It has taken twenty-eight years, but New Zealand are back on the global stage in world football. Their 1-0 win against Bahrain this morning saw them through to the World Cup finals next summer. A record crowd for a football match in the country of over 35,000 packed out The Westpac Stadium in Wellington. After a 0-0 draw in the first leg in the Middle East, a single goal from Rory Fallon scored the only goal of the match just before half-time, but New Zealand had to live with shredded nerves in the second half. Goalkeeper Mark Paston saved a 51st-minute penalty from Bahrain’s Sayed Adnan after Tony Lochhead fouled Abdulla Omar.

This morning’s result also means that there will no representative from the Middle East at a World Cup finals for the first time since 1974. This may inadvertently cause problems for New Zealand’s natural rivals Australia, though. Australia switched from the Oceania confederation to the AFC in search of more competitive football in 2006, and have now qualified for two successive World Cups (although their 2006 qualification came from winning the OFC group and winning a play-off against Uruguay). This hasn’t been completely popular with other AFC nations, and Australia qualifying at, as they may see it, the expense of a “genuine” Asian team with a second Oceanic team also knocking an Asian team out of the competition via the play-offs may reignite the debate over whether Australia should be in the AFC.

For New Zealanders of a certain age and above, the result this morning will have brought back a few memories of their only other successful qualifying campaign in the World Cup. The tournament had been expanded from sixteen to twenty-four teams for the 1982 tournament in Spain, and New Zealand were one of the biggest beneficiaries of this expansion. In the first round of the combined AFC/OFC qualifying competition, they started off with a 3-3 draw against Australia and won their group comfortably, scoring thirty-one goals in the process (including a 13-0 win against Fiji), which put them through to a final group of four, of which two nations would qualifying for Spain.

During this opening group stage, events elsewhere would help the team. Rugby, of course, is the traditional sport of New Zealand but the football team picked up more support than it ever had done before when South Africa toured the country in July and August of 1981. With most countries boycotting the Springbok team because of the apartheid system in South Africa, there were huge protests which included one match being cancelled, a  sit-down protests in the centre of Wellington and a light plane dropping flour bombs on the pitch during the final test match between the two sides in Auckland.

The second group stage saw New Zealand playing against Kuwait, China and Saudi Arabia. They struggled throughout this round of home and away matches, losing at home to Kuwait and struggling to draws against China and Saudi Arabia, but managed to turn things around in their final two matches, managing a 2-2 draw in Kuwait City in their penultimate match and finshed with a 5-0 win against Saudi Arabia on an artificial pitch in Riyadh, with drew them level on points and goal difference with China, to forcing a play-off match against them in Singapore. New Zealand won this match to book their flight to Spain and, if for no other reason than sheer effort, they deserved it. Their 1982 World Cup qualifying campaign was, at the time, the most arduous ever undertaken by a country – they had travelled 55,000 miles and played more matches and scored more goals than any team ever had in qualifying for the World Cup at the time.

They were also the last team to qualify for the competition, with their final match being played on the tenth of January 1982, just before the draw for the finals of the compeition itself. Thedraw wasn’t find to them, pitching them against the tournaments Brazil, a strong Scotland team and the perennial (to the point of cliche) “dark horses”, the USSR, with their matches to be played in Seville and Malaga. When Scotland raced into a 3-0 half-time lead one might have felt that humiliation would be inevitable in all three of their matches, but second half goals from Steve Sumner and Steve Wooddin made Scotland sweat in bringing the score back to 3-2 before goals from John Robertson and Steve Archibald finally settled their nerves.

New Zealand lost all three of their matches in the end, following their 5-2 defeat against Scotland with 3-0 and 4-0 losses against the USSR and Brazil respectively. The size of their task, however, is easily shown from the players that scored against them in their remaining matches. Oleg Blokhin and Sergei Baltacha were amongst the goalscorers in their match against the USSR, whilst the goalscorers against them for Brazil were Zico, Falcao and Serginho. Also, the two goals that they did score had some influence on the rest of the competition. They meant that Scotland started their final match against the USSR with an inferior goal difference and on equal points, meaning that Scotland had to win rather than draw their final match. It ended 2-2 and Scotland were out. Had they beaten New Zealand 5-0 rather than 5-2, they would have qualified on goals scored.

