style square posts lasted longer in Scotland (after a riot at the Scottish Cup final between Rangers and Celtic in 1909, a particularly robust set of posts were installed that would remain in place until the late 1980s, which is surely a record of some sort).

There has been more or less constant talk of making the size of goals bigger for years now, which reached a crushingly dull crescendo in the build up to the 1994 World Cup. Although I don't agree with it, there is some merit in the idea. Depending on which surveys you read, the average male in the UK is between two and three inches taller than he was a hundred years ago, so on that level it makes sense make the goals bigger. Having said that, though, there have been numerous changes to the rules over the last century to encourage more attacking football, and increasing the size of the goals merely to increase the scores in matches would, I feel, be counter-productive in that it would merely devalue the act of scoring in the first place. The match that finishes 4-4 is so precious precisely because of its rarity.

The rigging behind the goals has provided just as much controversy over the last hundred years or so. In 1909, West Bromwich Albion scored a perfectly good goal in a league match against Blackpool, only to see the ball bounce out and the referee wave play on. Albion won the match, but missed out on promotion on goal average (the precursor to goal difference) as a result. In 1970, Aston Villa were victims of the same thing and in 1979 (and arguably most famously of all) Crystal Palace had a perfectly good goal ruled out when Clive Allen's shot at Coventry hit the stanchion at the back of the goal and bounced back out again (this is the only footage of it on YouTube - try to ignore the bleatings of Skinner & Baddiel). This was a potential problem that clubs had already taken into consideration. Some clubs, such as Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City, took to hanging their nets in front of the back stanchion, whilst others switched to D-shaped stanchions to try and reduce this sort of thing from happening (things went to the other extreme when England played Hungary at the Nep Stadium in Budapest in June 1981, and Trevor Brooking's twenty yard shot got wedged in stanchion).

Nets also evolved over the years. In the early 1970s, clubs started introducing "anti-hooliganism" nets. Traditionally, goal nets have a 4" mesh, but anti-hooligan nets have a smaller mesh, which supposedly makes them more difficult to climb in the event of a pitch invasion. Over the years, clubs have tentatively experimented - Everton's nets went dark blue in the early 1980s, whilst Grimsby Town (and others - but Grimsby were the first, thanks to to the local fishing industry) had striped nets. I could swear that, on a visit to Parc Des Princes in about 1987, Paris St Germain had goal nets that lit up "GOL!" in a crazy zig-zag shaped balloon when someone scored (since I can find no reference to it anywhere, I may have dreamt this - my memory tells me that they were discontinued after they started malfunctioning and flashing up "GOL!" on any number of random occasions, but still I'm seeking some sort of confirmation on this from elsewhere, if anyone can provide any). From a practical perspective (and I spent about four years putting them up and taking them down every other week), the biggest single problem is that they weigh so much - well over twice as much as standard nets. The plus side of them is that they are considerably more hard-wearing than standard nets and are, in the long run, are more cost-effective.

The current fashion is for the "continental box" style of goal. Debuted at the 1974 World Cup in West Germany, it leaves the net completely free from impediment, supported at the back by poles that sit behind the goal. It is, whether accidental or not, a link with the past, as can be seen from this (tiny) picture from the 1927 FA Cup Final. Personally, I'm not a fan (and neither, it would appear, is South America - as this picture from the Maracana shows). This style of goal would be more tolerable were it not for the recent fashion for securing the nets with a base tube (as in the picture above), as opposed to the traditional method of pegging the nets down. This idea was born in Ipswich where, in the early 1980s, the groundsman grew tired of having to tie the nets up every time he wanted to mow the grass on the pitch. He put a base tube around the goal with a hinge at the base of each post, so that the nets could be lifted in one go. Whilst the convenience for the groundsman is obvious, it is strangely less satisfying for the spectator. The ball now hardly ever "nestles" in the corner of the goal and several times I've seen a shot powerful enough to lift the whole base of the goal off the ground. Stamford Bridge seems to be particularly bad for this sort of thing. The other latest trend (on the continent, at least) seems to be for coloured nets again. Euro 2004 saw the Portuguese use black nets on the goals and in recent years the Champions League final has seen the traditional nets taken down and replaced with black or green nets. Don't expect to see any changes too soon, either. Commercialism may be running wild in football, but FIFA rules still say that the posts have to be white, and a recent diktat from Sepp & Co confirmed that sponsors logos are not allowed to be sewn into the design of the nets.

