Grovesred

I'm disappointed, but not overly surprised, that The Sun's lies still seem to form the basis of some people's view of what happened at Hillsborough.

Part of South Yorkshire Police's summary of the Taylor Report:

Lord Justice Taylor's Interim Report was published on 4 August 1989. It analysed the causes of the disaster and apportioned blame. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club, their engineers and Sheffield City Council were each criticised for safety issues but Lord Justice Taylor focused blame upon some senior officers of the South Yorkshire Police.

The Football Association's choice of ground was "ill considered". Sheffield City Council was inefficient and dilatory in not revising the ground's Safety Certificate after changes were made to the layout in the previous three years. Sheffield Wednesday Football Club were criticised for poor signposting outside the turnstiles which led to confusion. They were criticised for poor signposting on the concourse which encouraged underfilling of the wing areas and overfilling of areas 3 and 4. The presence, outside the ground, of an unruly minority of fans, who had drunk too much, aggravated the situation outside Gate C.

Lord Justice Taylor's Interim report said that the principal cause of the disaster was the failure of police control. He described the failure to cut off access to pens 3 and 4 as a blunder of the first order. He said that the officer in charge, Chief Superintendent David Duckenfield, "froze".

Lord Justice Taylor described Chief Superintendent Duckenfield's words [the allegation that fans forced the gate] to Graham Kelly as "a disgraceful lie".

McBreen will, I think, be an excellent signing.

He only scored a couple for City during his loan spell (one can be seen at http://www.ycfc.net/match-highlights/home-to-stafford-rangers.htm from about 3 mins 25 secs into the clip; he's No 27) but he made a huge difference to the young & inexperienced players around him; Onome Sodje, especially, flourished with McBreen playing alongside him.

With regards to S****horpe, trips there in the 1970s were always made with the amusing ditty, "If Ty-phoo puts the T in Britain, who put the c*nt in S****horpe?" ringing in our ears.

When a similar death occurred at York a few years ago, our opponents that day (Lincoln City) were allowed to postpone their next game, simply because their players were deeply affected by the tragedy.

Similarly, when a visiting player died at Harrogate Town last season, Harrogate were allowed to postpone the next couple of games.

Maybe Dundee United were late with the request, but given that games involving clubs not directly affected have been postponed, it does seem a wee bit insensitive on the part of the powers-that-be.

RIP

It's interesting information to have.

I think the publication of attendances must be a football rule rather than a legal requirement, as I'm not aware of any other sport that publishes the information on such a regular basis.

York City have published a home/away breakdown for many years, and announce the size of the away following at the same time as the overall crowd is announced during the second half: "Today's attendance is 3,042, which includes a total of 69 away supporters"

We have a tradition of applauding the away supporters at this point, which most find somewhat bemusing. On one occasion it nearly caused a brawl in the boardroom, when the chairman of Leigh RMI thought the applause for his team's 15 fans was a piss-take, when actually it was a show of genuine respect for fans who'll follow their team anywhere, no matter how bad things get.

Difficult angle...but id agree the ref in this case got it correct......if you look at the keeper..no part of his body makes contact and it looks like the player tried to make the most of the fact that he lost the chance and was looking for a penalty.

As a part-time ref id have denied the penalty and would have had to book the attacker.......perhaps viewing it from a different angle might be different.

That's you off my Christmas card list!

I can't view it at work, but I'll have another look later taking into account what you say which is, tbh, practically identical to what the cameraman said.

Referee Webb, of Co Durham played a stinker at Bootham Crescent yesterday, and capped it by booking Martyn Woolford for alleged simulation after he was brought down by the Droylsden keeper in injury time (so it's very close to the end of this clip and, believe me, this match is best skipped over using fast forward)

The guy who shot the footage has looked at it several times in better quality than it appears on youtube and says he thinks the ref got it right, but I remain unconvinced.

Merry Christmas one & all!

"Signing players from the likes of Maidenhead United, Altrincham and Bedlington Terriers while getting rid of players with Premier League experience shows just how much disrespect he has for the SPL," said one source.

It also shows that he was unsuccessful in tempting players from the lofty heights of the top end of the Conference (well, we were then) with one York player with SFL experience allegedly and almost unbelievably turning his back on the prospect of a season in the SPL

If he turned it down, I'm sure others did too, demonstrating that insiders already realised what a shambles Gr£tna is.

It’s a matter of context.

It certainly is offensive to call someone a “faggot,†but that doesn’t mean there should be a blanket ban on its use.

The context of this (brilliant, IMO) song is that a couple are having a drunken Christmas barney; she calls him “faggotâ€, he calls her “whoreâ€. I’m fully expecting to participate in several such episodes with my nearest and dearest over the next couple of weeks, during which I’ll say inappropriate things I'll later regret.

