James Hamilton on Sport History and Psychology
This is really a placeholder from which you are to go to Rob Marrs’ post on the failures of Scottish football and their potential futures. But I have four thoughts to add. You won’t get Simon Clifford, as he has other fish to fry, but putting someone with that degree of genuine vision and that…
Burnley 2009’s 0-3 defeat at Stamford Bridge this afternoon doesn’t quite have that bubble-bursting feel to it; it’s not their first defeat of the season, after all, and a three-goal reverse to a side who are inarguably one of Europe’s best – and who have played together at the top level for half a decade…
I’m promoting the headscratching Scotsmen. Gavin Hamilton looked good for a while, but otherwise Australia treated the Scottish innings as a gentle cleaning-up operation. I didn’t hang around: Montezuma’s. But everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. It left me thinking that this is very much how cricket has been at the Grange this last century and…
It’s a strange sensation, this walking down my little village High Street at lunchtime, to find it full of smiling faces because the local side has just skittled the Aussies. I’ve never seen Franco’s so full. Or heard San Marco so loud.. It wouldn’t have been fair to crop that picture as it begs to…
(UPDATE: Thanks Matt – taking earnings into account, the price of that 1920 pint would have come to c. £4.21. See the comments for more details. I’ll have a half…) Nick Booth at Peter Watts’ Big Smoke Blog comes up with a piece of pure genius: Could a crap football team be transformed into winners,…
<UPDATE>: Thanks to Matthew I’ve now access to all of Burnley’s 1920-21 results via this remarkable website – for which much gratitude. It was a 2-0 defeat away to Bradford City. In general, league tables don’t make a great deal of sense until 3 games have been played, but here we are putting a modern…
(UPDATE: As FA Cup Final Freddy says in the comments: FAIL – it’s Sheffield United, not Sheffield Wednesday. I’ll get me coat..) They shut Pathe News out of the Wembley Final in ’36 – so the journos hired a gyrocopter, made their wills and took off… It wasn’t altogether worth their while: Alex James scored…
Whatever else might be said about “Will Rubbish” remember this: he created a superb group blog that had Terry Glavin and George Szirtes on board, real luminaries of whom you have heard, to say nothing of a substantial chunk of the real left-wing blogging talent. Peter, Shuggy, Eric, Hak, Spirit, Bagrec.. If things went downhill…
For some of us, the name “Robbie Blake” still means Bradford City, and Bradford, remember, beat 1920 Burnley in their opening game. His goal, and the class and courage on display from Clarke Carlisle and Brian Jensen in particular, have made it all the more important that the 1920 team assert themselves. But the great…
Correct me if I’m wrong, but Burnley have the honour of being the last side from Division Two to lift the Charity Shield. The annual game was having dog days at the time, as the accompanying extract shows, but the result ties in with Burnley’s other distinction of being the only club to win every…