Author Archives: FWA editor

The Vanarama Column – Wrexham AFC

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The Vanarama column  – Wrexham, by Glenn Moore

Having four managers in a year is not usually associated with success, but Wrexham may prove an exception. The fan-owned club handed the reins to assistant manager Graham Barrow in December after Sam Ricketts, himself only appointed in May, moved to Shrewsbury Town. It seemed a sound choice as Barrow had enjoyed a successful spell as caretaker but it did not take long for the veteran to decide the altered dynamics associated with being No.1 were no longer to his liking.

He stepped down and in has come Bryan Hughes, a 42-year-old of much more limited managerial experience but with a long association to the club. A teenaged Hughes began his career at Wrexham in the mid-Nineties and was a key figure in the club’s 1997 FA Cup run. A busy midfielder he went on to have a decent career, twice winning promotion to the Premier League and playing more than 150 matches in the top flight for Birmingham City, Charlton Athletic and Hull City.

On Saturday his second spell at the Racecourse Ground began with a win over Dagenham & Redbridge that moved the Red Dragons into the top three of the Vanarama National League. More than 5,000 were present to welcome back Hughes and with the club moving within two points of the only automatic promotion slot the promotion dream is back on.

When Hughes played for Wrexham they were the best team in Wales. Indeed, they were as recently as 2001. That season, with Denis Smith in the dug-out, Darren Ferguson leading on the pitch, and a burst of goals from a non-League discovery called Lee Trundle, the Red Dragons finished 10th in what was Division Two and is now League One. Swansea were heading for the fourth tier after relegation, replaced by Cardiff City, promoted from the basement behind Brighton. Newport County were in the Southern League.

However, Wrexham went down in 2002 and while they briefly bounced back to the third tier they soon began a precipitous slide that involved two relegations in four years and a period in administration. They have now been in the Vanarama National League since 2008. They made three trips to the play-offs in the first five seasons plus an FA Trophy win in 2013, but have subsequently been mired in mid-table.

Meanwhile Cardiff are in the Premier League, Swansea, after enjoying seven seasons in the top flight, are in the Championship, and Newport, having climbed out of non-League, are established in League Two and making headlines in the FA Cup.

While football in South Wales has prospered it has been a bitter decade for North Wales, but there are signs of a revival. Average gates are, astonishingly, at their highest in more than 30 years and in March the national team returns to the Racecourse Ground for the first time since 2008.

Hughes, whose only previous managerial experience consists of a few months as joint-boss at Scarborough Athletic, is aware he has been given ‘a wonderful opportunity’. With the Vanarama National League title very much up for grabs it is one he hopes to seize.

for more on Wrexham, visit https://www.wrexhamafc.co.uk/

For more on the Vanarama League, see: http://www.wrexhamafc.co.uk

For great deals on cars and vans lease and hire, see https://www.wrexhamafc.co.uk/

Gordon Banks – The Greatest

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A tribute to Gordon Banks

By Brian Scovell, ex Daily Mail and now FWA Life Vice President

I’ve been lucky to meet many gentlemen footballers – one thinks of the three Bobbies, Moore, Charlton and Robson, Geoff Hurst and Walter Winterbottom – but top of the League of Gentlemen was Gordon Banks.

He never changed, friendly, smiling and cheerful despite his handicaps in life. Born in Sheffield, son of an illegal bookmaker, he left school at fifteen and started work delivering coal. His father’s business had collapsed and his handicapped brother died after he was attacked. In 1972 he was in an accident in 1972 when he lost the sight of one eye and his majestic reign as Britain’s finest goalie was brought to an end.

I first met him during the World Cup in England in 1966 when he was reaching his best. When he collected his winners’ medal in 1966, he held on to it until he boosted his failing income in 2001 and sold it for £124,750.

A cricketing friend named Peter Presence, who ran a company First Features selling sports columns to newspapers all around the world, asked me to approach Gordon and wondered whether if he would be interested. Gordon didn’t have a proper agent and he accepted the modest weekly payment which was slightly higher than his wages as a player.

Every week he would ring me on the dot, and as a struggling goalkeeper myself for the Daily Sketch team I learned from a vast amount of tips from him, like standing up when a forward is bearing down on you and not go down too soon. Too much of that still going on today!

He preached being calm and the great keepers like Pat Jennings, Lev Yashin, Dino Zoff and David Seaman all had that valuable quality. Joe Hart and Jordan Pickford, in particular, still get over-excited.

Over the years I lost contact with him but at the FWA Gala Night at the Savoy I met up with him again in January last year and he was the same but older Gordon. He had kidney cancer and you wouldn’t have guessed it.

