Just took mine off..I think I've seen enough!! Damage limitation for Rangers now,could've been 5 down.
Love these type of stories The football fan who has collected 3,000 shirts from around the world please log in to view this image What do you do when you have nearly 3,000 football shirts in your possession? If you are the Dutch football fan and collector Arjan Wijngaard, you allocate a room in your house as an exhibition space and log every single shirt you buy in a comprehensive online catalogue. Arjan has been collecting shirts from around the globe for the past 25 years, beginning with an Everton kit he was given in 1997, and he now boasts one of the largest, if not the largest, personal collections in Europe. What drew him to the idea of collecting shirts? “Of course, I liked football. That is an important thing if you want to collect shirts. There is no particular reason why I chose shirts, though. Some people choose scarves – I have some scarves as well because, if I can’t get a shirt when I visit a stadium or a game, I try to buy a scarf instead. Actually, maybe I should have chosen scarves or pins; they are a lot cheaper and don’t need that much space!” Take a wander into Arjan’s showroom and it is easy to see what he means. The walls are fitted with racks that groan beneath the enormous weight of his collection. The door is an incongruous rectangle of white in an otherwise ubiquitous banquet of colour. And in the window stand two mannequins in green and blue raiment. It is a veritable sacrarium of shirts – from clubs grand and small. “In general I like to collect shirts from clubs that are not very easy to find,” says Arjan. “Like lower and non-league, for example, steps nine and 10 of the English pyramid or clubs from countries not known as famous football countries, like New Zealand or Tanzania.” Why did Arjan set up the website Voetbal Shirts to display his shirts? “There were a few reasons. Firstly, it is to show others what I have. Secondly, for the insurance to prove I had all the shirts if there is a fire or robbery. Also, having my collection online makes it easier for me to see what I’ve already got, especially when I am looking for new ones online or when I am in shops abroad.” Before the pandemic, Arjan travelled abroad five times a year to buy shirts, with around half of these trips to Britain. “I prefer to get them personally from the club shop near the stadium, but that’s not always possible,” he says. “Other options are online club shops and, of course, eBay but also groups on Facebook and other collectors here in the Netherlands, abroad and on Twitter. Over the years, I have made contacts all over the world and that is also a fun part of collecting.” “All the things that come with collecting are maybe even nicer than having the shirts. The visits to the stadiums, searching online, getting in contact with people, meeting other collectors and volunteers who are proud of their club and want to help me to add a shirt or their club to the collection is great. Shirt collecting has given me a lot of positive things besides the shirts themselves: lots of talking about shirts and football, and helping each other through our mutual passion for shirts.” please log in to view this image The football kits of Arjan Wijngaard. With nearly 3,000 shirts to choose from, it must be difficult to single one out, but he does have a favourite. “There is one old FC Groningen shirt that is a favourite because it is a rare one – matchworn and almost 40 years old.” Like most of his shirts, Arjan does not wear it for recreational purposes – although not necessarily for the reason most people might expect. “I tend not to wear my shirts because not all of them are in my size any more! I don’t wear football shirts very often. I don’t want to damage them. But, actually, some I have double: one for the collection and one to wear.” Even though his showroom appears to have reached the point of saturation, Arjan is working through a shortlist of shirts – with one he covets above all others. “There is one shirt I really want to add to my collection, a matchworn Groningen cup final shirt from 2015. Groningen is my local team and they have only won one trophy: the Dutch cup. As I said before, I like shirts from non-league clubs I don’t have yet. So, if there are people who are reading this and think they can help me with a shirt from their local non-league club, don’t hesitate to contact me!” Arjan’s love affair with Groningen served as a gateway to his lifelong affinity for football and kits. “Groningen is my local team. I have had a season ticket for almost 30 years and the stadium is only 10 minutes away by bike. My opinion is that you always have to support your local team. But Everton was my first shirt. I guess I like to support people’s clubs. Everton, Groningen and Feyenoord really are people’s clubs.” As one of the old guard in the relatively recent phenomenon of shirt collecting, what does the future hold for Arjan? “I have no plans to stop!” he says. “As long as I like it and have the space to continue, I shan’t stop.”