All of that, though, is in the past. It seems unlikely that New Zealand could get as difficult a draw as they did in 1982 again in 2010, but it is certainly possible. The majority of their current squad ply their trade in Australia and New Zealand, though there are a couple of names that may be more familiar to British readers, most notably Celtic’s Chris Killen, Ryan Nelson of Blackburn Rovers and their goalscorer this morning, Plymouth Argyle’s Rory Fallon, so there are solid professional players in their squad. Their success may also spur on Ireland, Slovenia and Bosnia-Hercegovina, who play their controversial UEFA play-off matches later today. If New Zealand can make it to the World Cup finals, why shouldn’t one of these countries upset France, Portugal or Russia?

A Short Precis On New Zealand’s 1982 World Cup Team

Weymouth Football Club, one of the ongoing financial basket-cases of the last three years in non-league football, might have finally reached the end of the line. Reports on the BBC this morning confirmed that, with talks with new buyers having collapsed, the club’s administrators are planning to wind the club up this morning. It will be the first folding of the new season should it come to pass. Perhaps the local businessmen of the area, almost all of whom seem to have been involved in the running of the club over the last three years, finally ran out of patience with the belief that the club could continue to trade.

Administrators were called into The Wessex Stadium a few weeks ago, but talks with consortia hoping to buy into the club have proved to be fruitless. With debts approaching half a million pounds and only Blue Square South football being played, this is perhaps hardly surprising. The administrators cannot allow the club to continue to run up debts while in administration, and the players at the club are already not being paid. If they see no way out, as is starting to become more and more likely, their ultimate responsibility is to ensure that the club is wound up as quickly as possible.

The likelihood is that, should Weymouth Football Club fold completely, their record would be expunged and the Vlue Square South would continue with twenty-three clubs. The overwhelming smell to come from The Wessex Stadium has been one of a rot that set in long ago. There is no reason why a football club with a catchment area the size of Weymouth can’t be successful, but for years the club chased a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow that didn’t really exist and with new “investors” often seeming to be more interested in the value of the land upon which their stadium sits than the wellbeing of the club that plays there.

It is this that is probably the most disturbing aspect of the situation at Weymouth. If the club goes bust, then so be it. Football clubs obviously cannot be allowed to continue to spend and live beyond their means and there will be occasional casualties. The big loss, however, is the potential loss of a sports facility – the stadium itself – to the community. Weymouth owns its ground, which will be sold off to the highest bidder should the closure come, and this will immediately hamstring the club’s supporters trust should they decide that they wish to form a new club.

At most clubs that have fallen into difficulties over the last few years, this hasn’t been a problem and it highlights one of the curious paradoxes of stadium ownership. Clubs that play at grounds owned by their local councils and get into difficulty at least have the comfort zone of knowing that the facility will remain and that any new club will be able to continue to play at it. Grounds that are privately owned, however, have to be considered by the administrators to be an asset of the stricken company running the club and have to be sold as part of any liquidation proceedings. The tragedy of Weymouth is likely to be that the town will be left perhaps permanently without a football stadium rather than it being temporarily without a football club.

Phil Gartside’s plan to revolutionise the Premier League (any personal gain from which to him or his club Bolton Wanderers would, of course, be entirely coincidental) has failed, for now. The issue of relegation from Premier League Two can be stored away for another day (in December 2010, to be precise), and Bolton Wanderers can get on with the small matter of avoiding the relegation that Gartside is so scared of. It was not this aspect of his proposals, however, that attracted the most attention in the media. It was the proposal to invite Celtic and Rangers to join the league that invited the most comment from the fourth estate.

Predictably, Premier League managers could be relied upon for bone-headed comments about how “great” it would be to have two such “massive” clubs in the league. Martin O’Neill, David Moyes and Harry Redknapp were amongst those happy to go on the record as being in favour of the idea without having properly thought it through. Meanwhile, however, Celtic and Rangers’ supporters seemed to be doing their best to undermine any chances of their clubs getting an invitation. Rangers supporters caused trouble in Europe again (and were up before UEFA today, of all days) and then, last weekend, Celtic supporters hardly covered themselves in glory by singing Irish Republican songs during the minute’s silence for Rememberance Sunday last weekend.

