England and Australia set to collide in football clash that could offer pointers to their futures

 

Any sporting contest featuring a duel between England and Australia should always be high on the agenda for fans’ attention. But so far the friendly football, or soccer as it is called in down under circles, clash set down for the weekend seems to have elicited a low-key build-up. But it may still be worth me getting out of bed at some unearthly hour Adelaide time to see what unfolds at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. I have been slightly underwhelmed by English footballing efforts of recent times, nay spanning back a few decades now. But the Aussie-Anglo rivalry should add a touch of spice. It won’t reach the heights of an Ashes cricketing battle but the game is there to be won. The days of mocking Aussie soccer from afar and judging them on the obscure Aussie pools clubs of many a yesteryear in my childhood are long gone. This lot can play. Coach Ange Postecoglou will want to see what his lads have to offer before they embark on their next phase of the World Cup qualifiers for Russia 2018. England too, under the tutelage of Roy Hodgson, have Euro 2016 just around the corner. So there will be no time for a gentle end of season work-out for either team. Given the sporting rivalry, it is strange that the two counties’ paths have seldom crossed on the soccer stage. Indeed probably due to English footballing snobbery, the rivals didn’t meet at all until 1980 and since then there have only been six games. But the Aussies can be just as aloof — remember for many years it seemed that the rulers of Australian cricket thought they were too good to be bothered playing upstarts New Zealand in Test series. Even so, on the last two occasions it has been rather embarrassing for England. I attended the game at the Sydney Football Stadium in June 1991, as I was domiciled in that parish, when the Socceroos were still viewed as no-hopers on the international stage. So I was licking my lips at the thought of some overdue revenge to make up for the non-stop cricketing humiliations England seemed to suffer around that time. Nothing doing, I’m afraid. Our mob sneaked home 1-0 courtesy of an own goal by Ian Gray in a thoroughly unremarkable encounter. And to add to the anti-climax England fans, most of whom were expats, in those days were still tarred with the hooligan tag. As a result all the hostelries in Paddington were ordered by police to close for the evening. Over the top and a victory for the ‘no fun’ brigade. But after years of terrace mayhem, England’s fans had brought this on themselves. All in all, a sobering experience. By the time the teams met again in February 2003 the footballing landscape had changed. The Premier League had arrived and English fans had become gentrified. Also, Australia had a few promising players of their own. I was back in London by then but had forgotten to request the evening off from work when the sides clashed at West Ham’s Upton Park. Maybe it’s just as well I didn’t. I watched the telly from the sports desk of the Daily Telegraph as the Aussies dished out a major shock with a ground-breaking 3-1 win. True, England basically changed an entire line-up at half-time but the damage had been semi-inflicted by then. And the mercenary manager Sven-Goran Eriksson should have known better. Plus a team including such supposed luminaries as David Beckham, Frank Lampard, Michael Owen and Paul Scholes on paper should have been good enough to do the job. Instead goals from Tony Popovic, Harry Kewell and Brett Emerton, a Blackburn Rover at the time, meant joy for capital-dwelling backpackers. England’s sole reply came from Francis Jeffers. Remember him? He was another who passed through Ewood Park at one stage of his career. Full of potential but little end product. So this time around, who knows what will happen. Sunderland is a true football hotbed so there should be plenty of feeling. Since the club moved from the old Roker Park I have only made one visit — a 2-1 defeat for Sam Allardyce’s Rovers in August 2009. But one memory lingers… As Ivan Hickmott and myself approached the ground, we were trying to follow directions for the pre-match beer rendezvous with legendary Rovers fanatic John Pittard. We knew we were getting close and as the sun surprisingly shone down in the North-East, it seemed Mr Pittard had chosen well. Two young ladies in excellent health and clad in skimpy, revealing outfits with stockings, suspenders and high heels approached us offering free tickets for a loud downstairs venue. An enticing prospect, pre-game… Only at the last instant did Ivan realise that John’s meeting place was actually across the road in a rather less salubrious working men’s club. Ivan and I expressed our apologies to the smiling, nubile lasses and crossed the thoroughfare to meet John, Hayesey, Woody and co as agreed. I wonder what venue visiting Aussies will find on Wearside? It could be fun for them finding out…

Aston Villa and Newcastle United ready to sample life as second-class citizens

 

