125 years ago this Saturday, a Scottish draper from Aston Villa wrote a letter that made history (and football as we know it)

February 26th, 2013

By Nick Harris SJA Internet Sports Writer of the Year 26 February 2013 It was 125 years ago on Saturday, or 2 March 1888, that William McGregor, then the president of Aston Villa, wrote a letter to a small group of other football clubs, floating the idea that they should organise a league. In doing so, he changed the world, or at least the large parts of the world that know football as the only truly global game. McGregor, a draper by trade from Perthshire in Scotland, wrote to Blackburn, Bolton, Preston and West Brom saying: "I beg to tender the following suggestion as a...

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Wales, Bale, Giggs & Co: from historic outcasts to the heart of Team GB

May 22nd, 2012

By Steve Menary 22 May 2012 It seems almost certain now that the number of Welshman ever to have played Olympic football for Great Britain will double or treble this summer - from two in total at present since 1908 to five, six or even seven. The Welsh have been the worst represented of the Home Nations in all the previous incarnations of the GB side. The only Olympic Games where Welsh players have ever played was in 1948, when three Welshmen were among the squad of 22 chosen by a panel of selectors for Manchester United manager Matt Busby to oversee. And only...

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‘Finney would no more have tripped an opponent, or pretended to have been tripped, than he would have left a tap without washers during his day job as a plumber’

April 3rd, 2012

* JOHN ROBERTS wrote for the Daily Express, The Guardian, the Daily Mail and The Independent, where he was the tennis correspondent for 20 years. He collaborated with Bill Shankly on the Liverpool manager’s autobiography, ghosted Kevin Keegan’s first book, and has written books on George Best, Manchester United’s Busby Babes (The Team That Wouldn’t Die) and Everton (The Official Centenary History). As Matthew Engel once wrote in the British Journalism Review: “I suspect posh-paper sports writing changed forever the day John Roberts left the Daily Express to join The Guardian in the late 1970s, was handed a piece of routine agency copy and picked up a telephone to start asking questions.” . . By John Roberts 3...

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