Sponsored by
Luton win is good news for the game
LUTON Town's win at Wembley on Sunday was a real good news football story.
I have no particular affinity with the club, in fact the last time I went to Kenilworth Road I was not allowed in because they were performing an emergency drill.
And it might have been better had I missed the game altogether as Halifax Town were thrashed 5-0.
But the way the Hatters were treated last summer by the football authorities has been condemned universally by those who care about the game outside the top flight.
Luton were docked 10 points by the Football Association after being found guilty of misconduct by paying agents via a third party.
And they had a further 20 points taken away by the Football League after they failed to satisfy the competition's insolvency rules.
The punishment was Draconian and will almost certainly see them relegated to the Conference.
They are 12 points from safety yet with the docked points they would be comfortably mid table.
Few watching the game, including an incredible 40,000 travelling fans, would have begrudged Luton's moment of glory, even if it did reduce Scunthorpe to the role of stooges.
Mention of the Lincolnshire club, who took 13,000 of their own supporters to the national stadium, always takes me back to 1998 and a match against recently-promoted Halifax at Glanford Park.
Town won the game 4-0 with two goals each from Jamie Paterson and Marc Williams, but it was the beginning of the end of the Shaymen's revival.
The game was the first in which they had not fielded the Geoff Horsfield-Dave Hanson strikeforce.
The former never played for the club again as he joined Fulham, with whom he had been in negotiations in the build up to the game.
The latter became a bit part player due to injuries and neither of them were replaced.
Kieran O'Regan was sacked as manager after Christmas and the optimism built on the Conference triumph rapidly evaporated.
Oh, what might have been.
I WAS at Cougar Park on Sunday to see Keighley take on Castleford in the Challenge Cup with the home side looking for their first win over their opponents since the early 1970s.
It was always going to be a long shot and, after a battling first-half display, they eventually went down by 40-odd points.
But they did everything they could to evoke the memory of their last win over the Tigers - and I don't just mean playing in a ground that appears to have been largely untouched since that time.
The last five miles of my journey to the ground was behind an immaculate Ford Capri, the car of choice for many 40 years ago.
And then there was the pre-match music which included Black Sabbath's Paranoid, not something you hear every day in 2009.
It was a nice touch.
HALIFAX boss Jim Vince was not happy with the referee and linesman at Skelmersdale on Saturday - it is a good job he is not in charge of Chorlton Villa.
The Manchester side had a player booked for passing wind just as an opponent was about to take a penalty.
Ungentlemanly conduct was the offence, although I think my wife would probably say it was exactly the opposite!
Email to a friend
Print this page- A58 crash UPDATE: road now re-open after man hit by car earlier this morning
- Crash on the A58 in Halifax this morning UPDATE: Man in hospital with several broken bones
- Taxi worker dies aged 35 after finishing his shift
- Man suffers serious injuries in accident on M62
- How the new Halifax Central Library will look
Looking for...
Featured advertisers
Jobs
Search for a job
Motors
Search for a car
Property
Search for a house
Weather for Halifax
Saturday 11 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -2 C to 0 C
Wind Speed: 8 mph
Wind direction: South west
Tomorrow
Cloudy
Temperature: 2 C to 5 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: North west
