Posts Tagged ‘S South’

Paulton Rovers 0-7 Norwich City

“The most exciting thing to happen to the village since the Luftwaffe dropped a couple of bombs in World War Two,” was one Paulton regular’s assessment of this fixture. Norwich ensured it was nothing like as explosive with a ruthlessly efficient and free-scoring display, but for the club from the Zamaretto League’s South and West Division One – separated from their visitors by 120 league places – the occasion was always as important as the result. Good job, really.

Tucked away down hedge-lined roads so narrow cars have to slow to pass one another, Paulton is an old mining village in the Mendip foothills populated by just under 5,000. Only 123 people turned out to see Rovers begin their FA Cup campaign back in August with a 3-1 victory over Bideford. Yesterday the PA announcer was forced to appeal for fans behind one goal to “shove up” to make room for more of the 2,000-plus descending on the tiny but tidy Winterfield Road.

Their run to the first round – the farthest the 128-year-old club have ever been in the competition, eclipsing two trips to the fifth qualifying round that ended in a 1-0 defeat to Crewe in 1906 and a 11-2 loss against Hastings & St Leonards in 1907 – had already earned the club £29,000 in prize money. The visit of the three-time semi‑finalists from League One, and the TV and sponsorship money that goes with it, could have swelled their coffers by a further £150,000.

Not, of course, that it is just about the money. The Rovers manager, Andy Jones, who, when not masterminding unlikely Cup runs, owns a wholesale florist, said he “wouldn’t change a thing” about the experience, though presumably a few goals off the tally would have been nice. He conducted his post-match interviews with a can of cider in hand and said his squad would likely “demolish” a case in both celebration and commiseration.

Though the scoreline was, in the end, cigar-and-slippers comfortable, the visitors might have been less at ease had their hosts taken one of their early chances. James Tyrell had a volley tipped over after six minutes and seconds later, from Charlie Rich’s inswinging corner, Rob Claridge had his close-range header blocked. The Norwich manager, Paul Lambert, admitted to being worried – “They started well, they had chances” – but that was as close as the shaves got.

Norwich, shaken, were stirred. A quarter of an hour in, the boisterous crowd were deflated as Grant Holt nodded home Korey Smith’s cross. Nine minutes later, the mischievous and mercurial Wes Hoolahan put through Chris Martin to side-foot home, and before half-time Holt, by now thoroughly enjoying his role as the wicked witch in a Cup fairytale, thumped home another header.

Rovers rallied and seemed set to avoid a hammering until fading badly in the final 20 minutes. Hoolahan pinged in the fourth with 16 minutes to go and Martin rubbed salt into the wounds with three goals in eight minutes.

“Monday morning it’ll be back to the flowers,” said Jones, whose side never lost their exuberance in the tackle. “I’d better sell some because I don’t seem to have been doing that this past week.” With the dream now ended, normality is ready to come flooding back into this sleepy part of Somerset.

Amy Lawrence on Joel Santana’s South Africa

The success of a World Cup can hinge on the host nation’s performance but Bafana Bafana have their work cut out

There is little a football fan relishes more outside of matchday than plotting a trip to some faraway land. Like most of the good things in life, it is all in the anticipation. In the coming weeks, the lucky ones can start charting a path towards South Africa.

Nothing brings out your inner nerd better than a World Cup. I fondly remember poring over the fixture list, unfolding a map of Italy, analysing the transport timetables, grabbing a sleeping bag and jumping on a train bound for Italia 90. Our little group had no tickets and no accommodation, and on our arrival in Genoa it was clear that neither did quite a few others. But what the heck, this was the authentic World Cup experience. The group we chose to follow included Brazil, Scotland, Sweden and Costa Rica, which guaranteed an extensive range of frolics.

Italia 90 is generally remembered as a boring World Cup but most supporters who sampled it (with the exception of those who came across a particular section of England fans) concluded it was brilliant fun. Italy were such generous hosts it seemed obvious at the time that every World Cup for ever more should automatically be played there.

The local fervour for football rubbed off everywhere. Restaurant owners were so glad for the patronage of men in Viking helmets or pleated skirts they laughed like drains, brought down children to be photographed with these exotic creatures, and produced trays full of delicious pasta on the house.

Every night, with the tacit approval of the authorities, a couple of hundred football devotees with nowhere to go unfurled their sleeping bags, or flags, or a plastic bag, and fell into a coma in Genoa station. Nobody even minded the one gentleman who liked to ask if anybody knew what Scots wore under their kilts, and promptly presented his fruit and veg before tottering off.

The successful hosting of a World Cup tends to be linked with success of sorts for the home nation. Italy fared well in 1990, winning their group and reaching the semi-finals before they were ousted by Argentina. Four out of the last five World Cups have inspired hosts to reach the semi-finals at least, and in the other, the USA’s quarter-final finish was perfectly acceptable at a tournament where they also gained some kudos for putting on the show with the biggest aggregate gates in World Cup history.

Interestingly, the success stories of Germany in 2006, Japan/South Korea in 2002 and France in 1998 ignited something very special from a social point of view that underpinned the entire event. Germany felt reborn on the international stage, South Koreans had a conduit to express their patriotism in a way never before possible, and France made a unifying statement with the black-blanc-beur mixture of their winning team.