So there we are. The act of seeing a goal may be less satisfying than it used to be, but the game's authorities have resisted the temptation to tinker too much with the 8 yard x 8 foot goal that has served the game perfectly well for well over a hundred years. And I will continue to get a little tingle in run down my spine when I see a pitch fully marked out, with nets hanging from the goals. I should probably seek some sort of help.

London Fashion Week

As one or two of you may have noticed from the comments section for the post below this one, there's going to be a definitive history of goal nets on here in the next few days or so. I will be working on this tonight (and if anyone has any titbits if information that they'd like to share with me, then email me!), so I've got to keep tonight's post on here relatively brief. I'm not, for once, going to delve into the past but bring you right up to date by nudging you in the direction of a handy little page for geeks like us.

The venerable Historical Kits website (the undisputed UK champions of cataloguing football kits down the years) has produced a handy guide to the kits that the teams of the Premier League, the Football League, the SPL and the Scottish Football League will be wearing next season. You can see the English page here and the Scottish page here. It goes without saying that none of these kits would have made the grade in 1982 (the high point of football kit fashion), but there's a mixed bag this season, with some teams going gratifyingly minimalist and others going, well, just plain horrible. Let's have a quick look at what we've got to look forward to.

The Premier League: Well, at least most of them have decided what they're wearing next season, which is a start. Special praise should go to Spurs (who are celebrating their 125th anniversary with a home kit apparently based on the 1961 double winning team - try to ignore their sky blue and white halved "anniversary" third kit), Manchester City (pleasingly bonkers - shadow stripes, pinstripes and a Le Coq Sportif logo on the shoulder) and Fulham, who have regressed right the way back to the 1975 FA Cup Final with a completely plain white shirt. On the down side, Newcastle United have proved yet again that it is possible to mess up something as simple as black and white stripes, Birmingham City, Everton, Sunderland, Wigan and West Ham have all succumbed to absolute monstrosities from Umbro, who have gone from being Britain's best kit manufacturers in about fifteen years to being, well, you work out the rest. Derby County and Middlesbrough are still too shy to show us what they'll be wearing next year. Amateurs.

The Championship: The entire Football League is a graveyard of fashion this year, but there are some in each division that have contrived to be even worse than the rest. Crystal Palace, for example, have decided to eschew stripes in favour of what looks like stripes in the shape of a heart, Coventry City and Bristol City have simply allowed Puma to incorporate their colours into one of their Sunday League kit template designs, and Diadora's designs for Watford and Preston North End make it look as if their players have breasts. On the up side, Burnley (winners of the award for the best kit in the entire league last season) have been admirably restrained, whilst Ipswich's pinstripes hark back to a time when they spent their time winning things like the UEFA Cup, rather than worrying about whether they could beat Colchester for the sake of local pride.

League One: Half of next year's League One clubs haven't decided what they wearing next season, and the remainder of them range from the suitably restrained to the downright awful. You can't really go wrong with blue and white quarters, and Bristol Rovers' effort looks more like a proper football kit than most. Millwall and Southend (who are still wearing the same as last season) have also gone for the "less is more" look. Meanwhile, dear oh dear... Walsall. Step forward. You are the winners of the Worst Kit Of The Season award before a quarter of the clubs have even declared. Their kit seems to be based on the pinafore of a 1950s Lyons Tea House waitress.

