Back of the Net

Footballers: they've got no sense of humour, have they? As Alan Hansen so ably proved in his recent documentary, interviewing Alan Shearer is the journalistic equivalent of having your teeth pulled out. Without anaesthetic. And he isn't even the worst of them.

So it's rather encouraging to discover two new web-sites from players (albeit slightly less well known than Al and friends) that do the profession's dour reputation no justice at all. First up, there's Craig Boardmans site, a brilliantly comic account of life at northern nobodies Ossett Town, from a central defender who once plied his trade as an apprentice at Forest and, more recently, was at Halifax Town.

Boardman, who rather disturbingly insists on referring to himself in the third person, hasn't entirely given up hope of returning to the professional game, but in the meantime he devotes his time to taking holidays with his mates, scooping Man of the Match awards in the Northern League and passing on congratulations to former team-mates: "Boardman wishes Crossley well." "Boardman wishes Cloughie well." You get the picture. With deadpan humour like this, he'd fit in only too well at the City Ground.
,p> Yet Boardman (any relation to Stan, one wonders?) must make way for the new kid in town - ten-year-old Tyson Eyo of Liverpool, a budding future pro currently wowing scouts for Kirkby under-11s. Tyson's page are maintained by his coach, and chronicle the trials and tribulations of the junior game in football. There's controversy (lemonade kicked over in car-park tantrum!), drama (will chicken pox derail Tyson's dreams?) and tragedy (heartless Everton bosses release our young prodigy) in equal measure here. Alan could learn a lot from this pair.

Glad tidings from the world of statistics. www.statto.com, a new venture devoted to the love of numbers in the national game, should finally prove the last word in stats sites (here's hoping, anyway). All English and Scottish tables are analysed in detail, but the real spark of genius here is an individual page for each club with history, results, betting advice and even more stats.

Another nifty little mover is Grass Roots - the Player Register, which aims to put grass-roots players and clubs in touch with each other via a network of footballers' classified ads. And hats must be doffed to whoever thought up the Football Literature website, an online guide to what's hot and what's not in the world of books. A useful place to visit before making that purchase from Amazon.

New and, as those young pop minxes Cleopatra might say, comin' atcha, the impressive EnglandNet is by far the best site thus far dedicated to the delights of the national team, though there's still room for improvement. Elsewhere Liverpool fans have put together The Red Express in the name of Red worship, but the site of the month has to be Pompey's Not The News fanzine. The content is impressive enough in itself, but the gold star goes to an anarchic half-hour RealAudio broadcast of madness thrown in for good measure. And, let's face it, there's no shortage of material at Fratton Park right now…

FourFourTwo Issue 58 June 1999

Non-League Website. ......A review

And finally - Craig Boardman's Boots - Quite why this ex-Forest, Scarborough, Halifax, Stalybridge Celtic player should inspire such devotion is uncertain, but here is everything for the dedicated Boardman fan - every news story ever written (or not) about him, links to all his previous employers from Forest to Halifax to err...the Yorkshire Electricity Board? No wonder Benfica, Man Utd and Warner Bros. recordings are all vying to pry him away from the clutches of Osset Albion. The subject of this site is referred to as just "Boardman" throughout and is referred to in the third person, like "Boardman wishes Teddy (Sheringham) all the best". The photo of Christopher Lee in "The Wicker Man" which greets you on the opening page is frighteningly apt - "Craig Boardman's Boots" is a cult. And that's not all - it's sick and it should be banned.

ALAN BATES A REVIEW