Both of these incidents have debates of their own which accompany them, but those are for a different time. What mattered at this particular time was that the two clubs were both demonstrating behaviour that would clearly be perceived as undesirable at a time during which they should, if they wanted into the English Premier League, have been on a charm offensive rather than merely being offensive. What, any rational person would have to conclude, was the advantage to allowing these two clubs in? The list of reasons not to was growing, and concern over the desirability of having the clubs join was only one of the reasons against having them.

We can probably safely discount the moral considerations in the decision-making process of the Premier League. Such matters don’t often overly concern them. The logistical problems, however, were something else altogether. Even if it was ratified, Premier League approval would be only the first hurdle that would need to be cleared. Permission would be needed from both the FA and the SFA. The FA might have turned out to be blinded by the glamour, it seems but if the SFA said no, convention dictates that the FA would have had no choice but to back the decision of their fellow association.

If both associations said yes, it would still have to be cleared by UEFA and FIFA. With England’s 2018 World Cup bid already floundering, it is doubtful that the FA would give their approval. However, there remains a degree of animosity towards the idea of Britain having four separate football associations within FIFA. The idea of forcing a merger to a Great Britain football team if both Scottish and Welsh clubs played inside the English league system might have been a tempting one to some other FIFA members, and both the FA and the SFA are already aware of it. Had the Premier League been ultra-bullish about it, they could have gone head to head with the entire football world over it, but the will clearly wasn’t there even in the hard-headed Premier League to fight for Celtic and Rangers’ admittance into English football.

The other consideration – one which may have been taken into account by the chairmen of English Premier League clubs – was the uniform unpopularity of any plan to allow two Scottish clubs into English football. This, to an extent, goes against received wisdom, which paints all football supporters as being wowed by anything huge and glamorous. We had been constantly told that “this is what the fans want”, but this opinion usually emanated from people that have spent more time in television studios or dressing rooms than on the terraces or queuing for rancid cheeseburgers. Looking for supporters of parachuting Celtic & Rangers wasn’t as easy as might have been expected. There were some that believed there to be nothing wrong with them joining the English system but felt that they should be made to start at the very bottom.

Even in Scotland, support for their departure seemed limited to supporters of other Scottish clubs that have long since been tired of their duopoly on success and media coverage, as well as the behaviour of a proportion of the clubs’ supporters. Even Celtic and Rangers supporters themselves didn’t seem that enthused by the idea. Ultimately, the rejection of the two clubs couldn’t have been more emphatic. The Premier League’s official statement was terse, and to the point:

They [Premier League clubs] were of the opinion that bringing Celtic and Rangers into any form of Premier League set-up was not desirable or viable.

As if that wasn’t emphatic enough, Richard Scudamore, perhaps having sensed the antipathy towards Gartside’s idea, went further than that when asked for his comments after the meeting by Sky Sports News:

There is nothing to say other than what it is in the official statement. The clubs have discussed it as part of strategic development, but as far as Rangers and Celtic are concerned – it’s a non-starter.

Asked to reiterate his statement, he banged the final nail into the coffin. “No means never”, he said. With that, Celtic and Ranger’s hopes died. Where they go from here is anybody’s guess. Unwanted by the English and increasingly despised in Scotland, the proposed Atlantic League remains a get-out clause for them, but will television companies pay for a second-rate Champions League? Are that many people interested in the best two or three clubs in Scotland, Belgium, Holland, Portugal and so on playing each other? Might they have to concede ever being able to play in the Champions League, where the serious money is, and seems likely to remain? All of these questions – and the fact that there is considerable doubt over the answers to all of them – mean that such a league may prove to be unworkable.

There may be a solution for Celtic and Rangers, but it would involve the support of the rest of Scottish football and a sea-change in attitudes. It might be time for Scottish football to go back to larger divisions, with the repetitiveness of playing each other several times per season clearly not having the desired affect upon the game in Scotland. A more equal distribution of television and sponsorship money might allow for more competition. Clubs might be encouraged to spend more money on training academies and bring through young, local players, giving them a possible stream of income. A wage cap may curb clubs from spending too much in the pursuit of success. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that Celtic and Rangers may have to be a little more circumspect in their relationship with Scottish football in the immediate future for their own good.