How the mighty have fallen… Newcastle United’s relegation from the English Premier League was confirmed when neighbours and bitter rivals Sunderland comfortably beat Everton to seal their own safety. How Big Sam Allardyce must be smiling. It means that the Magpies join another football powerhouse, Aston Villa, in sampling the cesspit of mediocrity known as the Championship. Norwich City have gone down too — the latest yo-yo team — but they don’t rank in the same pedigree. The second tier of the English soccer pyramid is seemingly awash with big name clubs who have fallen on hard times. Most of them feel they have spiralled from their rightful spot at the top table, but getting back there is easier said than done. Leeds United, Wolves, Nottingham Forest, QPR, Birmingham City and more are all clubs with recent Premier League qualifications and plentiful supporter bases who can trot out hard luck stories about their falls from grace. Alas, in this Division where everyone seems capable of beating everybody else an escape route back to the moneyed echelons of the elite is like trying to free yourself from a spider’s web. Now Newcastle and Villa are going to share this potentially galling experience of being second-class citizens. I have a special link with both clubs in that I have spent past years domiciled in their respective cities so I know how their fans will be feeling. In my student days, if I was not heading to Spaghetti Junction to thumb north or south via the M6 to watch Blackburn Rovers, I would take a neutral’s stance at one of the West Midlands grounds. In those days, the steep imposing standing terrace of the Holte End made for a good vantage point. No wonder the fans used to sing “Holte Enders in the sky.” It’s long since been all-seated but the ground still has a stately feel. Villa, along with Rovers and Everton, are the only three teams to have been founder members of the Football League in 1888 and the Premier League in 1992 so they are steeped in history. Next season may be a testing experience for them, especially as they have known their fate for several weeks. Newcastle too have been in the mire for a while and even the recent arrival of Rafa Benitez as manager could not save them. Now it will be a case of will he stay or will he go? It will be hard to take for my Geordie mates Ged Clarke, Simon Malia and Mick Ramsey. Ensconced in Jesmond in the early-Eighties, I covered the Toon’s fortunes for the Shields Gazette newspaper. So I know all about their passionate fans. Alas, Newcastle United is a never-ending soap opera. It seems the club just can’t do itself justice in terms of honours. Ged put out his brilliant book Newcastle United: Fifty Years of Hurt in 2006 to mark a half-century, not including promotions, without any major domestic honours. Now, make that 60 years. Since the FA Cup success of 1955, the silverware cupboard has been bare. Newcastle still had a tradition of links to the FA Cup when I arrived on Tyneside in late 1980. It didn’t take long for me to appreciate that. The Toon were in the second tier at the time and St James’s Park was ramshackle and run down with an open terraced Gallowgate End and the Leazes End that had been demolished but only partially restored. Nevertheless, a win over Sheffield Wednesday in the third round of the Cup led to joke lists being pinned up in the old Haymarket Hotel for coach trips to the final at Wembley. You can guess what happened next — Newcastle were bundled out 4-0 in a fourth round replay by Fourth Division Exeter City. When you think of some of the other less well credentialed clubs who have won titles and cups, it’s almost as if Newcastle are cursed. Yet, along with Villa, if these two giant clubs can’t make an instant surge towards the top from August, they will have plenty of time to stew about their situation. Rovers’ fans have been doing that for the past four lamentable instalments after our relegation, which was equally soul-destroying. The 2015-16 season mercifully came to an end for Rovers last weekend. And they signed off another miserable campaign with a typically inconsistent finishing statement. The totally insignificant 3-1 win at home to Reading also saw boss Paul Lambert walk out the door for the final occasion. Who strolls in next, who knows? It was only last November when he arrived in the latest upheaval by Venkys, the hapless, hopeless Indian owners. But for whatever reason, he has chosen to operate a get-out clause in his contract a mere few months after joining up. He hasn’t fully stated his reason but I’m not looking much further than the crackpot owners. Since the loathsome Indian chicken pluckers slithered onto the Ewood threshold they have presided over a continued decline that shows no signs of abating. They came, they saw, they sodded off back to India to implement a series of barmpot decisions from faraway that have put the club’s very existence in doubt. This deluded family seem to know as much about running a football club as I do about the chicken fast food industry. The debts have piled up, decent players have left and lately the team has featured a cast of loanees and free transfer rejects. Whoever the new manager is, he will have to work under Venky’s befuddled constraints. There seems not a hope in hell that we will be able to mount a promotion surge next season. In fact, we are more likely to emulate near neighbours Bolton Wanderers in a plummet towards the trapdoor, or even worse the coastal Lancastrians Blackpool, who seem to be locked on a crash course for oblivion. Any journalist wishing to interview the out-of-sync Venky matriarch Memsab Anuradha Desai would have an easy option for questions. You would only need to ask one — an open-ended why? Why would you to take a well-run, stable Premier League club and turn it into a Championship basket case? Lots of us want to know. With this non-communicative ice queen in charge, following Rovers is about as much fun as an enduring a never-ending winter in Narnia. To make things worse over the northern summer, Burnley, our Claret chums from Hillbilly Central, have wormed their way back into the Premier League. Things look so glum at Ewood that the supporters only have pre-Venky memories to hang on to. In a curious Geordie link it’s almost like the theme song to the classic English TV sitcom, Whatever Happened to the Likely Lads — “the only thing to look forward to is the past.” One thing seems certain. As Villa and Newcastle try to muscle their way to the summit of the Championship ladder next season, there is precious little chance of Rovers being anywhere near.

