These Football Times These Football Times

We’re joined in the Centre Circle today by Callum McFadden, author of Behind The Curtain Of The Beautiful Game. 

Callum’s first book features a string of fascinating interviews with characters involved in football, from players, coaches and managers through to referees, commentators and TV producers. Interviewees include Roy Hodgson, Martin O’Neill, Norman Whiteside, Matt Le Tissier, Les Ferdinand, Martin Tyler, Jeff Stelling and many more.

Callum has generously donated the profits from the book to Man On! Inverclyde, a well-being and suicide prevention charity, so you can enjoy a good read and benefit a good cause at the same time. 

It’s football’s greatest achievement that you’ve probably never heard of. In 1930/31, West Bromwich Albion won promotion from the Second Division and, if that wasn’t enough, they won the FA Cup as well. It was the first time that double had ever been done, it hasn’t been done since, and I think we can safely wager the TFT family silver on it never being done again.

We’re joined by members of Albion’s extended royal family, Paul and Ben Wood, who are, respectively, grandson and great-grandson of Stan Wood, the Throstles’ left winger who played a huge part in that season, playing 50 games and scoring 17 goals as his side won a unique double.

Our epic trawls through the 1970s and 80s are finally at an end, so in one final effort to keep the franchise going, Steven Scragg and Dave Bowler meet to debate the merits and otherwise of the two decades. Alex Ireland bravely takes on the Jack Taylor/Keith Hackett role. Maggie Thatcher, you took one hell of a beating.

In the decade that will never die, the 1980s team reunite one last time (probably) for a bit of whataboutery? Some listeners have pointed out a few of the stones that were left unturned in the course of the series, so everyone has reconvened to debate Aberdeen, Chelsea, the legendary summit between Keith Burkinshaw and César Luis Menotti. Thoughts eventually turn, of course, to Peter Hucker, Gary Bailey and Mirandinha.

Second Division played First at Highbury in 1982, and it was the lower tier side who came out on top, Terry Venables piloting a way to the FA Cup final for his side in a game where West Brom simply couldn’t get going. Dave Bowler relives a teenage nightmare in the company of Steven Scragg and Bill Hern. 

Join us as we talk to TFT’s very own Aidan Williams about his new book, Euro 1984: The Greatest Tournament You Never Saw. As the title suggests, here in the UK we missed most of the tournament when the TV companies chose to ignore it after none of the home nations qualified. So let us fill you in on just what happened 40 years ago.