Meanwhile, back in England, Phil Gartside’s ultimate plan – to ensure that Bolton Wanderers eat from the Premier League trough in perpetuity – remains. The Premier League has certainly not dealt with the Premier League 2 with the same force as it has with the notion of the Old Firm joining it, and we can be certain that in six months or a year’s time it will be back on the table, possibly slightly modified but still ultimately seeking to increase revenue without addressing the elephant in the room – that Premier League clubs have had an ongoing cash bonanza since 1992 and still managed, on the whole, to wildly overspend. Even if Gartside was to get his own way, there is little in the recent history of the game to suggest that this particular habit would change.

After last week’s swine flu debacle, Heart of Clackmanannshire Football Club find themselves in court in this week’s Shit Shot Mungo, accused of deliberately and maliciously spreading the virus through playing an infected team in a recent match. A draconian punishment awaits them, unless Mungo McCrackas or Sir Roddy Bulbs can save the day. As ever, Shit Shot Mungo is brought to you by Dotmund, the number 4 and the letter Z. If you prefer your Mungo n high definition, you can get it here.

It has been one of the quieter football revolutions of the last decade – Peterborough United have, over the last couple of years, gone from being also-rans in League Two to being back in the Championship for the first time (if we gloss over the various name changes) for the first time since 1994. There is little doubt that much of this sudden rise has been largely due to the free-spending approach of Darragh MacAnthony. MacAnthony took control of the club in September 2006 and since then the club has spent over £2.5m in transfer fees and – just as significantly, considering the affect that they have had on the pitch – turned down massive transfer bids for players such as Craig Mackail-Smith and Aaron MacLean.

The manager for this period was, until earlier this week, Darren Ferguson. The son of Alex had taken the club to two successive promotions, but a dismal start to this season (at the time of writing they have won just two of their sixteen matches in the league so far) has been enough to do for him. After two successive promotions, it could be argued that Ferguson has cause to feel a little deflated by the division. Three months into the new season sees them at the bottom of the Championship table but they are hardly cut adrift at the bottom of the table at present and the transitional period required to bring in a new manager may cause yet instability at London Road.

It certainly sounds as if Darren has taken on some of the personality traits of his father. Earlier this week, The Guardian quoted an insider stating that Darren could be, “”stubborn, wilful and unwilling to admit to mistakes”, and hinted – not particularly subtly, in all honesty – that there had been a major breakdown in the relationship between MacAnthony and Ferguson. In the days since his departure, there have been concerted efforts on the part of Peterborough United to confirm that the parting of ways was “mutual” rather than a “sacking”. This suits MacAnthony quite neatly, as Ferguson signed a new, four-year contract during the summer and considering that the club that has been spending so heavily in the transfer market, they can probably seldom afford to pay off his entire contract.

It may also turn out to benefit Ferguson. He leaves Peterborough United with – gossip notwithstanding – his reputation having been greatly enhanced by his time in charge at the club, to the extent that the Daily Mail was linking him with the (not even vacant yet) Hull City job. The Premier League may yet come calling for him. Meanwhile, Peterborough United are left with the job of having to replace him. They have already been refused permission to speak to the AFC Bournemouth manager Eddie Howe by the club (although, of course, none of this means that this Howe won’t end up at London Road) and the most recent reports have Gareth Southgate, Peter Taylor and Steve Coppell down as the favourites for the job.

If that short list rings any bells, it’s probably because that short list formed many people’s top three for the until recently vacant Brighton & Hove Albion manager’s job. Brighton plugged their hole on Monday with confirmation that Gus Poyet has become their new manager. The new Brighton chairman Tony Bloom has a reputation as a gambler and there is an element of chance in offering the job to the previously untried Poyet. Having said this, however, something about Poyet seems to exude many of the right character traits required to be a manager. As their fourth manager in eighteen months, he can scarcely afford to be the wrong choice for the club.