League Two: Could there be a better Axis Of Evil than Nike making Franchise shirts? No, I didn't think so either. Those two organisations are made for each other. Mind you, Marshall Amplifiers should know better than to be their sponsors. Bradford have gone retro (their kit is better than the picture on Historical Kits might suggest), whilst Shrewsbury's yellow and white collars are appropriately mad for a club whose badge, until this summer, had three lions with their tongues sticking out on it. Rochdale are celebrating their centenary by reverting to the black and white stripes that they wore in their first season, whilst poor old Macclesfield have a big "S" (presumably for "Silkmen" - their nickname) scrawled across the front of their shirts. Presumably this was designed by the chairman's three year-old grandson.

Scotland: In the SPL, things aren't too bad. Celtic appear to be trying to invoke the spirit of the 1967 European Cup Final, whilst Dundee United and St Mirren have both sexy Hummel kits (Dundee United's even has shadow stripes - be still, my beating heart). Rangers, meanwhile, haven't had a decent home kit in twenty-five years, so it's no surprise to see them in a by-the-numbers Umbro disaster (Hearts, to stretch a pun to breaking point, follow "suit"), and Motherwell's kit this year, whilst pretty bad, is at least made by Bukta, who I had kind of assumed didn't even exist any more. The majority of clubs in the Scottish Football League haven't declared yet, but a couple of those that have deserve a mention. I fully expect to see three page adverts for Nike featuring the heroes of Hamilton Academicals, Airdrie's red chevron is a srangely reassuring sight, and East Fife have gone for a look that mildly resembles an abstract artistic rendition of the Hiroshima bomb.

St Albans City will almost certainly not even get their new kit delivered until the middle of September (they played last weekend's pre-season mini-tournament at Kettering in their away kit from two years ago. Now, I have goal nets to read about.

Some Sort Of Record?

I've recently been watching "Danny Dyer's Real Football Factories". The series sends actor and, by all impressions, self-styled Cockney Geezah Danny Dyer across the world to meet football's most notorious hooligan firms. Over the last couple of months, we've followed him to Argentina, Brazil, Holland, Turkey, Italy, The Balkans, Russia and Poland. You may remember Dyer from the hoolie-porn flick "The Football Factory". I'd assumed that he was playing an over the top stereotype, but it turns out that he actually is an over the top stereotype himself. He has been seen wandering the streets of Moscow, Rio De Janeiro and Buenos Aires muttering things like, "dis is the furvest I've been from my manor in moi loife", and describing almost everybody that he meets as "nawty boyz".

There is a germ of an idea for a good programme going on here. Football hooliganism is a global phenomenon these days. Indeed, it's one that I'm glad to be able to say that we don't really see too much of in England these days. However, it's difficult to get past the fact that Dyer is such a massive twat, and the programme suffers as a result. It would be nice to think that we could learn a lot about the inner workings of the hooligan mind, so that the issue could be addressed in a more constructive way than the normal mixture of hand-wringing and draconian proposals that are brought forward whenever there is any trouble at a football match. We were always going to be unlikely to get this with Danny Dyer, though. He seemed to be far too pumped up on a mixture of fear and testosterone to be capable of anything approaching serious analysis. He failed singularly to address the more unsavoury aspects of their political stances (either he was too scared or tacitly agrees with them - it was difficult to tell) and, in the intense atmosphere of the Curva at the Stadio Olimpico for a Rome derby, he seemed to be close to gurgling with excitement, in spite of being amongst a large number of neo-fascist Lazio ultras.

Danny would have been delighted to have been at last Sunday's Intertoto Cup match between Vetra of Vilnius and Legia Warsaw, which had to be abandoned at half-time with Vetra leading by two goals to nil after a pitched battle between riot police and Legia fans at half-time. You can see it here, if you're particularly interested (though I'd steer clear of reading the comments, unless you're of the opinion that human evolution reached its peak about a hundred years ago and has been slowly regressing ever since). UEFA have, of course, promised an enquiry, and Legia have issued a statement saying words to the effect that, "you know, that video footage doesn't exactly show us in a very good light - we're going to have to take whatever punishment is thrown at us". There have also been worried noises coming from the press over the recent decision to host the 2012 European Championships in Poland and Ukraine. This is, of course, largely scaremongering. There are plenty of Western European journalists that are happy to stereotype Eastern Europeans as subhuman and infer that their impoverished infrastructures will never be able to cope with hosting a major football competition, but this is nonsense. The English rioted in Dublin just a year before Euro 96, but I don't really recall anything beyond a couple of column inches in the more hysterical tabloids suggesting that England was incapable of hosting a major tournament.

