Crusadersand Coleraine are all settotakeon English teams in Cup quest
CRUSADERS and Coleraine could face English opposition in the IRN-BRU Cup next season.
England National League sides Sutton United and Boreham Wood will join Irish and Welsh clubs in the tournament at the second round stage.
Stephen Baxter’s side reached the semi-finals earlier this year when they lost 3-2 at Inverness.
Also involved in next season’s competition will be Bohemians and Bray Wanderers along with Welsh teams The New Saints and Connah’s Quay.
Neil Doncaster, SPFL chief executive, said: “The IRN-BRU Cup remains an innovative and evolving competition, and we are pleased to now extend a warm welcome to the National League and their representatives, Sutton United and Boreham Wood.
“We look forward to developing a positive relationship with our counterparts in England, just as we have with representatives from the leagues of Northern Ireland, Wales and the Republic of Ireland over the last two years.”
Bruce Elliott, Chairman of Sutton United, said: “We’re delighted to have been asked to compete in the IRN-BRU Cup.
“Both manager Paul Doswell and I are excited at taking part in a competition that is new for us, and gives us the chance to encounter new opposition and play against sides that we would not meet in our normal schedule.
“We are thoroughly looking forward to it.”
Crusaders have added goalkeeping coach David McClelland and physio Brian Strain to their backroom team.
Meanwhile former Portadown favourite Martin Russell has been appointed Bray Wanderers manager while Cork City have signed former Crystal Palace ace Damien Delaney until the end of the 2019 season.
The 36-year old defender signalled his wish to leave Palace last month after spending six successful seasons with the club.
THE four-star Forrestmix Hotel just outside St Petersburg, where England’s footballers will be based during this summer’s World Cup, boasts 107 plush rooms, gym facilities, a pool, a VIP spa, three restaurants and a helicopter pad. The players will be able to fill their downtime with myriad forms of entertainment — laptops, tablets, games consoles, box sets — whilst theoretically keeping in touch with the rest of the world via their smartphones.
When Gary Lineker and his England team-mates travelled to Mexico for the 1986 World Cup, they were only allowed to make one phone call a week, which had to be done from the main reception, the location of the only phone in the hotel. The only entertainment inside the rooms was a television with a couple of unintelligible channels on it.
And so, the players would make their own fun. Some played cards. Others would set up a pool and have a bet on the football. It was, as Lineker puts it, “a bit like prison”.
But there were certain advantages to their confinement as well. Shielded from the harsh glare of social media by virtue of the fact that it hadn’t been invented yet, Bobby Robson’s England squad were able to exist largely in a bubble, oblivious to the brouhaha their run to the quarter-finals was creating at home.
In a way, Mexico ’86 was the last vestige of a more innocent age.
By the time England arrived in Italy four years later, the now-customary travelling circus of fans, hooligans, long-lens cameras, pack journalists and 24-hour scrutiny was already beginning to take ominous shape.
Back home, football was already in the early throes of a revolution that would transform it from a sport of ordinary blokes and grimy terraces to one of reclusive billionaires and half-time cheeseboards. The late Bobby Robson now lends his name to an executive suite at St James’s Park, promising “the very finest a la carte dining and premium seating, paying fitting homage to one of football’s most cherished legends”.
And yet, English football’s Year Zero was also its last hurrah. It’s the last time the national team came remotely close to winning the World Cup, leaving an itch that a generation later, we are still waiting to scratch. Meanwhile, Lineker’s feats would propel him into a lucrative retirement, enduring celebrity and a successful second career in broadcasting. And it all began one sweaty night in Turin.
The old joke you made is that football is a simple game: 22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes, and then the Germans win on penalties. But back in 1990, there was none of that. In fact, it was England’s first ever penalty shootout. So what’s going through your mind at that stage?
“I mean, obviously there was the Gazza thing in extra time,” said Lineker (below at the World Cup draw in December).
“That distracted us a little bit. And then the conditions, the heat and everything else, are so exhausting that you’re just trying to get to the end of the game. We’d done 120 minutes against Belgium, 120 minutes against Cameroon, then a threeday gap. Even on the morning of the game, I could barely get out of bed. I was so stiff and so tired from the concrete pitch in Naples. But adrenaline is an incredible thing. And then, obviously, towards the end you start thinking it would go to penalties. But I was planning to take one anyway. I used to take 30 to 50 penalties every day, in training.”
Thirty to fifty? Every day? “During the whole World Cup, yeah. In ’86 and ’90. With no goalkeeper. I didn’t want them to affect my confidence. So I’d just go and hit 30 to 50, depending on how I felt. And I’d just keep practising the same penalty, the whole tournament. Keeper’s left, so I was basically aiming it just outside the post. When you hit it with the inside of your foot, it just curves naturally. And you always bottle it a little bit.”
So you would decide on the sides days in advance?
“This is a true story. The day before the Cameroon game, we trained at the ground, and at the end I was about to hit my practice penalties. The day before a game, I didn’t do quite so many: probably 20. So Bobby Robson called me over, and he said: “Gary, you might want to think about your penalty practice. I’ve just been told there’s a Cameroon spy at the ground.” So I just hit 10, and I hit them all low to the keeper’s right.
“So we get a penalty with eight minutes to go, 2-1 down. Just as I hit it, I could see the keeper going low to his right. Two-all. Then we got another one in extra-time, and I thought: ‘What the f*** do I do with this one?’ But he went so early on the first one, I thought he’s going to go one way or the other, so I’ll just whack it down the middle. And that was exactly what I did.”
Was anybody else practising like you were?
“No. But if I was in charge, they would. I would have them hitting 20, 30 a day at least. Even if they’re not taking them. It drives it into you. I hear really sensible football people going, ‘Yeah, but it’s different because you can’t replicate the situation’.
“I just don’t get it. Do golfers never practise a 6ft putt because it’ll be different on tour?”
It’s now been 52 years since England won anything. Do you have... a theory at all? Mine is that it’s largely a mental thing.
“I don’t see why it should be overly mental. It’s not a national trait, because we’re excellent in lots of sports. Look at the Olympics. I just think that a) it’s very, very hard to win, and b) our youth development has been s*** for 40 years.
“I mean, it’s only five or six years since we stopped playing little kids on full-sized pitches
❝ Lots of (retired) players turn to drink or gambling. I was lucky — I found something else I could do
with big goals, which beggars belief. We never learned like the Spanish players, the South American players do: pass the ball, possession, dribbling skills. It was just hit it long, punt it down the pitch. So I think, looking at the next World Cup, we’ll be really good. We’ve got so many talented kids coming through, playing the game properly.”
What do you make of England’s chances this time?
“Not great. I don’t think the expectations should be very high. Gareth Southgate’s a sensible guy. I think he could sell it to the nation that this is just one for experience. Play some of the young players. If we got to the quarters, I think that would be a really good achievement.”
AS well as winning the Golden Boot, Mexico ’86 also marked another milestone in Lineker’s career: his first stint as a broadcaster. After England’s exit, he stayed on as a pundit for the BBC’s coverage of the final between Argentina and West Germany.
Unable to resist the opportunity to cause a little mischief, host Des Lynam asked Lineker