One suspects that if Brighton hadn’t snaffled Poyet up, Peterborough might have been interested and the fact that they are looking at the same range of managers as Brighton – who are a division below them – says something about the rapidity of their rise. They may still be perceived by new applicants as a “lower division” club by potential applicants and a combination and the (untrue and unfair) belief that relegation from the Championship is a foregone conclusion is also allowed to take hold, this could damage them as well. It has to be said that for all the concern that Peterborough supporters may have about their club’s current league position, they have come a long way in a very short period of time.

Darren Ferguson, meanwhile, may be in a hurry to get himself a new job while the memory of those two successive promotions is still fresh in the mind of prospective new employers, and if the comments made this evening by Barry Fry, Peterborough’s agricultural Director of Football, are anything to go by, he will be back in work sooner rather than later. Would he have managed those two successive promotions without Darragh MacAnthony’s money, though? Possibly, but it would certainly be a stretch to imagine that, with all that money having been spent, that it was anything like all down to him. Having said that, however, less than six months into a four year contract and only just over a third of the way through the season seems like a rash decision, personality clashes notwithstanding. This “mutual” decision may turn out to be a high risk one for both Peterborough United and Darren Ferguson.

The death of Hannover 96 and Germany goalkeeper Robert Enke at the age of just thirty-two would have been a savage shock to anybody interested in international football regardless of the circumstances. The fact that his death is being widely reported as suicide is numbing. Our thoughts obviously are with his family and his friends at this time, and it would not be appropriate at this time comment much further on the specifics of what has happened this evening. We can, however, take a moment to appreciate a goalkeeper that was at the top of his game and who had broken into the absolute top of his profession.

His career took him from Borussia Mönchengladbach to Benfica then to Barcelona, Fenerbahce and Tenerife before returning to Germany to play for Hannover 96 (he had been their first choice goalkeeper there since 2004), where he became the club captain as well as succeeding Jens Lehmann in the German national squad. As with so many other goalkeepers, he seemed to improve with age and he would have been likely to have been at least in the running to keep goal for the national team at next years World Cup finals.

Away from football he was an avid supporter of PETA, which hints at a level of thoughtfulness not often associated with professional footballers, regardless of whether you are a supporter of their cause or not. The esteem in which he was held by his club has already been demonstrated this evening. His club’s web site has been replaced by a black curtain, and candles and flowers have been laid by supporters at the Niedersachsen Stadion. Dr Theo Zwanziger, president of the German FA, the DFB, said that the football community in Germany, “are deeply distressed and in mourning”, adding that, “all of our sympathy goes to the wife of Robert Enke and his family”.

And there isn’t a great deal more that we can add to that. Hannover 96, the Germany team and the community of football has lost one of its outstanding performers and we should all take a moment to mourn his passing.

Q. Where do you see Chester City FC and Steve Vaughan in 5 years time?

A. Chester City in the Championship or even the top flight. As for myself, still chairman unless of course you know something I don’t! Are you the VAT man, or the Taxman or maybe even the police?

In October 2004, Stephen Vaughan was interviewed by the independent Chester City website “Blues Mad” and volunteered that answer to a question from a supporter of the club. It took a shade over five years, but the past may finally have become to start up with Vaughan, who was this week disqualified from acting as a company director for eleven years by The Insolvency Service over his part in a VAT fraud that took place during his time at Widnes Rugby League Football Club. We shall wait and see now whether the Serious Fraud Office choose to follow this up with a a prosecution, although his agreement to the disqualification is not legally considered in itself to be an admission of guilt.

The allegation made against Vaughan relate to what is known as “carousel fraud”.  Carousel fraud is a very specific type of fraud which relates to the non-payment of VAT within the European Union. It entails setting up complicated import and export schemes between EU member countries, charging buyers for value-added tax in the country of destination, and then absconding with the tax rather than handing it over to the governments. Until relatively recently, it was believed that the majority of carousel fraud concerned electronic items, but it has become increasingly apparent over the last couple of years that fraudsters have moved away from these items. Vaughan was said to be involved in the simultaneous purchase and sale of clothes, and the amount of money not reported for tax was a shade over half a million pounds.