 

Leicester City have sealed a miracle title win ‑ now let’s see what happens next

Congratulations, Leicester City on achieving an improbable, highly unlikely even far-fetched coup of clinching the English Premier League title. The unsung, unheralded club from the East Midlands have somehow sneaked away with the honour while the moneyed monoliths of Chelsea, Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal  and Manchester City have had to miss out. Leicester should enjoy the moment, bask in their triumph and take it all in. Because the hard work starts now. The most unexpected of successes is probably even more astounding than when Blackburn Rovers saw off all the supposed ‘big boys’ to grab the Premiership title way back in 1995. It seems such a long time ago, but little ol’ Leicester could learn a lot from what happened when Kenny Dalglish’s team claimed English football’s greatest prize, despite a final day defeat at Liverpool. Or rather Leicester can look at the aftermath. It was such a shock to the system in 95 that Rovers were already on the slippery slope to being also-rans almost as soon as the victory lap of honour had been taken around Anfield. We just were not used to success. For the likes of Liverpool and Manchester United, this sort of thing happened all the time. As soon as such clubs won one trophy, they picked themselves up ready to do the same thing again. Success begets success it would seem. But Rovers somehow lost their way by not planning ahead, still wrapped up in the dizzying euphoria of what such a small-town club had achieved as the 1995-96 season kicked off. Don’t get me wrong ‑ the summer of 1995 to be walking round Blackburn on a sunny day had the same sort of feelgood vibe as it must have been to stroll through the streets of San Francisco in the hazy, crazy summer of love in 1967.’Cept in Blackburn at that time you did not need drugs — you just got high on the fact that we were league champions. So we got ready to do it all again  — or so we thought. But this time everybody was waiting for us. Every club wanted to beat the top dogs – us. In little over a week into the season two away defeats at Sheffield Wednesday and Bolton Wanderers came as a shuddering jolt to the champions. When arch-rivals of the time Manchester United (told you it was ages ago) walked away from Ewood Park with all three points in the next game, it was three defeats out of four and the title had been virtually surrendered. I don’t wanna be a party-pooper amid Leicester’s fun-filled jamboree but they should beware of what is around the corner. They should be planning ahead, making signings while they are at the top of the tree. Rovers had the chance to do likewise in 95 but missed the boat. As one piece in The Sun newspaper said at the time, Rovers made noises about signing Zinedane Zidane and Christophe Dugarry but settled for Matty Holmes and Graham Fenton. Dalglish had moved upstairs to become Director of Football and with Ray Harford in the managerial hot seat, it seemed to be a case of “If it aint broke don’t fix it”. Hindsight is a wonderful thing. It could all have been so different, even if in the end 1995-96 was a decent season with some real highlights including a 7-0 home and 5-1 away double over Nottingham Forest. And the god-like figure of Alan Shearer ended up with five hat-tricks before he upped sticks for his hometown club Newcastle United. So as Leicester City’s party moves into full swing, the fans will be in dreamland. And so they deserve to be. But just don’t dream for too long. For now, the rest of the footballing world will be looking on agog at the Foxes’ stunning achievement. It has imparted some much-needed romance into a pecking order which, for all the hype and television mega-cash, had become so predictable and elitist. Leicester somehow gatecrashed the cosy status quo. Again, well done. What happens next will be just as fascinating.