Lump to the throat reading that The forgotten story of … Jimmy Hasty, Irish football's one-armed wonder Rory Carroll please log in to view this image In October 1960 Jim Malone, the chairman of Dundalk football club, told the board he had discovered an exciting talent, a centre-forward who was scoring goal after goal for Newry Town, just across the border in Northern Ireland. He was tall and strong, had preternatural balance and was lethal in the air. Dundalk should sign him immediately, said Malone. The player’s name was Jimmy Hasty. Another board member piped up. He had heard of Hasty, heard something fanciful – that the fellow had only one arm. Malone conceded this was true. Hasty had only one arm. But Dundalk should sign him, he said. The board did not often say no to its ebullient chairman but did so this time. We are not, Malone was told, in the business of freaks. Malone then revealed he had in fact already signed the player with a personal cheque. Jimmy Hasty was coming to Dundalk. Sixty years later the reverberations still ripple for Hasty’s family and for Dundalk, where the story of the one-armed striker is told and retold as something wondrous, something verging on fairytale. “The board weren’t happy but Jim Malone believed in Jimmy,” recalls John Murphy, 82, who captained the team in the early 60s. “We didn’t know what to expect.” Forgotten Stories of Football Forgotten stories of football Malone badgered the board into fielding Hasty and on 20 November 1960 he made his debut in a home match at Oriel Park against Cork Celtic. Curiosity swelled the attendance. It seemed as if half of Dundalk turned up to watch. Hasty played a blinder. “He scored once and brought gasps of astonishment at his football skills,” notes the club’s official record. “His ability to ghost past defenders was greeted with disbelief. Nor was he just a scorer – he was the general of every attack, holding the ball until executing perfect passes to his colleagues.” please log in to view this image Hasty in action for Dundalk in the early 1960s.Photograph: Paddy Malone Malone’s faith was vindicated, says Murphy. “Jimmy had brilliant balance and could score with both feet; a brilliant header of the ball; he had everything you’d want.” So began the reign of one of football’s most remarkable and overlooked players, a man who defied biology, inspired teammates, electrified spectators and touched sporting history – and then, one cold morning in Belfast, fell victim to a different, malignant arc of history. Hasty was born in 1936 in Sailortown, a multicultural dockland in north Belfast, a decade before that other prodigy, George Best, was born in east Belfast. He grew up playing on cinder pitches – possibly a key to his toughness – and aged 14 got a job at a mill. On his first day a machine snagged his left arm. It had to be amputated. The mill’s loss was football’s gain because Hasty learned to play again, first in junior leagues and then for Newry Town in Northern Ireland’s B division. Malone, on a scouting mission, signed him on the spot. The contract vaulted Hasty 15 miles south of the border to Dundalk, a once-formidable force in the League of Ireland. Teammates marvelled at their new 6ft 1in striker. “It’s not easy to be a footballer with an arm missing, you use your arms an awful lot in running, movement, balance,” says Francie Callan, 85, who partnered Hasty up front. “But somehow you wouldn’t know he had only one arm.” Forgotten Stories of Football Forgotten Stories of Football Opponents at first hesitated to tackle him but that changed after Hasty scored a flurry of goals in his first 10 games. One secret to his aerial dominance: grounding defenders with his stump. “He could lean on you with that stump so you couldn’t get off the ground, and the ref could be looking and see only a sleeve dangling,” recalls Murphy. Goals flowed, Dundalk moved up the table and the crowds swelled. “Everyone wanted to see the one-armed bandit,” says Murphy. “It was like the circus coming to town. He took the League of Ireland by the cobblers.” please log in to view this image Dundalk’s 1963 League of Ireland-winning team.Photograph: Paddy Malone As a child Paddy Malone, son of the late chairman and himself a club stalwart, says he and other boys played football with an arm tucked in a sweater, the sleeve flapping, to emulate their hero. “We never considered that Jimmy Hasty had a disability, we just considered that he was a great player.” Hasty was affable and gregarious, happy to sign autographs and socialise with teammates. He was handsome and dapper. When Callan, the other striker, was grieving the death of a child to cot death he saw a sensitive side to his teammate. “Jimmy sent me a letter, a wonderful letter so full of love and feeling. I’ll never forget it.” Callan later passed the letter to another grieving parent who also found consolation in Hasty’s words. Though often sidelined through injury, Hasty scored 103 goals over six seasons. In 1963 Dundalk won the league, ending a 30-year wait. “He filled every ground in the League of Ireland. Attempts to mark him out of the game were doomed to failure – he could create goals and space for others,” records the club’s official history. Perhaps the only other one-armed player to surpass Hasty’s exploits was Héctor Castro, who played and scored for Uruguay in the 1930 World Cup final. Glory in Ireland did not lead to England, though there was a rumour Nottingham Forest considered buying Hasty. The transfer market was in its infancy and the missing arm deterred interest, says Des Casey, a Dundalk club administrator who later became vice-president of Uefa. “He was perceived to be severely