This wasn’t the only misdemeanour that Vaughan effectively admitted to in signing the Disqualification Undertaking. In addition to this, he also failed to disclose a loan of £392,000 that he made to the club to other directors. Both of these events took place during the summer of 2006, while Widnes RLFC was effectively insolvent. Supporters of Barrow AFC and Chester City FC may be starting to spot a link in the effects of Mr Vaughan’s own particular style of football club ownership, but in this case there is no suggestion of any wrongdoing on the part of either of those two clubs. It may, however, encourage the authorities to take a closer look at the recent goings-on at The Deva Stadium.

How, then, does this affect the current situation at Chester City? Well, the good news is that Vaughan now categorically fails the Fit & Proper Persons Test by any stretch of the imagination. Where the legalities of the disqualification become less clear is how this affects his current involvement in the club. Under insolvency law, from the 24th of November he will be banned from “acting as a company director, or in any way controlling a company”. Vaughan, however, quit as a director of the club earlier this year and there is no law against him continuing to hold shares in CCFC 2004, who are the holding company that owns Chester City.

However, how one chooses to interpret the phrase “in any way controlling a company” is open to question, but it doesn’t seem unreasonable to hold the opinion that Vaughan will continue in much the way that his history would seem to indicate that he will – staying just on the right side of the letter of the law most of the time, transgressing the spirit of it considerably more often, but occasionally straying the wrong side of it. What may prove to be more relevant over the course of time might well turn out to be who is watching and how closely they are watching. As all students of American history will be more than aware, when the American authorities wanted to nail Al Capone, they got him for tax evasion.

Two weeks ago, the Football Conference gave Chester City three weeks to pay the debts that they owe to fellow clubs Wrexham and Vauxhall Motors. We still don’t know whether these amounts will be paid on time or what the sanction will be if they don’t. What we do know, however, is that their form in the league has changed dramatically under new manager Jim Harvey with three straight wins and the gap between them and the safety one is now nineteen points, which, whilst it remains a massive amount, isn’t completely insurmountable if they can continue anything like the form that they have shown in the league of late.

All of this raises more question than it answers. It has been rumoured that the Football Conference wanted Chester City out of their league during the summer but that they were leant upon the Football League to admit them. If this was correct, the points deduction would have been a way for the Football Conference to remove the club after one season. If they were to stay up, what would they do? There is precedent, but it is precedent that the Football Conference has already ignored. They relegated Boston United straight into the Blue Square North from the Football League for agreeing a CVA which contravened the league rules in 2007 and then into the Unibond League at the end of the following season after they failed to exit administration.

Chester, of course, were kept in the Blue Square Premier during the summer after failing to agree a CVA. Whether they would be demoted at the end of the season if they did stay up would be another matter, but it seems as if everybody is bending over backwards to give them every chance to turn things around. Meanwhile, the club’s name continues to slosh around in the gutter and, while Jim Harvey may have turned around their fortunes upon the pitch, nothing seems to have been done to fix it in any other respect. That job remains with Chester Fans United, and if they had received anything like the support from the authorities that the club has the situation there could be very different.

They wait and watch. That’s what they do. About three hundred or so of them on either side of you. The older ones seem to be to the right of you, with the younger ones on the left. Watching football in the away end at Millwall is a strange, surreal experience. It starts at South Bermondsey railway station, where you’re funneled away from the home supporters and down a long walkway with metal fencing on each side. Once inside the ground, we walked through and into the bottom tier of the stand, where there were already no seats available. We might have been expecting stewards to rush over and berate us for standing in a gangway, but none came. We were still there an hour and three quarters later.

Then, of course, there was the staring. It’s part unsettling and part amusing, the knowledge that there are a good number of people not even watching the match and are watching you instead. They can’t, you rationalise, get anywhere near you (the four stands at The Den are completely separate structures with no way of getting between any two and for this match the lower tier of the two sides of the ground were closed) and they won’t see you immediately outside the ground, but they may catch up with you at some point and the fact that there are so many junctions at which they could meet up away from the ground throws the propensity for trouble away from the ground into sharp focus. You can see how it could or might happen, but last night it didn’t.

For all the spiky metal that surrounds it, though, The Den itself is a perfectly good facility and, considering that it is now approaching twenty years old, it has worn its age better than many of the other first rash of new grounds that started to spring up at the end of the 1980s and the start of the 1990s. Wimbledon had some cause to be worried by this fixture. For all that has happened over the last twelve months they were outplayed by a Wycombe Wanderers team that was inferior to this Millwall team at the same stage of the FA Cup last season. A win may have been too much to expect, a creditable performance probably not.