Anyway, well done to the lunatic fringes of Legia's support. You've almost certainly got your team thrown out of any involvement in European football for this season, at least. Not, I strongly suspect, that any of them will care that much. Might I suggest that, the next time they're going to get involved in anything like this, they invite Danny Dyer along to join in? A short spell in a Polish prison might cure him of his voyeuristic tendencies.

Be Careful What You Wish For...

Existentialism. Now, there's a topic. I don't really want to delve too deeply into the subject (not least because I try to hide my ignorance of this sort of thing on here), but a discussion that I had in the pub yesterday afternoon set me thinking. Now, any discussion of this particular philosophical strand can be a depressing matter and I certainly don't want the suicide of any number of Boston United supporters on my conscience, but have you ever stopped to think... what, really, is it all about? It's a thought that has crossed my mind more and more over the last few years or so. I'd like to think that Albert Camus, the patron saint of this little blog, might approve of this - even if he wouldn't have approved of some of my grammar or my clumsily over-long sentences.

I ask the question now because we were discussing the small matter of what it's like to get promotion after a long period of waiting. My companion was telling me about a Wolves fan that he knows. For years and years, her sole ambition had been for Wolves to get into the Premier League. Their comically ill-starred attempts to get promoted throughout the 1990s were well documented at the time and continue to be now. Then, suddenly and quite out of the blue, in 2003 Wolves were promoted through the play-offs. You'd think that it would be the greatest thing that could ever happen to her. Well, not quite.

Once in the Premier League, Wolves had a wretched time of it. There were small high points, such as their 1-0 win against Manchester United, but they were relegated with three matches to spare, and finished bottom of the table on just thirty-three points. And she had hated it. For all those years, getting into the Premier League had been the "holy grail" - simultaneously visible on the horizon at the same time as being tantalisingly out of reach but, once they managed it, our plucky heroine found herself paying more than she ever had done before for the privilege of seeing her team taking a damn good thrashing, week in, week out. I feel her pain, though the circumstances at St Albans have been somewhat different. Watching St Albans play football could be described as being akin to the old truism that "life is what happens while you're busy making other plans". After their formation in 1908, they rushed through the leagues into the Isthmian League, and won that three times in five years after joining, before settling down to an altogether more sedate pace.

The Isthmian League, for many, many years, had no promotion or relegation, so there was nowhere really to go (they could have turned professional and joined the Southern League, but I can't find anything in the club's records suggesting that this was ever even discussed). They sat in the Isthmian League for over fifty years until 1974, when the League expanded to two divisions and they were relegated. When the Isthmian League expanded again in 1983, they contrived to get themselves relegated again, following this up with promotions in 1984 and 1986, whereupon the torpor set in again - or, to put it another way, they spent just twelve years out of eighty-two not playing at that level (and all twelve were at an even lower level) before, to the massive surprise of everyone at Clarence Park, getting promoted into the Conference at the end of the 2005/06 season. That little experiment lasted precisely one season, and now they're back in the Conference South. Almost, you could argue, as God intended.

The existentialists amongst you will already have figured what I'm getting at here. What's it all about? Now, the circumstances at St Albans were slightly different to those at Wolves. Wolves had been baying for Premiership football. Critics and hacks had been saying, with very little basis, that they were a "big" club that "deserved" Premier League football. The same could hardly be said of St Albans, whose appearances near the top of any league table in living memory (second in 1955, third in 1971, second in 1993 and 2006) have been so rare that they positively trip off the tongue. In spite of the gulf of difference in expectation, though, the feeling that I get is that the Conference for me was every bit as underwhelming an experience as the Premier League was for Wolves fans. The extra media attention was quite nice, but the higher prices weren't, and the continual heavy beatings weren't either.