His great adversary Pele was supposed to be the speaker but exhausted by attending the World Cup draw in Russia he had to withdraw through illness. Gordon was one of the speakers and, inevitably, he talked about his unbelievable save to deny Pele a goal in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.

The packed diners of the elegant Lancaster Room of the Savoy were enthralled by hearing him recall his preparation to take on the world’s number one player, saying “The pitch was rock hard like a road, the temperature was 103F and on the last training session before the match I noticed the ground was bumpy and shots were bouncing up higher than you would expect. So I asked the players to shoot from distance so I work out what I had to do.”

No football fan will ever forget when The Greatest keeper foiled The Greatest footballer.

Gordon Banks RIP

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We at the FWA join the rest of the football world in mouring the death of Gordon Banks, our former Footballer of the Year, who has passed away at the age of 81.

Banksy, or the Banks of England as he was nicknamed, will always have a special place in football history as England’s goalkeeper when Sir Alf Ramsey’s side won the World Cup in 1966, but arguably his most famous save came four years later, at the 1970 World Cup finals.

England were playing Brazil in Guadalajara in a group game between the reigning champions and champions-elect, and when Jairzinho crossed from the right and Pele headed the ball towards the far post, the watching world – and the great striker himself – thought it was a goal.

Banks flung himself from one side of goal to the other, dived low and clawed the ball up and over the bar from a seemingly impossible position. It was a stunning save, and although Brazil went on to win the game and win the trophy, Banks’ save is one of the most famous images of that tournament, and has been replayed ever since.

Speaking at the FWA’s tribute to Pele in London last January, Banks said: “He always says to me ‘wherever I go in the world people talk about the goals I scored, but when I come to England, all people talk about is that save you made from me!’”

See the full interview here: https://youtu.be/W-yRFKlGsco

Gordon Banks was born in Sheffield and started his career down the road at Chesterfield, but it was at Leicester City that he first found fame. A year after winning the World Cup, he was surprisingly sold to Stoke City, and played with them until the end of his top-flight career, which ended prematurely when he lost an eye in a car crash in 1972. He played on with Fort Lauderdale Strikers in the US in the late 1970s, had a brief spell as manager of non-league Telford before leaving football in 1980.

He was honoured repeatedly, not least when the FWA voted him Footballer of the Year in 1972. Fifa voted him Goalkeeper of the year five times running from 1966 to 1971, and he was awarded the OBE in 1970.

Having won a battle with cancer in 2015, he continued to watch his beloved Stoke City and attend football events until the end. Our thoughts and prayers are with his wife Ursula, family and friends.

Gordon Banks 1937-2019.

Clive White RIP

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The FWA is saddened to learn that another of our dear friends, Clive White, has passed away. On the same day that Vikki Orvice lost her battle with cancer, we heard that Clive, who was an extremely popular and friendly colleague on the football and tennis circuits, had also succumbed to the illness. He passed away peacefully at his daughter Chloe’s home.

Below is the story carried on the Sports Journalists’ Association website, followed by a tribute from Paul Newman, his friend and former sports editor of The Independent.

CLIVE WHITE joined The Times in 1981 becoming deputy sports editor from 1982-84 and then deputy football correspondent where he covered three World Cups and two European Championships before leaving in 1991.

From there Clive – often known as Chalky – joined The Independent where he covered tennis and football and in 1995 moved to the Sunday Telegraph as tennis correspondent and football writer for the next 13 years.

At the Sunday Telegraph he wrote the columns of both John McEnroe and Gary Lineker. He also co-wrote Lineker’s 2010 World Cup diary.

Tennis played a major part in his career. He was author of the ITF Davis Cup yearbook between 2010-12 and worked for the federation in a writing and broadcasting capacity.

He had also written the programme notes for Wimbledon and was back at the All England Club in 2012 as tennis team leader for the Olympic News Service.

Clive also worked for ONS at Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games, reporting on cross-country skiing. At the Baku 2015 European Games he covered boxing and karate.

Thoughts go out to his children Chloe, Phoebe and Elliott and the rest of Clive’s family and close friends.

TRIBUTE FROM PAUL NEWMAN

There have certainly been sports reporters who had a better record of hitting deadlines and there have been a few who could write as elegantly about football, but I doubt whether many cared more about their words than Clive White.

News of his death, after a long illness, brings back memories both of a colleague who always wanted to do his very best and of one of the most likeable people in sports journalism. As a mutual friend said to me today: “Clive was the original Mr Nice Guy.”

