Football Ruined My Life

In our last edition before the World Cup break, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes are joined by the distinguished author and journalist Duncan Hamilton.  Duncan has written almost twenty books on various aspects of football and cricket including three William Sports Book of the Year winners.  Among those twenty are biographies of George Best, Harold Larwood and Neville Cardus, a fascinating portrait of Brian Clough called Provided You Don’t Kiss Me and his latest Answered Prayers about Alf Ramsey and the winning of the World Cup.  You would think that there was nothing left to say about 1966 but by concentrating on the rather tortured character of Alf Ramsey, Duncan makes us relive that whole experience with fresh insight.  In particular Duncan promotes the importance in Alf’s life of the Spurs manager Arthur Rowe, the now almost forgotten manager of the Tottenham Hotspur side that won the League Championship in the 1950-51 season.  His tactics came to be called “push and run” and in Alf Ramsey, Rowe found a willing student.  To discover all sorts of fascinating details about Alf and the 1966 World Cup triumph download the latest podcast. And just to re-iterate: Colin, Jon and their indefatigable producer, Paul, are arriving at the World Cup like all the players – utterly knackered.  In order to recharge the batteries, they will have a close season where they will not be found drunk and disorderly in a nightclub in Ibiza. Instead, they will be back bright eyed and bushy-tailed for the new season towards the end of August.  If you really can’t wait till then and you want to see them all in operation you will be able to find them at the Nevill Holt Festival in the glorious Leicestershire countryside near Market Harborough at 4.45pm on Saturday 13 June.   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today we’ll be following on our discussion of football in the 1980s with an entirely self-indulgent session of selecting the team of that decade.  To help Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler to do so they are delighted to be able to call on the services of Steve Coppell, a man who was playing for Manchester United and England at the start of the decade and at the end of it was the manager of Crystal Palace.  It’s hard to think of anyone better suited to evaluating the talents and characters of the players of that decade.  There have been two previous podcasts on teams of the 1960s and 1970s so we can usually rely on Jon to supply the goalkeeper, the position awarded in the 1960s to Gordon Banks and in the 1970s to Peter Shilton - except that now a new rule is in operation.  Like Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year, no player can be selected more than once so what is Jon going to do now that he can’t start off his team with his client Peter Shilton again?  Listen and you’ll find out… Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this podcast episode Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes turn their attention to one of the darkest decades in recent football history - the 1980s.  It wasn’t all bad.  We got to the quarter finals of the World Cup in 1986 and were unlucky to lose to a goal punched past Shilton by the Hand of God.  We had a fascinating rivalry at the top of the game between the two sides based in Liverpool one of whom was not Tranmere Rovers.  Three different English sides won the European Cup between 1980 and when we were banned from Europe after Heysel.  However, if you look at the crowds during the decade there was a steep decline.  The hooliganism was bad and getting worse, the government hated the game and everything to do with it and television was accordingly losing interest.  The decade was the last chapter of the game as it had traditionally been played in this country and it culminated in one of the great finishes to the League Championship as Arsenal won at Anfield.  Tragically too, it was the decade of Bradford fire and the Hillsborough disaster when 96 innocent people died needlessly.  What are your feelings about football in the Eighties?   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This week the Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the year 1970, which, to their collective astonishment, is 56 years ago. It’s Colin’s favourite year and much treasured by the 20-year-old Jon. Meanwhile the teenage Andy Hamilton skipped school to watch Chelsea beat Leeds in an infamous FA Cup Final replay (and was found out) and ignored his O level revision to watch Brazil v Uruguay in the World Cup semi final (he failed his Latin and had to resit). Everton won the League, City the League Cup and the European Cup Winners Cup and England got knocked out of the World Cup at the quarter final stage when the whole world (never mind the whole of England) was eagerly anticipating an England v Brazil World Cup Final. It was the end of the decade and somehow the excitement that had been generated in the 1960s disappointingly began to diminish thereafter. If you ask us to nominate a year when football ruled our lives and hadn’t yet ruined them, it was 1970. Much to discuss, much nostalgia to wallow in. Please join us in our indulgence. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Today Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes look once more at the emails you’ve sent us since we did our last postbag at the end of last year.  We encourage you to write to us every week and you do so in comforting numbers.  Once again the tone is almost entirely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to… or correcting our very fallible memories.  We’re happy to acknowledge our mistakes even if on some occasions we have been grossly libelled.  We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience and we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and talk about and also it’s a comfort to know that at least we’re not just talking to ourselves.  The subjects range widely, reflecting the breadth of the listeners’ interests but there is genuine anger at the travesty of the World Cup draw and the sycophancy of the FIFA Peace Prize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices