Sporting Memories

7:30pm Wednesday 23rd July 2008

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10 YEARS AGO AS rookie Reggae Boy Ricardo Gardner prepared for a new life with Wanderers, another international – the veteran former England striker Peter Beardsley – was desperately trying to keep his Reebok career alive.

The 37-year-old had a horrible first season after joining the Whites from Newcastle. After a promising start, he was dropped, transfer listed and shipped out on loan to Manchester City and Fulham as Wanderers toiled in vain to stay in the Premiership.

There was widespread rumour of a fall out with manager, Colin Todd, and speculation that Wanderers were desperate to get shut of him.

But Beardsley, back in the fold on the club’s pre-season tour of Ireland, remained upbeat about his Reebok future.

He hoped he could start the new season with a clean slate.

“I feel I’m good enough to be playing and, ideally, I want to be playing in the Bolton team,” he said.

“The manager felt I wasn’t good enough to play in the Premier Division, maybe he’ll think I’m good enough for the First Division. I hope so.”

Todd, meanwhile, had paid £1million for Gardner, pictured, the 19-year-old Jamaican, who had made a name for himself in the World Cup. But prospects of him being available for the start of the new season were receding because of delays in the granting of his work permit.

One young sportsman who was very much in the swing was Andrew Flintoff.

Lancashire’s exciting 20-year-old all-rounder was lined up for his England debut in the fourth Test against South Africa at Trent Bridge.

25 YEARS AGO BRITISH athletics selectors dropped a bombshell when they refused to let Steve Ovett double up at the forthcoming World Athletics Championships in Helsinki.

He was entered in the 1,500m with middle distance rival, Seb Coe, entered in the 800m, but when the selectors refused both men permission to enter a second event, an angry Ovett lashed out.

“I saw no problem in doubling up,” he said. “I love competition – the more races I’m in, the better I like it.

“Nobody has contacted me and I’m left wondering what I did wrong.”

There was a rude awakening for the Bolton Wanderers players when they returned for pre-season training.

Manager, John McGovern, imposed a tougher than normal regime, determined to have his team in peak form – not for the start of the new campaign but for the start of their pre-season tour of Ireland.

“If we can start as we mean to go on it will be the best possible build up to the new season,” McGovern said as he welcomed new signings Tony Caldwell, Peter Valentine, John Platt and Eric Snookes to his squad.

Two familiar figures were preparing to bid farewell to Burnden. Chris Thompson, top scorer the previous season, was in talks with three North-west clubs while midfielder, David Hoggan, was having a trial at Dundee United.

35 YEARS AGO JIMMY Armfield’s Burnden Park makeover, including the proposed signing of Manchester United’s Tony Dunne, was paying dividends.

Home attendances the previous season had rocketed by 56 per cent – the biggest increase of any club in the Football League – and season ticket sales were booming.

Talks were continuing, but Armfield was confident of persuading Dunne, the Republic of Ireland international freed by United, that he could be part of something big at Bolton.

Bury’s directors, meanwhile, were on the verge of a signing coup of their own, although in their case they preferred to play down, rather than talk up, the player’s reputation.

They at least showed they were prepared to forgive and forget by offering the former England and Sheffield Wednesday centre-half, Peter Swan, a three-month trial. Swan, rated one of the best defenders in the country in his day, was one of three Wednesday players – Tony Kay and David ‘Bronco’ Layne were the others – who served prison sentences and handed lifetime bans for their involvement in a match-fixing betting scandal that rocked the football world.

The life ban had been lifted the previous year and Swan returned to Hillsborough, but, after regaining his first-team place, he fell out of favour and decided to move on in search of regular first-team football.

But there was no mention of the scandal in the day’s report, merely that Swan had been “out of soccer through a lengthy ban”

Die-hard Tykes might have referred to him as “Sir Geoffrey” but life was getting distinctly uncomfortable for Boycott over in Yorkshire.

They were struggling in the County Championship and a poll in a Leeds-based newspaper called for him to stand down as captain because his international commitments were affecting his performances.

They weren’t for budging, however, on the rule that insisted that only players born in Yorkshire could play for the county.