Somewhere in a box of papers in my study I have a piece of copy which Clive wrote for The Times when we were both working there more than 30 years ago. I was the chief sub-editor on the sports desk and was one of the last to leave the office late one Friday night when a messenger dropped into our in-tray a late item dictated to our copytakers.

I imagined it might be a late-breaking story about an impending transfer or maybe news of a manager who would be sacked the following morning. Instead it was a message from Clive, who had written the main football preview for the following day’s newspaper.

It said simply this: “In the ninth paragraph of my football preview, please change the words ‘with two-thirds of the season gone’ and replace them with the words ‘with one-third of the season remaining’.”

I can just imagine Clive having worried all evening about what he had written, wondering whether he had got the tone right or always found the mot juste. The importance of stressing whether there was one-third of a season left or whether two-thirds of it had gone clearly mattered to him.

Nevertheless, it would be wrong to give the impression that Clive was in any way nerdish or obsessive about his work. He was a smiling, sociable character who was always popular with his colleagues and always willing to help. A personal memory is of my second day working at The Times. I introduced myself to Clive, who could not have been kinder or more helpful to a raw and nervous newcomer.

Clive worked at The Times for 10 years. He joined as a sub-editor and eventually became deputy sports editor and then deputy football correspondent. He had a deep understanding of football and wrote about it with insight and elegance. He could turn his hand equally well to match reports, news stories, features or interviews. If Clive missed a deadline or two, it was nearly always because he wanted to polish his work to perfection.

He left The Times in 1991, by which time I had become sports editor at The Independent. With Clive going freelance, I welcomed the chance to bring him into our pages. His writing style suited us perfectly and he was an excellent addition to our football team.

Clive eventually joined the Sunday Telegraph, where he wrote about football and tennis for 13 years. He ghost-wrote excellent columns by Gary Lineker and John McEnroe. Ghost-writing is an art that not many journalists can master, but Clive knew exactly how to bring out in the written word the voice of whoever’s name would be appearing above the column. Lineker, learning of Clive’s death, described him on Twitter as a “brilliant and trusted journalist”.

After leaving the Sunday Telegraph Clive focused more on tennis. He used to write the programme notes for Wimbledon and was also a regular contributor to International Tennis Federation publications.

His latter years were dogged by ill health, but throughout his troubles he retained his sense of humour. For those of us who were lucky enough to have known him, we will remember the man as much as the journalist.

RIP Clive

Tributes flow for Vikki Orvice

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Tributes have been flooding social media after Vikki Orvice, FWA vice-chair and The Sun sportswriter, passed away on Wednesday at the age of 56.

Her husband Ian Ridley, one of our most esteemed members and a fine sportswriter in his own right, announced on the morning of February 6th that Vikki had finally succumbed after a long battle with cancer.

Tributes from all over the world followed and obituaries were carried by The Sun, whose former chief sportswriter Steve Howard penned a lovely tribute to his friend and colleague, The Guardian, British Athletics Writers’ Association and many more.  Jacqui Oatley, whom Vikki introduced the FWA’s National Committee, wrote movingly for our own website.

BBC Radio 4 broadcast a tribute from Anna Kessel, Vikki’s co-founder in Women in Football, and there were messages from many other journalists and sports stars, including Sebastian Coe, Jessica Ennis-Hill, Paula Radcliffe, Kelly Holmes and many more.  Sports federations and clubs, including her beloved Sheffield United, paid tribute, too.

When Ian returned to social media later on Wednesday, he admitted to being “overwhelmed” by the messages on the medium.

He added, poignantly:

and Ian added thanks, particularly to close friends, Vikki’s MacMillan nurse and the Royal Marsden Hospital.

There are far too many tweets to list here, but you can see most of them by typing Vikki’s name into the searchbar in Twitter.

Her legacy lives on.

Links to Obituaries:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/8363990/vikki-orvice-dies-aged-56-the-sun-tribute/

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2019/feb/06/vikki-orvice-the-sun-trailblazer-women-sport-dies-aged-55

https://www.iaaf.org/news/iaaf-news/vikki-orvice-obituary

https://www.athleticsweekly.com/news/tributes-paid-to-trailblazing-journalist-vikki-orvice-1039920471/

Vikki Orvice (1962-2019)

Vikki Orvice’s legacy – Sun Scholarship scheme

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The Sun are launching a scholarship scheme for aspiring female sportswriters in honour of Vikki Orvice, who passed away on Wednesday.

Vikki was the Sun’s athletics correspondent and also covered football for the paper, having become the first female sports journalist to be employed by a tabloid newspaper in 1995.