There is considerable pressure on South Africa to deliver a safe and well‑organised World Cup, but that should not detract from their other challenging mission, which is to deliver on the pitch too. The national team have made a habit of underachieving in recent years, and would never have qualified for 2010 had they needed to go through that process.

This week Bafana Bafana touched down in the west of Ireland to continue preparations. In the tunnel before their friendly match they chanted songs of extraordinary passion and harmony – a sort of South African haka. It sounded astonishing. Unfortunately it was not powerful enough to stop the Republic of Ireland from smothering the skill in their team.

South Africa are improving on the pitch, but there is still some distance to go. Under the guidance of the Brazilian Joel Santana, whose appointment met with scepticism due to his minimal experience, they play with a speedy, fluid rhythm but there is a problem when it comes to the final bang. Last summer’s Confederations Cup was encouraging in that South Africa were able to compete against high-calibre opponents – only losing by a slender margin to Spain and Brazil, probably the two best teams around right now.

But the bottom line is that Ireland consigned South Africa to their sixth consecutive defeat. People are concerned that the learning curve is too steep to avoid the kind of embarrassment never before witnessed at a World Cup. None of the previous 18 hosts have fallen at the first hurdle.

Don’t be surprised if the draw for the finals next summer is extremely kind to Bafana Bafana. In the meantime, if they want to emulate the spectacular improvement that whisked South Korea beyond their wildest dreams they probably need a coach who is a little more like Guus Hiddink and a little less like a man who the South African federation once mistook for a famous Mexican-American fusion guitarist.

Capello’s authority is paying dividends

England’s coach comes across as stern and cool but the players like him and it shows in their results

A former Soviet republic with a hardline president was an ideal setting to observe Fabio Capello’s authoritarian style of leadership and the lasting impression from England’s faltering first 40 minutes in Kazakhstan is of managerial fury.

Capello’s gesticulations are imported performance art. The gushes of anger through a generally clenched body yield a rich array of arm-throwing gestures that leave his players in no doubt of his displeasure. By the end England had cruised to a sixth consecutive victory towards qualifying for next year’s South Africa World Cup but not before Capello had bullied a team whose weariness was more forgivable than their positional indiscipline.

The England coach had told his team to “expect” a Kazakh assault fuelled by patriotic fervour. John Terry’s men confessed to having slept badly in Almaty on account of a five-hour time-lag. The Kazakh dervish was their unwanted alarm call. It found Glen Johnson (right-back) dozing and Ashley Cole (left-back) sleepwalking too far forward when the manager expected him to be in defensive lock-down mode. Gareth Barry was evidently dreaming of Manchester City. Capello let them all know it with a succession of convulsions that threatened to detach his hands from his wrists.

So fierce was his rebuke to Cole that “Cashley” fired a few words back at the bench, the first known case of an England player defying the bespectacled martinet. The coach’s point was that England should weather Kazakhstan’s enthusiasm from sound defensive positions and then assume control of the game. Instead they appeared intent on fighting fire with fire from an advanced position and were surrendering possession far too frequently for an Italian’s taste.

“In the first half I was disappointed with the position of some of our players. It was impossible to get my message across,” Capello reported. On the surface these fiery exchanges between an aficionado of order and a team who have been specialists in chaos in tournaments will leave no mark in the annals of long-haul travel. It did, though, point to Capello’s enduring belief that English players cannot always be trusted to apply strong tactical thinking to high-pressure moments. His brand of supervision is the polar opposite of that practised by Sven-Goran Eriksson and Steve McClaren.

Laissez-faire has been scratched out of his dictionary. It was the gravy smell of Football Association largesse that drew him to London but he is not the sort to scoop up easy money without giving effort in return. England have now struck 20 times in six qualifiers. Wayne Rooney, who was often semi-detached under the old regime, has scored eight in six outings and has become one of Capello’s lieutenants on the field. When Shaun Wright-Phillips was midway through a cameo of extraordinary carelessness, in the second-half, it was Rooney who applied the flamethrower of collective disgust.

“The manager is a strong manager and none of us want to let him down,” said Rooney before the game. This is one of the more significant statements of Capello’s reign and not just because Rooney is finally finding his natural voice (his declaration last week that the middle is his best position was unusually bold, given that it was bound to be painted as a memo to Sir Alex Ferguson). Jonny Wilkinson used to say the same about Martin Johnson when English rugby was in its pomp. Some players, especially English ones, prefer to be told what to do, provided the results suggest the dictator is blessed with wisdom as well as strength.

Described as “surly” and uncommunicative by Chelsea’s Carlo Ancelotti last week, Capello certainly conforms to a model of loftiness that most of the Champions League regulars seem to like. They know he has unlocked the potential of this England squad by finding a coherent tactical shape and imposing the more professional tone of a big club striding into a major Champions League tie.

But he is colder, more brutal, in his touchline urgings than even Rafa Benítez. Cole’s indignant reaction to one of his barrages reminded us that these one-man corporations are not infinitely receptive to being treated as unruly toddlers. It is natural for Capello to stop a training session to berate his players or grab one by the shoulders to illustrate a point. For FA grandees this has become something of spectator sport.

The enemy now, after England have increased their haul to 21 points, against Andorra on Wednesday, is complacency in the home games with Croatia and Belarus and the visit to Ukraine. Capello’s eruptions in Almaty say he is alive to this risk. He is the jockey who knows he is on a horse that has to be flogged all the way to the line.