Football Ruined My Life Jon Holmes, Patrick Barclay, Colin Shindler, Paul Kobrak

In the days when the cricket season finished at the end of August and did not begin again until the first week in May it was perfectly possible to be a professional sportsman who played both games. Now it would be impossible to find a footballer who also played county cricket let alone Test cricket. Digging back, as ever, into the days of our youth, however, we can easily find plenty of them. Joining the regular panel, Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Patrick Barclay is Michael Henderson, formerly Cricket Correspondent of the Daily Telegraph and a man who has written perceptively and entertainingly on both football and cricket for many publications. 
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The Football Association Challenge Cup is the oldest and most prestigious cup competition in the world, having been in existence since 1871. Winning the Cup for many of us was actually more highly valued than winning the First Division championship which had none of the excitement and charisma of walking up the steps to the Royal Box and holding up that most prized trophy.  The panel examines the reasons for the decline in importance of the FA Cup and compares Cup Final day now to the Cup Finals of their youth – with predictable results.
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The panel turn their forensic eyes on the question of football tactics and, with a respectful nod to one of the great Monty Python sketches, their wider reference to the world of philosophy. In particular this edition sets the supporters of the philosophy of Route One against the supporters of playing out from the back or Tiki Taki as it is sometimes known.  The main point at issue is the alleged superiority of either the long ball tactics favoured by Stan Cullis’s Wolves, Graham Taylor’s Watford and Harry Bassett’s Wimbledon as opposed to the subtler arts of passing out from the back as perfected by Pep Guardiola.  But if your team is winning, does it really matter what tactics they employ to do so?
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There used to be such a thing as a Reserve team which we watched if we couldn’t afford to travel to watch our team away from home. Young players started in the A and B sides and made their way up from the B to the A team until they reached the Reserves. The Reserves contained a sprinkling of first team players coming back from injury and embittered old pros who deeply resented the humiliation of playing in the Central League or the Football Combination. As such spectators got to see old favourites and possible new stars. But the Reserves are gone now, like our youth, too soon. Does the panel regret the passing of this old tradition or does its replacement by squads of 25 and endless substitutions during a match mean a better deal for football?
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Everton may well have saved themselves yet again from The Drop and at the same time finished Liverpool’s chances of a last Premier League title for Jurgen Klopp but the history of a once proud and famous club over the last thirty years or so has been painful for their fans.  One lifelong supporter is Jimmy Mulville, co-founder and manager of Hat Trick Productions and therefore responsible for shows such as Have I Got News For You and Father Ted.  In this podcast he shares with the panel the agony and ecstasy of supporting Everton stretching back to the 1950s and including his visit with his father and grandfather to see the famous FA Cup Final win of 1966, a time when the City of Liverpool seemed to rule the cultural world. 
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In this episode, the panel is talking about the maverick.  Not the old tv series of the same name starring James Garner but the flair players who didn’t necessarily fit into the team ethic.  Think Stan Bowles, Frank Worthington, Charlie George, Tony Currie and Rodney Marsh to name but five.  How weird that they were all playing at the end of the 1960s and throughout the 1970s.  Why were there so many mavericks then?  Were there none before and none since then?  The Brains Trust scratches its collective head and suggests some possible answers.
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