They got one. A tight first half saw Millwall dominate possession for long periods without being able to turn this into anything tangible in front of goal, and Wimbledon broke effectively and fluidly when they did get possession of the ball. Indeed the only clear cut chance of the first forty-five minutes fell to the visitors shortly before half-time, when a smart ball in from the right hand side found DannyKedwell unmarked and twelve yards out, but his shot rolled just wide and the chance was gone. Had he converted it, the second half might have been a very different proposition – even so, half-time came with the scores level and not a great deal to choose between the two sides.

Three minutes into the second half, Millwall struck. Neil Harris, who seems to have been at Millwall since the dawn of time (even though he spent a couple of seasons failing to completely fit in), found the corner with the sort of clinical finishing that turned out to be the main difference between the two sides. The second half soon became an even contest in a similar vein to the first, with both sides jabbing at each other. Wimbledon goalkeeper James Pullen made two outstanding saves at one end while, at the other, Elliott Godfrey poked the ball wide from a good position while Paul Lorraine headed narrowly over.

When Jason Price swept in a second goal for Millwall with just under twenty minutes to play it should have finished the game as a contest, but Wimbledon came back and, with nine minutes to play, Danny Kedwell’s smart backheel teed up Lewis Taylor to roll the ball in. For a short while, it looked as if the comeback could be on as Wimbledon threw themselves forward in search of an equaliser, but this left them exposed defensively and five minutes later Danny Schofield curled the ball into the top corner from twenty yards out to reinstate the two goal advantage. In the closing minutes, Price added a fourth goal to finish the contest.

Unlike last season, Wimbledon weren’t outplayed by their Football League opposition this time around and the final margin of Millwall’s win was certainly somewhat flattering. Ultimately, the difference between the two sides was in the finishing. When the professionals of Millwall had their chances, they took them. When the part-timers of Wimbledon had theirs, they didn’t. This, however, only tells part of the story of last night. We got a train back to London Victoria that was pleasingly incident-free. A travelling support of almost 3,500 had come to The Den and it is unlikely that Millwall will see a bigger, louder away support all season, yet the match passed off without incident. They watched and they waited but last night that was all that they did, and their hospitality was welcome. Next time they meet, it might just come as equals.

This week’s Video Of The Week takes us back to the race for the Second Division title from the 1978/79 season and features three matches from an episode of London Weekend Television’s “The Big Match”, presented as ever by Brian Moore. The first match is between from Selhurst Park and is between Crystal Palace and Notts County, the second match is from The Goldstone Ground and is between Brighton & Hove Albion and Blackburn Rovers (about whom Moore says, “they’ve already been relegated to the Third Division, so at least they’ll be relaxed) and the final match is from Roker Park, and is between Sunderland and Cardiff City.

Look out also for interviews with an extravagantly coiffured Terry Venables and with Alan Mullery, who looks as if he has stepped straight from the set of “The Sweeney” and, as if that isn’t enough to satiate you, the show also features LWT’s “Golden Goal of 1979″ competition, in which viewers are asked to put six of the best goals of the season in the correct order, with the prize for the winner being a trip to Munich for the European Cup final between Nottingham Forest and Malmo. Thrilling stuff.

Whilst it is normal for one or two Football League clubs to be given a bloody nose by a non-league club at some point during the early rounds of the FA Cup, predicting where this will happen is a slightly trickier business. Yesterday, ITV went with the “romance of the cup” and saw Norwich put seven goals past a Paulton Rovers side whose defence’s pre-match training didn’t appear to contain any extra “hap” sessions. In the evening, they went for Stourbridge against Walsall, only to see Walsall nick a scantly-deserved win and Oxford United against Yeovil Town, which saw Oxford win, but against the curiously unsatisfying backdrop of an impressive, all-seater stadium. One suspects that Oxford will play Yeovil in the league within two or three years, which somewhat detracted from the feeling of surprise at the result in that particular match.