Why do we keep going, then? Well, I guess that some people maximise their chances of winning by supporting successful clubs. Those of us nearer the bottom of the success pile, I rather suspect, tend to emphasise the social side of things above the actual football itself. I've spent many a Saturday afternoon in football club bars rather than watching the actual match itself (my personal record came in about 2003, when a friend and I lasted fully the first seven minutes of an FA Trophy match against Crawley Town before deciding that it was too cold and that the football was too awful, and retired to the bar for the rest of the afternoon - our decision was vindicated by a 0-0 draw), and I've found that, in recent years, the long distance solitary travelling has left me in a sufficiently "lubricated" state to be completely unable now to remember any of the details of what actually happened during the match. St Albans' Conference South decider against Weymouth in April of last year? The play-off final against Histon? Their first ever Conference match at Kidderminster last August? I was at all of them, and I know the scores of all them, but I can remember next to nothing about what actually happened. It's a good job that I'm not an aggressive drunk, or I'd probably be banned from every sporting venue in England by now.

I guess that the moral of all of this is, as the title of this piece suggests, be careful what you wish for - you might just get it. There are plenty of people that will tell you that it's better to have loved and lost than never to loved at all, but some of us get by perfectly well without any of those ecstatic highs and miserable lows, and it bothers us somewhat when the natural order of things is upset. Supporters of Rochdale, who are girding themselves for their thirty-fourth consecutive in Division 4/Division 3/League 2, will know what I mean here. For those of you now worrying that you'll begin next season wondering what the point of it all this, I will offer this one suggestion - Sainsbury's sell very neat 330ml cans of gin & tonic. Four of those on your way to the match and your existential angst will mysteriously start to lift.

Get Your Kit On

Whilst there are many good things about being the supporter of a non-league football team (the cost of getting in, being able to get a pint of something drinkable at half-time, not having to worry about stupid kick-off times, not very often having to queue at the turnstiles, being able to stand up, and so on), there are a few things that irritate me about it, too. Firstly, there's not being able to see your team on the television. I noted with interest that Channel 5 have bought up the rights to show Serie A highlights next season, and I was somewhat disappointed, because football below the Conference has never been shown on the television in this country.

Quite why this is, I'm not sure. I mean, the quality can be really dreadful, but there's loads of it, and most of the clubs are so strapped for cash that they would do more or less anything for a cheque for £500. If Channel Five are happy to fork out good money for football from Italy, isn't it about time that someone like FTN or UKTV History threw their lot in with, say, the Northern Premier League? They could market it as "real, gritty football, the way it's supposed to be", and surely more people would watch it than watch the garbage that they show at the moment. It makes supporting a non-league team from a distance really difficult when you don't know who's who, who's doing what, who's playing well and who isn't.

Another minor bugbear of mine is the delay in getting the fixtures released. The Football League have theirs issued next week, but the non-league clubs probably have at least another couple of weeks to wait. I know that this is at least partly due to the fact that Conference needs a few weeks during June to randomly kick a couple of clubs out and allow those who have suddenly realised that they're in way over their heads to resign back to the county leagues, from whence they came. However, I'd like to know which social events I'm going to have to wheedle my way out of at the same time, which Saturdays at work I'm going to have to swap, and which matches I will be missing because I'm away over Christmas. It's something that I can cope with, but it remains a minor irritant.

There is one thing, however, that makes those things (and the more serious issues, such as the fact that, if my club went to the wall, no-one else bar a few hundred of us would really care that much) fade into insigificance, and that's kits. Firstly and foremostly, there's the issue of when we find out what next season's kit will look like. The bigger clubs now debut their kits for the next season on the last day of the season before, and the rest make theirs available over the following couple of weeks or so. Down here in the "Blue Chip South", though, there is silence from the manufacturers and from the club. For all I know, St Albans are lining up in the monstrosity that they spent last season wearing. I do know that next season's kit will be made, as this year's was, by Errea, and that St Albans aren't big enough a designer to make them something unique, so it's fair enough to look ahead to the new season by looking at the template shirts that Errea currently have on offer.

