Intimate photos, inflatable phalluses: Notts County sink into nether world | Richard Williams


The world’s oldest professional football club are used to hard times but their present dire situation on and off the pitch has reached a new low

When the wind was coming from the wrong direction, the most salient feature of a visit to Notts County in the old days was the smell drifting down from the abattoir further up Meadow Lane. Last week the stench was coming from inside the club itself. From the chairman’s office, in fact. To add insult to the injury of sitting plumb last in the fourth tier, the world’s oldest professional football club was in the hands of a man who, during the course of a spat on Twitter, pressed “send” on a photograph of his genitals. Inadvertently, of course, but still.

To his credit, you might think, Alan Hardy turned up to face the music at Saturday’s home match against Lincoln, local rivals and League Two leaders. What confronted him was a sight possibly not witnessed before at a league ground: the winter sun glinting off a forest of inflatable giant pink penises waved from among the 4,285 visiting supporters in the Jimmy Sirrel Stand.

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