On the other hand, if some talentless bigot produces a record which insults gay people as “faggots†and/or incites hatred and violence against them, I’d expect the BBC to think twice before playing it all, let alone bleeping out the odd word.

Censorship’s always a thorny issue. Liberals and lefties like myself might wish the BBC and other responsible broadcasters wouldn’t give airtime to bigoted filth, but asking the state to ban this or that is a dangerous route, because it rarely uses such powers in a liberal fashion.

Think yourselves lucky: you only have to confront the moral dilemma of backing an Englishman; in this part of the world we have to deal with the fact that he's from Lancashire

Brian Clough

To cheer things up up a bit (and sorry if I've already told this story on another thread, but it's one of my all-time favourites), former York manager Billy McEwan tells a great story about how Clough took him to Brighton from Blackpool.

McEwan is dragged out of the pool hall next to Bloomfield Road and told to wait in the office for an important phone call.

The phone rings and it's Brian Clough.

"McEwan?"

"Yes"

"Get your arse on the first train to Brighton, I want to sign you." Clough puts the phone down.

Billy gets his arse on the first train to Brighton, and makes his way to the Goldstone Ground.

After an hour or so, Clough calls him into his office.

"Right McEwan, what the f*ck makes you think you're good enough to play for my team?"

When I was young I thought his name was spelled Evil Kin Evil.

A work colleague of mine convinced his (somewhat gullible) girlfriend that Evel's best mate was another stunt rider called Awful Knawful.

Three players I have had the privilege of seeing play for York City, and whose deaths still make me weep:

Albert Johanneson scored in the first City game I ever saw, in October 1970, and remains one of my all-time City heroes. A fantastic talent destroyed by racism and alcoholism.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/leeds/content/articles/2005/10/12/sport_united_johanneson_inside_out_feature.shtml

Keith Walwyn is my favourite footballer. Ever. I wept buckets when his 13-year old son took his place in a past players' reunion game just under a year after his dad's death. http://archive.thisisyork.co.uk/2004/3/8/250834.html

David Longurst died on the pitch at Bootham Crescent during a League match in September 1990.

My boss's response, "does that mean we can go and nick all their oil?"

*runs for cover*

give him the burnley job...

No, he'll be returning to his roots, as front-runner for the York job; we just had to wait until he was given the boot in order to avoid the inevitable accusations of tapping-up

He could probably buy a club with his pay-off, never mind working for one.

I would love to go down to Burnley pre-season. Rather do a tour of Lancashire then the Highland league teams. Oldham (abuse Lee Hughes), Bury, Burnley, Altrincham. Could be a right laugh.

Pedant's point: Altrincham is in Cheshire.

...and Oldham & Bury are in Greater Manchester

You could try Accrington, as long as you don't mind an away end with one turnstile, staffed by night-club bouncers

Might we want the recently dismissed Billy McEwan, former York City boss, GrovesRed?

You could do a lot worse. I'm gutted that he's got the boot from City, though I couldn't say, hand on heart, that in the board's position position I wouldn't have done the same.

He has a tremendous eye for young players, seems to be an excellent coach (especially when it comes to developing youngsters), is noted as a disciplinarian, and has excellent contacts throughout the game (his referees when he applied for the York job were Alex Ferguson and Steve McLaren).

He gives body and soul to the job, and lives, eats, drinks and breathes football. One evening last summer, I was locking up after an event in the Social Club at around 11:00-11:30pm. We were about to lock the main gates but noticed a car still parked. On closer examination it turned out to be Billy's; he was still in his office phoning players and other managers. Bear in mind that whatever time he finally finished, he had an hour's drive to his home in Rotherham, and he'd be back at his deak by 8:30 the next morning.

He's not everyone's cup of tea, and some people find him a bit arrogant (he played under Cloughy, and I think he tries to manage in his style, with a pinch of Alex Ferguson thrown in for good measure) but I've always found him a likeable bloke.

Whether he'd consider upping sticks from Rotherham to move back to Scotland, I wouldn't like to say.

Edit: The silly season's in full swing down here, with uncomfirmed rumours circulating that Ron Atkinson has been seen at Bootham Crescent. I'm sure Manny Panther and Onome Sodje would be massively impressed by that particular appointment...

I feel sorry for the Ebbsfleet fans having 40,000 nobodys with no knowledge of the club or understanding of their history prancing in trying to take over. You wouldnt want it to happen to Saints so dont see why you'd invest in someone else.

Ebbsfleet's current owners don't have a huge amount of understanding or respect for their club's history having changed its name from Gravesend & Northfleet in the summer, so that it matches the name of a major shopping development being thrown up nearby.

That said, it's a good job the supporters already have a Trust in place; I have a feeling they're going to need it sooner rather than later, when this cock-eyed scheme goes belly up.

