A Sticker's Worth 500 Words

Today Richard Allinson gives us a trip down memory lane through the 2006 World Cup and trials and tribulations of England’s supposed ‘Golden Generation’. Perhaps the best way to sum this particular team up is that as all those around them tied themselves in knots trying to work out how Steven Gerrard and Frank Lampard would gel together in the centre of midfield Owen Hargreaves ended up as the Three Lions’ player of the tournament. Over to Rich with the details. “Don’t shoot from there you stupid cun… OH WHAT A GOAL!” Joe Cole’s shot against Sweden in the 2006 World Cup was speculative, and as you may be able to tell from the above, I thought he shouldn’t have hit it. However, his strike convinced me and my mate Tom that England were going to win the tournament, much to the amusement and bemusement of the other folk around us at the Brandenburg Gate fan park that balmy June evening.  I’ve never followed a World Cup around a country, but Germany 2006 was the closest I got. Basicall...

Whatever field you work in you’ll find that you now use so many acronyms that you might have even forgotten what they stand for. When, for example, did you last hear NATO referred to as the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation? When you were last promising someone you’d complete an urgent task for them did you bother typing out, or saying for that matter, it would be done as soon as possible or did you just go for ASAP? Similarly I think we’ve no doubt all had the unpleasant experience where someone has actually said “LOL” and you’ve had to pretend that’s now socially acceptable. In recent years sport has been infiltrated by one particular acronym which, prior to the mid-2010s, was synonymous only with irritating barnyard animals. It’s just about bearable in the endless Ronaldo v Messi debate where both players are clearly abnormally talented but a half-decent performance in the League Cup or anything to do with American Football should never lead to anyone being referred to as the ‘Grea...

Today Richard Allinson takes us back to a brief moment when a product of the Arsenal youth system was believed to be the future of English football. All football fans are guilty of trying to predict the future (bet in play, NOW!) and we’ve even had a go at it on these very pages . That being said if any of us really had a clue we would have already made our millions by now. It’s also unlikely that any of us would have called today’s subject being snapped in a swimming pool snogging Joe Hart. Over to Rich with the rest. England’s run to the Euro 2020/21 final already seems like a distant memory. Although tactically astute, the sides that Gareth Southgate picked throughout the tournament were often hard to predict, but they were more logical than those selected by the journalists that went all Mystic Meg in the years running up to the tournament.  Take, for example, the BBC who in 2015 named their predicted side which was quite accurate, but randomly included the uncapped Nathan ...

Today Mat Jolin-Beech takes a look at one of life’s great levellers through the medium of a young striker who has lit up Serie A this season. Much as we might crave the adulation that comes with banging in goals in Europe’s top leagues we probably enjoy the anonymity that spares us the glare of the tabloid press every time we slightly misjudge our reverse parking. Over to Mat. Professional football can seem disconnected to those of us living in the “real world”. The nine to five working week, worries about the rising cost of living, and, for the new parents out there, dealing with the far too frequent poonamis. Professional footballers do not have to worry about these issues. Training for a few hours a day, having meals cooked for you, sleep pods with the perfect environment to rest and recover, 24/7 access to gyms and physios – it is a life of luxury and fitness dreams. Even the new parents from the footballing world have WAGs (if that is still a thing post 2006) and the expensive au ...

Today Richard Allinson takes a look at a midfield stalwart who embodied the greatest era of football, the 1990s, simply through his era-defining haircut . His longevity at the top level provided us with a number of options in terms of stickers and cards but Rich and I agreed this one best demonstrated his most important asset. Over to Rich to actually talk about football for a bit. There are certain footballers that could only exist in the 1990s. Not because of their ability or style of play, but because of their haircut. No one epitomises this more so than Garry Flitcroft. His hair-do was a part mushroom/part pudding bowl/part curtains undercut delight. Stick him in some NAF-NAF jeans and a pair of Kickers and he’d have fit right in at any middle school dress-down day across the land.  His haircut was at its peak during his days at Manchester City, the club with which he made his name. He came through the ranks with the Citizens (I refuse to use the silly Cityzens spelling, sorry)...

During the War of 1812 the British Empire’s forces were indebted to the Iroquois people of North America in their successful defence of what was then known as Upper Canada from the USA. The ability of the indigenous soldiers to march up to fifty miles a day and their knowledge of the terrain that had been their homelands for millennia more than compensated for Britain’s numerical disadvantage owing to the ongoing Napoleonic Wars and they were instrumental in the pivotal victory at Queenston Heights. The Iroquois Confederacy was composed of the people of the Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, Seneca, Tuscarora and Mohawk tribes and known by the British as the Six Nations long before Italy were being added to a longstanding rugby tournament. Many of the male Iroquoian warriors could be recognised by their distinctive hairstyle where all but a central tuft of hair was plucked away. Although, through various reprehensible conquests and policies, the Mohawk people now only number around 28,000 acros...

Today Richard Allinson brings us a look at a left field sporting crossover which has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that he wrote it during this year’s Six Nations. There is a lot that both footballing codes could learn from each other but I will hand over to Rich before I turn into one of those blokes in the pub talking about “thugs’ games played by gentlemen”. When Jonny Wilkinson knocked over a drop-goal with 26 seconds left on the clock to seal England’s 20-17 victory over Australia in the 2003 Rugby Union World Cup Final, I don’t think anyone could’ve predicted that only two years later his manager Clive Woodward would be entering the world of professional football.  Rumours about a change of sport started only twelve months after Wilkinson made me spill a pint of Guinness all over myself and, as Woodward was a friend of Southampton chairman Rupert Lowe, the south coast seemed the likeliest destination for this unlikeliest of moves. And so it was that in July 2005, Sir...