handicapped.” Forgotten Stories of Football Forgotten Stories of Football The league title win yielded a European Cup tie against Zurich. Dundalk were overawed in the home leg, played in Dublin, and lost 3-0. They flew to Zurich for the second leg so deflated and depleted by injuries the joke was they should have gone to Lourdes. They almost got a miracle. Hasty set up a goal for Dermot Cross, scored a second goal himself and almost bagged a third with a shot against the crossbar from 15 yards. Dundalk ended up winning 2-1, so Zurich went through 4-2 on aggregate, but it was the first time an Irish team had won a match in Europe. Hasty grabbed other honours, such as sharing the League of Ireland top scorer of the year award, before retiring in the late 1960s. The Troubles were erupting around him in Belfast but he made a new life: married his childhood sweetheart, Margaret, had two sons, Paul and Martin, and got a job at a bookmakers. Just before 8am on 11 October 1974, Hasty – then aged 38 – was walking his usual route to work, down Brougham Street. A car stopped. A gunman got out and opened fire, hitting Hasty three times in the back. Witnesses said he staggered across the street and collapsed. It was a sectarian murder attributed to the Protestant Action Group, a cover name for the Ulster Volunteer Force. No one was ever charged. Lost Lives, a catalogue of people killed in the Troubles, lists Hasty as victim 1,205. “It was to spread fear to the Catholic community by shooting a well-known character,” says Paul Hasty, who was two years old when he lost his father. “It was a message that everyone’s a target. I think they knew what they were doing.” The murder devastated and impoverished the Hasty family. In Dundalk people wept. “It was the only time I saw my father cry,” says Paddy Malone. Fans packed in for a testimonial match to raise funds for the family, many paying well above the £3 entry fee, adds Malone, who helped man the turnstiles. If the killers are still alive Paul Hasty, now 48, wishes they would come forward for the sake of his mother, who is 81. “Just to say why. I’d like her to have some peace.” Jimmy Hasty did not die alone. A passerby, George Larmour, cradled him on the pavement and tried to comfort him as life ebbed away. In awful synchronicity, the IRA murdered Larmour’s brother John exactly 14 years later, on 11 October 1988. An off-duty policeman and amateur footballer, John was manning the counter at George’s ice cream shop. The gunman asked about flavours before shooting him four times. Hasty’s exploits faded into legend, the stuff of old men’s anecdotes, dusty match reports and grainy team portraits. If RTE ever had television footage, it was long scrubbed. please log in to view this image An image in a newspaper showing Hasty’s shot being saved by Shamrock Rovers goalkeeper Pat Dunne in their 1964 match at Oriel Park. Photograph: Courtesy of Dundalk FC Then, in 2015, Paul McClean, researching a documentary about Hasty for BBC Radio Ulster, received an email from Zurich. Clips from the 1963 game had been used in a Swiss TV news report – and survived. “There was Jimmy, and they flippin’ battered Zurich,” says McClean. “Seeing how Jimmy moved, everything came true.” Paul Hasty got to experience what he had thought impossible – watch his dad play football. “You knew it wasn’t a fairytale or made up,” he says. “It was fantastic. Like a hundred Christmases at once.”
Just watching a bit of the Birmingham Sunderland game, and there's the usual multiple replays of a 'penalty' shout, and the usual discussions. My question is, if the commentators are comfortable describing someone as being clever in how they 'won' a penalty or a free kick, or was 'entitled to go down because there was slight contact' why aren't they equally comfortable praising someone that craftily legged up an opposing player, without it looking like they fouled them? Obviously, they should be more comfortable yelling 'stop cheating you set of ****s'.
Rooney..Mind you, it is on Joan Terry. FA contacts Wayne Rooney over comments in interview. Rooney said he changed his studs to "long metal ones" when playing for Manchester United at Chelsea in 2006 as he "wanted to try and hurt someone". United were beaten 3-0 and Chelsea won the Premier League that season. "We knew if Chelsea won then they had won the league that day," said 36-year-old Rooney. "Until my last game for Derby, I always wore the old plastic studs with the metal tip. "For that game I changed them to big, long metal ones - the maximum length you could have because I wanted to try and hurt someone, try and injure someone. "I knew they were going to win that game. You could feel they were a better team at the time so I changed my studs. "The studs were legal but thinking if there's a challenge there I knew I'd want to go in for it properly, basically. I did actually. "John Terry left the stadium on crutches. I left a hole in his foot and then I signed my shirt to him after the game... and a few weeks later I sent it to him and asked for my stud back. "If you look back when they were celebrating, JT's got his crutches from that tackle." https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/football/60312167
Any thing in it about shagging grannies or going from bar to bar in Alderley edge begging for someone to give him a line of Charlie???
Champions League, Inter Milan v Liverpool, Rannochia has just come on as a sub for Inter & Robertson is in the Liverpool team. Who’d have thought we’d be saying that 20 years ago?
One of my favourite goals against Liverpool, Robertsons tackle, the ball breaks to Rannochia, and his wonderful pass to Niasse who scores.
