The Hertfordshire club’s next opponents are not, however, Newcastle United but, in a second-round FA Umbro Trophy Tie tomorrow, Gateshead.
Despite the obvious distractions of next Wednesday’s FA Cup fourth-round replay at St James’ Park, Stevenage are keen to rebuff suggestions that they will be taking tomorrow’s game lightly.”The Trophy is our prime target this season,” Paul Fry, the GM Vauxhall Conference club’s press officer, insisted yesterday “It is unreal that we are travelling to Newcastle, though. It would have been much easier to concentrate on the game anywhere else.”Even though Gateshead are bottom of the Conference, Borough will not be taking victory for granted. They lost 2-1 at the International Stadium last month to give the Tynesiders one of the two league wins they have secured this season.Tomorrow John Carroll, the Gateshead manager, will welcome the experienced Gary (brother of Bryan) Robson back from a ban, but his Stevenage counterpart, Paul Fairclough, has suspension problems. Steve Perkins, another key midfielder, can play tomorrow but will be suspended on Wednesday.Fairclough must also do without two defenders for both fixtures on Tyneside: Michael Love, who is out for six weeks with a broken foot sustained in the 1-1 draw against Newcastle at Broadhall Way last Sunday, and Ryan Kirby, whose six-game suspension has ruled him out of both games against the Magpies – “he’s just gutted about that,” Fry said – as well as tomorrow’s tie.Despite the selection problems, Stevenage are confident that their squad is strong enough to keep them on course for Wembley in the Trophy and, if their wildest dreams come true on Wednesday, they may still have two routes to the twin towers open to them this time next week.. Jason Soloman, who scored the first goal in the 2-1 win FA Cup third-round win at Swindon, starts a ban which will also rule him out of Wednesday’s big game against Kenny Dalglish’s Magpies.
Neil Ruddock has refused a loan move from Liverpool to Tranmere.The full-back Richard Edghill has rejected a lucrative offer to stay at Manchester City and could leave for nothing.. Only players signed before tomorrow can play in the rest of this season’s European competitions.The Leeds striker Rod Wallace has turned down a move to Middlesbrough The clubs had agreed a fee of pounds 1.5m. And I’m going to work hard to make sure it happens.”
Manchester United have abandoned the search for new players before the deadline for Uefa competitions. Sinclair sees the move as an opportunity to recover his form. He said: “I wouldn’t be coming back to the Premier League if I didn’t want to recapture my best form – that’s what I’m here for. A small Paris hotel tried to whip up a little fervour last week by decking itself out in the national flags of all 32 countries involved: it was immediately ordered by the Paris Town Hall to take the flags down, because they made the street look untidy.. Trevor Sinclair yesterday joined West Ham in a cash-plus- players deal from Queen’s Park Rangers, who have taken the Northern Ireland internationals Iain Dowie and Keith Rowland, plus pounds 2m in exchange.
Many French First Division games have attendances of fewer than 10,000.The country as a whole remains, with four months to go, intrigued and interested rather than excited about the World Cup French officialdom has not caught the spirit at all. The organising committee is still trying to persuade the roads ministry to put up special signs to direct foreign fans to the stadiums. The truth is that the France, unlike almost all its neighbours, is not a passionate, football-supporting country. Shades, perhaps, of England in the run-up to 1966: could Monsieur Jacquet yet prove to be the French Alf Ramsey?His squad, packed with excellent defenders and midfielders, still lacks a top-class striker: Stephane Guivarc’h of Auxerre (sought by Newcastle United, according to the French press) and David Trezeguet of Monaco were tried out against Spain but both looked clumsy in the awkward conditions.Will this match be enough to stoke French passions? The crowd was hopelessly quiet, though, admittedly, many were invited dignitaries rather than genuine fans. Is it difficult?Nat West writes: Difficult? It’s hopeless! It’s heart-breaking! You slave away at it all your life and then you end up writing a dead-end showbiz advice column in a newspaper when you should be lolling on your yacht at Antibes. “It’s not natural and it doesn’t do the land any good.”Although he spent the last half of his working life sitting on a tractor, he always enjoyed an opportunity to visit friends who still kept horses and try his hand at ploughing with them. “When you’re ploughing with horses and the plough’s set right, you can hear the plough singing through the soil and the horses are just sailing,” he said “Man, that’s a great feeling.”.
The absence of an accusatorial procedure when an appeal against the refusal of planning permission is conducted by way of an informal hearing, rather than by a public local inquiry, places an inquisitorial burden upon the Inspector hearing the appeal. Dyason v Secretary of State for the Environment and another; Court of Appeal (Lord Justice Nourse, Lord Justice Pill and Lord Justice Thorpe) 28 January 1998
The Court of Appeal allowed the appellant’s appeal against the dismissal by the High Court of his application to quash the decision of an Inspector appointed by the Secretary of State for the Environment, given by letter dated 19 February 1997.Having conducted a hearing on 5 February 1997, the Inspector dismissed the appellant’s appeal against the decision of the second respondent, Chiltern District Council, to refuse planning permission for the carrying out of alterations to existing buildings to provide a single-storey agricultural building for ostrich breeding, rearing and general storage on land at Chesham.The appellant appeared in person; Tim Mould (Treasury Solicitor) for the Secretary of State; Anne Williams (Solicitor to Chiltern District Council, Amersham) for the Council.Lord Justice Pill said that the issues identified by the Inspector were “whether the development would be unacceptably harmful to the character and appearance of the area and, if so, whether there was sufficient agricultural justification which outweighed that objection”.It was submitted by the appellant, inter alia, that he had not been given a fair hearing by the Inspector. Until the team starts winning convincingly, he said in a recent interview, the French will not get excited about the event.The performance against Spain, some people’s tips to win France ‘98, was certainly encouraging. The exiled stars, such as Zinedine Zidane (who scored the frost-assisted winning goal) and Youri Djorkaeff produced, finally, something like their Italian club form. “What a good augury,” said the banner headline in the daily sports paper, L’Equipe.Until now, French preparations, on the field, for France ‘98 have been dispiriting: a series of draws and defeats and narrow victories over second- rank teams such as South Africa. The right wing-back, Lilian Thuram, and right-sided midfielder, Ibrahim Ba, also given rave reviews in Serie A this season, showed why the French coach, Aime Jacquet, continues to ignore the Tottenham Hotspur winger David Ginola, who is still very popular in France.Jacquet, a taciturn man accused of producing dull and mechanical teams from promising components, was jeered by the crowd when he was presented before the match.