Sadly Vikki succumbed to cancer after a 12-year battle, but her legacy will be the Vikki Orvice Memorial Sports Journalism Scholarship, which is seeking a “young woman who has all the qualities Vikki held so dearly” to join The Sun’s sports team.

Shaun Custis, a fellow FWA member and The Sun’s sports editor, said: “Vikki lived and breathed the job every day and was so proud to work on The Sun’s sports team. There could be no finer tribute to her wonderful work than to have a scholarship in her name.”

Details of how to apply will be released in the near future.

Vikki Orvice – a tribute by Jacqui Oatley

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Jacqui Oatley, the broadcaster, was brought on to the FWA’s National Committee by Vikki Orvice, who passed away today at the age of 56.  Here is Jacqui’s tribute to her friend and our dear colleague.

 

BRAVE. FEARLESS.  TRAILBLAZER. PIONEER. 

There was only one Vikki Orvice. That’s clear from the many tributes which have poured in from journalists and senior sporting figures alike following the desperately sad news of our beloved colleague’s passing. Taken from us by cancer at the age of 56, but not before she’d squeezed every drop out of life and found humour in even the darkest of days.

This funny, strong Yorkshirewoman and fiercely loyal friend was unrivalled in her experience, yet did everything in her power to draw others alongside her.

Vikki had been a member of the Football Writers’ Association since the mid-1990s, joining the national committee in 2015 and becoming vice-chair two years ago. Holding the belief that change must come from within, she was also a committee member of the Sports Journalists’ Association. Vikki had so much to offer so, when she heard about our new Women in Football campaign group, she wanted to get involved. WiF was set up in 2007 by Anna Kessel and Shelley Alexander with a plan to champion our peers, challenge discrimination and create opportunities for other women. Vikki saw this as another avenue to make a difference in a heavily male-dominated industry so became a founding board member.

Vikki had been a staff writer for The Sun since 1995 and could easily have chosen to focus on the considerable demands of such a role on a national newspaper. She could have kept a low profile to focus on simply keeping her job. But no, Vikki’s political beliefs stimulated her determination to stand up for the vulnerable, those who lacked confidence and needed a guiding hand. She was in a perfect position to mentor others. Nobody else has equivalent experience so every word she uttered to wide-eyed students and aspiring journalists was absorbed and digested. She would always make the effort to attend our WiF events over the past 12 years – only extreme ill health or being in another country would keep her away. Such was her dedication and commitment.

Just a fortnight ago, Vikki attended the FWA tribute dinner to Gareth Southgate at The Savoy Hotel. She was in a wheelchair and so frail, her body ravaged by cancer and the drugs required to fight it. Most would have taken the easy and sensible option to stay at home to rest but not Vikki. She had to be there alongside her husband, the renowned sports writer, Ian Ridley. Spirited and resolute to the end. Naturally, she was still smiling.

Vikki achieved so much in her relatively short but action-packed time on the planet. Far too much for one article to detail, so here’s a brief overview: she was the first female staff football writer on a tabloid, athletics correspondent at The Sun, charity campaigner and fundraiser, patient governor at the Royal Marsden Hospital, diversity campaigner, board member and despite the effects of intensive treatment, she even found time to chair her local book festival in Hertfordshire. Her inspirational story will be told in full in due course.

Vikki’s passing is devastating to all who knew her. I have cried a steady stream since taking the call from my WiF colleague, Jo Tongue, at breakfast time. Too soon, just too soon to lose this special person. But Vikki was such a force for positive change that her friends and colleagues will turn our grief into her legacy. Plans for a sports writing bursary in her name are just the start.

Rest in peace, dear Vikki. There was nobody quite like you but your warmth, wit and spirit will live on. We will do everything in our power to ensure the sporting press rooms and press boxes of the future are a more welcoming and equal environment. On behalf of all female sports journalists: thank you.

Pictures courtesy of News Group Newspapers

Vanarama National League column – Danny Rowe

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By Glenn Moore

Football is brutally ageist. Once a player passes his mid-twenties, unless he is already a success, his chances of career progression decline rapidly. Clubs, with an eye to sell-on fees, are generally reluctant to pay high prices for anyone who would be nearing 30 when their contract ends. Even the poster boy for late developers, Jamie Vardy, was only 25 when Leicester City paid £1m to take him out of non-League. He was a gamble, but the likelihood was he would continue to improve, although few expected Vardy to be such a success.

Add a few more years, however, and players are thought to be, if not quite over-the-hill, certainly nearing the brow. And yet, in an era of conditioning coaches, nutritionists and all-round enhanced professionalism it seems rash to write off a player who could have another five years in him.

