Create your own ‘fixtures release day’ news story with this handy pre-written template… Continue reading “Every ‘Fixture Release Day’ article you’ve ever read.”
Every ‘Fixture Release Day’ article you’ve ever read.
Author: glen wilson
Former schoolboy, Glen Wilson writes on football and travel and has been editor of the award-winning popular STAND fanzine since before the award.
How I watched football 2014-15
When you get in the habit of watching live football, any live football, to the point of consuming live football, every season runs the risk of stumbling to a conclusion. A desperate scramble to watch tenth tier league cup finals and rearranged reserve team play-offs in order to get one last hit before the reality of the football-free, barbecue-smoke backed summer months hit home. For me, and 33,279 others, there was no danger of this season petering out in such a way. That’s because, ahead of us all the way through, firmly in our calendars since last summer, our end-of-season boss level awaited; Wales versus Belgium… and it didn’t disappoint. Continue reading “How I watched football 2014-15”
Editorial: On Contemplating Life Without Football
I am unable to recall when or why I fell in love with football. There was no epiphany. No great moment of clarity. Football, as far as I can remember, was simply always there; eternally bobbling about alongside grazed knees and Why Don’t You? in the goalmouth scramble of my childhood. Continue reading “Editorial: On Contemplating Life Without Football”
Go Away! Milton Keynes
From issue 75 of popular STAND here’s your indispensable guide to Milton Keynes, for anyone foolish enough to venture there for tonight’s Rovers game. Continue reading “Go Away! Milton Keynes”
Haifa a High; Wales in Israel
‘Oh shit! I’ve forgotten my lucky envelope as well’.
Those words are mine. They left my mouth on the morning of the game. You need not know why the envelope is deemed lucky, nor how I’d come to forget it, but for context do consider this. I am 32 years old. I’m educated. But for the duration of a morning’s exploration of Haifa I genuinely feared I had jeopardised the hopes of my nation’s football team through the act of leaving a torn dog-eared envelope in a South London flat. This is what following Wales does to you. It suspends all notions of rationality or belief and replaces them instead with a clouded fug of paranoia, superstition, melancholy, and blind, desperate, stupid hope. Continue reading “Haifa a High; Wales in Israel”
On Football as the next Great American Drama Series
Last month I went to India. And yes, I had a lovely time thank you very much for asking, but I’ll save going all Judith Chalmers on you for another time, and get to my point. Whilst in India I met my girlfriend’s cousin, Nikhil, for the first time. He’s an intelligent fella, a writer who speaks multiple languages and he’s into football; he supports Chelsea – evidence if ever it were needed that who we choose to support is rarely a rational choice. Nikhil has lived near to, or in, Bangalore all is life. Bangalore are the current Indian football champions. I asked him why he didn’t support them. His answer is that he likes football, and so he wants to watch the best football in the world, and as the Premier League is screened regularly in India, it is this which he, and the other football fans he knows, watch. Continue reading “On Football as the next Great American Drama Series”
Doncaster Rovers 0-3 Bradford City: 250 word match report
Typical really. You pen a thoughtful fanzine article detailing why Paul Dickov deserves more time, then come the day you sell it his team deliver a performance that is inexcusably abject. Continue reading “Doncaster Rovers 0-3 Bradford City: 250 word match report”
Gillingham 1-1 Doncaster Rovers: 250 word match report
You hear ‘goal out of nothing’ often at football matches; rarely has it been more fitting than Rovers’ opener here. The surprise at Harry Forrester’s free-kick finding the net being emphatically magnified by the forty minutes of vacuous wind-disrupted nonsense of twenty-two men repeatedly failing to control a football which had preceded it. Continue reading “Gillingham 1-1 Doncaster Rovers: 250 word match report”
Doncaster Rovers 3-0 Yeovil Town; 250 word match report
‘Aye, but it’s Yeovil… we never beat bloody Yeovil’. Thankfully the doom of the old fella I told to cheer up was ill-mongered, as our one time bogey side were despatched for a third time in four meetings. Continue reading “Doncaster Rovers 3-0 Yeovil Town; 250 word match report”
Crawley Town 0-5 Doncaster Rovers; 250 word match report
It’s rare you can justify paying £22 to sit in a marquee on the outskirts of Crawley. Thanks to the Rovers , tonight was that anomaly. Continue reading “Crawley Town 0-5 Doncaster Rovers; 250 word match report”
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