Pitch invasions could be joyous eruptions of glee if not for idiots who reflect a Them and Us world of rising violent crimeRoker Park, the final game of 1989-90. Sunderland were sure of their place in the playoffs; Oldham knew they would miss out, largely because of the strains of an extraordinary season in which they had reached the League Cup final and the FA Cup semi-finals. Oldham won 3-2 and, as the final whistle went, home fans invaded the pitch.Slowly they made for the corner of the Roker End where the away fans were housed. I was on the terrace a few yards away and remember clearly the sense of sudden anxiety as my dad gripped my arm and...
Potential upsets, Premier League clubs needing to take it seriously and old foes meeting after taking diverging pathsSwindon and Manchester City were regular combatants in the 1990s, meeting in the second tier and during Swindon’s one season in the Premier League, 1993-94. Friday’s visit to the County Ground will be a first meeting in 20 years. On 5 January 2002, former Swindon man Kevin Horlock scored the second in a 2-0 home win at Maine Road. The years since have seen the clubs move in radically different trajectories, and they now operate on different planets. Swindon arrested a slump with a 5-2 defeat of Northampton on New Year’s Day, and lie in the League Two play-off positions. The club have...
‘If you tell me a goal, I’d be able to go back in my mind and tell you who passed it, or how it came about, or the feeling I had at the time,’ explains the strikerAnyone can score a good goal. A swing of the foot, a lucky connection, and a ball that on any other day – on every other day – flies wildly high and wide this time rockets into the top corner. This is how Nemanja Matic ends up on the shortlist for the Puskás Award.The only fail-safe method of proving a goal was no fluke is simple: do it again, and again. Just as Dennis Bergkamp’s goal for Holland against Argentina at the 1998 World...
The Swindon director of football did not appear to be present to witness Conor Thomas’s late winner over Millwall which gave the Robins a glimmer of hopeHow do you galvanise a callow, dejected team that appears to be sleepwalking into League Two? It was a question Luke Williams had to ponder before his Swindon Town team faced Millwall on Saturday. They had lost four games in a row, three of them to goals in the dying minutes, and were seven points from safety. When Williams assessed the mood at training early in the week, he sensed that hope was ebbing away. Two days before the game he told them exactly that: it seemed, the head coach informed his squad, as...