BTW it's a good job that Ebbsgrave & Purfleet's head coach Liam Daish isn't in charge of Saints; he is known for holding less-than-enlightened views on women in football, which could reflect badly on the club following the appointment of a female referee's assistant for the Dunfermline game

Hold on Grovesred, Ive just across the other side of the office so that I can read your post......!

I pasted it in from a word document, and did alter the format, honest!

It just goes to show that men don't have a clue when it comes to driving computers...

I guess that 99% of the crap referees that I’ve seen in nearly 40 years of watching professional football have been men.

In all that time, I don’t recall anyone ever arguing that the demonstrable awfulness of male officials means only women should be appointed to the referees’ list, and that the continuing preponderance of men was an example of political incorrectness gone mad.

If this woman has a bad game, by all means criticise her. If a particularly bad call cost Saints the cup, by all means heap abuse on her, but for goodness’ sake don’t abuse her for being a woman, abuse her for being crap.

And if she has a good game (or misses the blatant offside in the run-up to Saints’ injury-time winning goal ) please be prepared to give her the praise she deserves, just as you would a good male official.

Well, it might happen

I'd always thought the Olympic team was called "Great Britain and Northern Ireland", not just "Great Britain".

Quite possibly! My knowledge of the Olypics could be written on the back of a postage stamp, but in the BBC article there are numerous references to GB (or similar terms) and only one to UK, which is in the reference to the historical situation up to 1972, not in the sections about future plans. I've no idea whether that reflects the plans or is down to lazy London journalism.

My interest in international football is generally limited to supporting England's next opponents, but I feel the three FAs of the island each has its own independent traditions which should be preserved.

As for the Irish Football Association, I tend to think it should merge with the FAI, but that's probably a discussion for another day, and another thread

Interesting that Northern Ireland appears to be included as part of Great Britain.

Great Britain is the name of the island shared by Scotland, England, and Wales. If they want to include the six counties in this ludicrous scheme, they should at least be honest and call it Team UK.

But of course that would be a gift to everyone who hates the idea...

the "Team fUK off" T-shirts would sell by the lorry load

Edit: I see from the BBC article that a UK team entered each Olympiad until 1972. If that didn't threaten the individual FAs, why should it now? Or was the potential threat of forced merger the reason behind the lack of a UK team since 1972?

Plenty big enough, in my opinion.

I read a report in my paper this morning about a Home Office report that didn't make the headlines.

Apparently:

- the increase in migration has contributed an extra £6 billion to the economy

- migration is having no discernible effect on unemployment levels

- the downward pressure on wages is minimal

When it comes to pensions, we're always being told that they "can't afford" decent pensions any more because the population is ageing, meaning that fewer young people are carrying more and more old people. This would surely mean a long term decline in the population, scuppering hopes of long term economic growth.

Well, if you have a look at the migrants coming from eastern Europe, the vast majority are young and healthy, meaning they're paying plenty in tax and NI, but using little in the way of services. I might be a bit simple, but it seems to me that if tax revenues are rising to that extent, and young migrants are counter-balancing ageing Brits, there should be no pensions crisis.

Furthermore, 13% of staff in the north west of England are migrants, which again says to me that migrants aren't a drain on resources, but are actually a major contributor to service provision.

Finally if it wasn't for my NHS Polish dentist, I'd still be paying stupid amounts of money to an incompetent alcoholic* in private practice

Rant over.

*Which is to say he was a bad dentist. By all accounts he was an expert boozer.

I always thought the Royal Mail/Post Office was established to provide a service, not make a profit.

But in any case, if it needs to make savings, it could start at the top:

The Sunday Times last summer reported that Post Office MD Alan Cook would receive a bonus of £1,000,000 if he closes 2,500 post offices on schedule. So when your granny can’t pick up her pension at the village post office, cos it’s been closed, at least she can take comfort from knowing that her sacrifice has “earned†£400 for Mr Cook.

Royal Mail Chief Exec Adam Crozier last year got £370,000 bonus to eke out his paltry £615,000 salary.

Royal Mail chairman Allan Leighton’s latest pay packets seem to be a secret, but in 2004 he got £814,244 salary plus £2,200,000 bonus.

While ordinary posties are facing 40,000 job losses, cuts to their pension, a pay rise below inflation, and the public faces the loss of 2,500 post offices, these pillocks have their snouts well and truly wedged in the trough, and still have the brass neck to call other people “greedyâ€.

The postal workers have been backed into a corner by a ruthless management that's determined to tear up all previous negotiated agreements and force wages and conditions down to levels not seen in this country for decades in a bid to boost profits and with no thought for the human consequences for workers or customers.

This strike comes from postal workers' desperation, and I'm backing them to the hilt.