Now, the Axel design is what they wore last season (I could get quite fond of the away kit, which is the mirror image of what's on view there), and it's doubtful that they'll wear the same thing again next season, and some of the designs don't appear to even have a blue and yellow option (fortunately, the distinctly homo-erotic Elastic shirt appears to be one of them), so I'm at a loss to be able to predict what it will be - though if anyone from Errea does happen to see this, I'd quite like the away kit to be in the Stripes design. Pink or beige, please. Either would be good.

St Albans' colours, for those of you that didn't already know, are blue and yellow, and they've had a pretty bewildering selection of different kits over the years. You'd think that blue and yellow in itself would be pretty difficult to get wrong, but they've had a decent go at it over the last twenty-five years or so. From memory, they've had: plain yellow shadow stripes, blue with three thin white hoops and a thick yellow hoop (think France at Euro 84, only not made by Adidas), an exact copy of the 1988 Wimbledon FA Cup winning shirt, thin yellow and blue stripes (on two seperate occasions), blue with yellow sleeves, blue with a yellow chevron (about six million times worse than it sounds, that one), blue and yellow quarters, thick blue and yellow stripes (on two seperate occasions), blue and yellow halves, yellow with one blue hoop, yellow with blue flecks on the sleeves, plain yellow with blue colours, all plain yellow, and, last season, yellow with a diagonal blue stripe. You can understand my excitement at what next season may bring.

Last year, though, the new kit wasn't delivered until about three days before the start of the season, and the debate over when the new kit will be in the club shop will almost certainly continue until well into September. Such organisation, coupled with the fact that they still, so far as I'm aware, only have about ten contracted players at the moment, lead me to believe that the bookmakers' current placing of them as 7/1 second favourites might be a little bit optimistic.

Sunday Sunday Sunday

Now, there's a chance that it might not be the best idea in the world for me to be writing this whilst I'm still full of last night's tequila, but there we go. Oof. It can be tough, supporting a football team. Yesterday, Kidderminster Harriers raced into a two goal lead against Stevenage Borough in the FA Trophy final at Wembley, before Stevenage came back to win by three goals to two. The crowd at Wembley, by the way, was 53,000 for the first cup final to be played there. Impressive. Meanwhile, Derby County seized the advantage in the first of the Championship play-offs at Southampton and, at the exact time of writing, Wolves by beaten by West Bromwich Albion at Molineux in the other semi-final earlier this afternoon. This afternoon, the Premiership finally reaches its conclusion. Wigan are still more likely to go down than anyone else, but don't be surprised to see them and Sheffield United doing what they have to do should Manchester United oblige them by thrashing West Ham United at Old Trafford, as they are surely likely to do.

Today, I'm returning briefly to the subject of computer games. I spent much of yesterday afternoon playing "Football Manager", the 1982 ZX Spectrum game. Thanks to the brilliant "World Of Spectrum" website, you can play loads and loads of football games on your PC. No reviews here (I haven't got the time), but here's a list of them. Eighties-tastic.

Adidas Championship Football
Advanced Soccer Simulator
British Super League
Cup Football
European Super League
FA Cup Football
Football
Football Champions
Football Club
Football Director
Football Director 2
Footballer Of The Year
Football Manager
Football Manager 2
Football Manager 3
Gazza's Super Soccer
Graeme Souness Soccer Manager
International Football
International Match Day 128
Italia 90 - World Cup Soccer
Italy 1990
Jimmy's Soccer Manager
Kenny Dalglish Soccer Match
Kenny Dalglish Soccer Manager
Kick-Off
Kick-Off 2
League Challenge
League Football
Manchester United
Match Day
Match Day 2
Match Of The Day
Microprose Soccer
Mundial De Futbol
Peter Beardsley's International Football
Peter Shilton's Handball Maradona
Premier League
Professional Footballer
Professional Soccer
Soccer Director
Soccer Star
Star Soccer
Subbuteo
Super Cup Football
Super League
Super Soccer
World Championship Soccer
World Cup
World Cup Carnival
World Soccer League

So there we go. That should keep you all occupied for a couple of hours.