The things about surprises is that, well, they are surprises. Bath City’s win away to a steadily declining Grimsby Town might have been an eyebrow-raiser, but the fact that it was taking place at Blundell Park was enough to keep the Outside Broadcast Unit away. Staines Town’s win at Shrewsbury Town was an even bigger surprise – not least because, mercifully, the travelling Staines supporters elected not to dress en masse like Ali G (although the winning goal was scored by someone called Ali C) – and these were the two matches that were pushed to the top of the bill on ITV’s (vastly improved) late night highlights show last night. This afternoon brings the second of their live matches. Northwich Victoria versus Charlton Athletic. Will Northwich do a Paulton or will they do a Staines?

Much of the answer to this question comes down to the state of the opposition, and Charlton Athletic supporters have cause to be concerned. Their team has won just one of its last six matches in League One and, while they remain in second place in the table, they are going at best sideways at the moment. Northwich, meanwhile, are deceptively placed in the the Blue Square North – without the points deduction that they suffered during the summer, they would be there or thereabouts in the promotion race, and they’re unbeaten in the league in two months. Moreover, last season they were a Blue Square Premier who, with relegation a certainty, won their last six matches in a row at the end of last season. The optimism that their supporters might have fel at the tail end of the summer has slipped away as the evenings have lengthened.

In the first half, Charlton Athletic are completely outplayed and it is somewhere between a mystery and an outrage that they are not a couple of goals behind, to the point that it is apt that ITV’s man at the match is the perennially breathless sounding Peter Drury. Northwich start agriculturally, throwing the goal forward towards their strikers, who buzz around the Charlton central defenders like hyperactive greenfly. This direct approach seems to unsettle Charlton, and Northwich start to control the game. If they have spotted a weakness in the Charlton defensive line, it may be goalkeeper Darren Randolph, who is their third choice and is making his debut for the club, but Randolph ends up being their first half saviour, making two brilliant saves. The nearest that they come, however, is a goalmouth scramble that ends up looking like a pinball game designed by an inhabitant from a lunatic asylum and requires Christian Dailly to block the ball on the line three or four times before Randolph falls on the ball like a soldier smothering a bomb.

The second half begins much as the first half ended, with Charlton continually fighting off a constant stream of  aerial bombardment. By now, Randolph is getting better protection from his defenders and there are slim pickings for the Northwich strikers, but it is so constant that Charlton can, for the first twenty minutes of the half, barely get the ball out of their own third of the pitch, but then the balance of power slowly starts to shift as Charlton’s superior fitness levels start to manifest themselves. An outstanding dedensive block on the edge of the penalty area prevents thm from taking the lead. It’s as close as they have managed all match, though, which says a lot about the way that Northwich have managed to tame their opponents. When Northwich do get into possession they frequently find themselves running down blind alleys and losing possession. Still, though, that long ball into the penalty area looks dangerous.

Then, with nine minutes to play, the breakthrough. A looping header through from the halfway line catches the Charlton defence cold. Randolph, so assertive in the first half, hesitates as Wayne Riley bears down on him and the eighteen year old striker (who has only been on the pitch for six minutes) toe pokes the ball under him. The ball rolls over the line agonisingly over the line, but it makes it in the end and Northwich have the lead. Three minutes later, any thoughts of running down the clock are put momentarily on hold as Bailey’s header loops over Randolph and is cleared off the line by Sam Sodje. Charlton’s response is utterly toothless. They switch tactics out of desperation and start throwing the ball forward but Northwich tidy it up with ease every time. Deep into injury time, there are a tense thirty seconds as Charlton with a free-kick on the edge of the penalty area, but the ball is charged down by the wall and with that the match is over. Northwich Victoria have beaten Charlton Athletic.

The better team on the day won. Of that, there is no question. The issue of how and why Charlton have fallen so far and so quickly is one for another day, but there is an important point to be made about this result which was only lightly touched upon by ITV. Last season, Northwich were locked out of their stadium by a vindictive owner, who referred to the ground as his “pension fund”, locked the gates and stripped it of the fixtures and fittings. They came perilously close to being expelled from the Football Conference then, and they did again in the summer when the Football Conference’s Dennis Strudwick expelled them from the league after their relegation from the BSP, only for them to be reinstated upon appeal. They are still here, and they will play Lincoln City in Second Round of the competition. They deserve nothing less.