Consider Danny Rowe, briefly a team-mate of Vardy at Fleetwood Town. Rowe is the most prolific scorer in the Vanarama League having scored more than 150 goals for AFC Fylde in the past five seasons. This has been noticed. Oldham bid £50,000 for him in summer 2017. Cheltenham bid £175,000 in summer 2018. On both occasions Fylde, only a dozen years out of the West Lancashire League, turned the bids down. Though Rowe is keen to play in the Football League he accepted the decisions and kept on scoring. The dream of both player and club is to go up together.

At the weekend Rowe scored goals number 20 and 21 this season as Fylde won 2-1 at promotion rivals Solihull Moors. That followed the 48 goals in Vanarama National League North in 2016-17, which propelled the Coasters to promotion, and 28 goals last season as Fylde reached the play-offs.

If Rowe seems in as much a hurry as his club it is with good reason. Time is not on his side. On January 29 Rowe enjoyed his 30th birthday, a questionable landmark in an industry which confers veteran status on 30-somethings.

However, in playing terms he is not so ancient. A prodigious scorer as a boy, so much so he joined Manchester United at 11, Rowe quit the game at 16, released by United after falling out of love with the grind. He took up a joinery course and played for fun, at amateur level. Soon the goals began to flow again. Fleetwood signed him, but while he did OK on loan to Droylsden and Stockport he failed to score for Fleetwood. They preferred Vardy, though Rowe occasionally played alongside the future England international in 2012. 

It wasn’t until Rowe arrived at Fylde, in August 2014, that it clicked. “He’s found a place where he is comfortable and his goalscoring record over the last for or five years has been outstanding,” said Fylde boss Dave Challinor after Saturday’s win. “He has ice in his veins. His calmness in and around the box is amazing. He is not bothered if he misses a chance and rarely celebrates when he scores – he just sees it as what he is there to do.”

If Rowe and Fylde win promotion to the Football League, it will be just reward.

For great deals on van and car hire and leasing visit: https://www.vanarama.com/

For more on Fylde visit: http://www.afcfylde.co.uk/

Motorama to take over as National League title sponsor

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Motorama, sister company of FWA partner Vanarama, will take over the title sponsorship of the National League from the start of next season.

This new agreement will build on the success of the Autorama Group’s previous work with the National League through Vanarama as National League title sponsors since 2013. The sponsorship, along with support for the FWA through our annual Golf Day and regular National League columns, propelled Vanarama into the homes of millions of people around the UK, driving huge engagement with the brand and the wider football community.

Motorama (a new car leasing company) will take the naming rights from the start of the 2019/2020 season – to encourage real football fans to STOP buying cars and to START leasing them with Motorama.

The growth of car leasing has been huge in the last three years and is expected to grow exponentially as customers become less interested in show rooms, and more comfortable with online purchases. In fact, 67% of customers that lease with Motorama don’t test drive the vehicle they choose to lease. Drivers are now leaning towards car ‘usership’, rather than ownership – making getting a car as simple as getting a mobile phone, with the same opportunity to upgrade every couple of years.

Autorama’s extension of the existing partnership with the National League under the Motorama brand will ensure that along with the National League they can take the competition to the next level. It signifies Autorama’s commitment to remain firmly at the heart of football – and engage football’s most committed fans. The Motorama National League will continue to receive incredible exposure, with BT Sport broadcasting live matches and highlights for the next three years – allowing even more opportunity for Motorama’s leasing proposition to outstrip tired and dated traditional car-buying.

Andy Alderson, Autorama Group CEO, said:  “We’re delighted to be continuing our relationship with The National League. With cars making up 88% of new registrations in the UK, the new sponsorship will appeal to a wider audience within the followers of National League football and provide a great opportunity to elevate and scale the partnership we currently enjoy with the National League. It will allow Motorama to enjoy the prestige of being title sponsor of one of the UK’s most popular football leagues and get its message that people CAN lease the cars they want – rather than settle for something they can find on a used dealer’s forecourt – to an engaged audience of enthusiastic fans.”

Previous title sponsor Vanarama found title sponsorship of the National League a game-changing decision, with customer engagement and intent-to-use the commercial vehicle leasing brand sky rocketing as a result. Vanarama now has the highest awareness in its market, thanks largely to the Vanarama / National league partnership which has reached a peak of cooperation and mutual benefit most sponsorship partnerships can only dream of.

Michael Tattersall said:  “Following five seasons as the Vanarama National League, we are delighted to be signing up for a further three seasons as the Motorama National League. Our relationship with the Autorama Group goes from strength to strength and is a classic case of football sponsorship delivering value and helping to create a leading consumer brand.”

For more on Motorama please visit: https://www.motorama.com/