An Echo of Glory
Following on from our previous series, Winning at Dominoes, An Echo of Glory is a twenty-part history of football in England and Wales, from the mob games of the middle ages to the corporate game of the 21st century.
Podcast 217: An Echo of Glory, Part 20 – Princes & Paupers
So, we've come to the end of the line. The last episode in this series. Thanks for listening to this series, we'll be continuing to put Scorchio out every Friday, and I'll make a decision on what to do next at some point in the future. This week brings us to 2010, and...
Podcast 215: An Echo of Glory, Part 19 – Funny Business
It's time for the penultimate episode of An Echo of Glory, our series of the history of football in England & Wales. This week's episode takes us into the 21st century, to corporate wrestling at Manchester United and the formation of FC United of Manchester, Roman...
Podcast 213: An Echo of Glory, Part 18 – The Wider Interests of Football
In the aftermath of Euro 96, the Premier League bubble continued to grow as football clubs rushed towards the stock markets. But the new-found wealth within football wasn't being shared equally, and smaller clubs were being left behind as the biggest grew and grew....
Podcast 211: An Echo of Glory, Part 17 – A Whole New Ball Game
This week's episode of An Echo of Glory takes us from the period following the Hillsborough disaster to Euro 96. A lot happened in those six years - a World Cup semi-final for England, the collapse of two Football League clubs and one former Football League club, the...
Podcast 208: An Echo of Glory, Part 16 – Hillsborough
This week's episode of An Echo of Glory has been brought forward from Sunday to this morning, to align with a tragic anniversary. On April 15th 1989, 96 football supporters travelled to a match and did not return. What followed made heroes of some, whilst others -...
Podcast 207: An Echo of Glory, Part 15 – The Day After
In May 1985, football in England suffered an existential trauma that some felt it may have been impossible to recover from. This week, we tell the story of how the game reacted to the twin disasters of Bradford and Heysel, as the national team continued to morph into...
Podcast 205: An Echo of Glory, Part 14: Eighteen Days in May
With the benefit of hindsight it had been coming for years, but the events of May 1985 blew through football in this country like a slow motion nightmare. In just eighteen days, 96 people were killed at matches featuring English clubs, the result of years of policy...
Podcast 203: An Echo of Glory, Part 13: Decline, Part 2
By the end of the 1970s, the decline had become a slump. Crowds were down, hooliganism was up, and England's first appearance in a major tournament finals in a decade ended in ignominy at the 1980 European Championships. Things were going to continue to get worse....
Podcast 202: An Echo of Glory, Part 12 – The Morning After The Morning After
Football in England underwent quite a few changes during the summer of 1974, but few would have guessed at the time that within just a few years English clubs would come to dominate the European Cup. For all of that, though, hooliganism was continuing to grow and the...
Podcast 201: An Echo of Glory, Part 11 – Decline, Part 1
Last week, we told the story of the big personality and big battles that defined football in England and Wales between 1969 and 1975. This, however, is only one of the narratives of this era. The flipside to all of this was that a feeling of decline was descending...
Podcast 200: An Echo of Glory, Part 10 – Tough At The Top
This week, it's the 200th 200% podcast, so well done us. At the start of 1969, England held the World Cup, the European Cup, and the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup. Within six years, any hopes of English football superiority failed to come to anything, but there are two...
Podcast 199: An Echo of Glory, Part 9 – 1966, 1967, 1968 & All That
In 1962, the FA finally took a big brave step into the 20th century and allowed a manager complete control over team affairs. But could Alf Ramsey turn England around, with just four years before they were due to host a World Cup? Also, there's Manchester United at...
Podcast 198: An Echo of Glory, Part 8 – Telstar
As the 1950s wore on, it was becoming increasingly clear that the Football League's maximum wage could not continue, but it took the threat of strike action to finally move professional footballers towards the executive class. Meanwhile, the smell of reform was also...
Podcast 197: An Echo of Glory, Part 7 – Light & Distance
As the home nations floundered by refusing to change in a rapidly modernising world, the club game surged on in the years after the end of the Second World War. Floodlit football and the posibility of regular matches against European clubs was on the horizon, but...
Podcast 196: An Echo of Glory, Part 6 – The Denuding of England
Britain had given the game of football to the world, and it was long believed that they were naturally the best at it, as well. Fallings out with FIFA meant that the home nations didn't take part in the first three World Cups, but by 1946 the world had changed an...
Podcast 195, An Echo of Glory, Part 5 – From Depression to Nihilism
We've reached 1930 in this week's episode of An Echo of Glory, our weekly history of football in England and Wales. The shockwaves of the Wall Street Crash were about to be felt around the world, and many of the worst-affected areas in this country were football...
Podcast 194, An Echo of Glory, Part 4 – The Roaring Twenties
It’s time for the next episode of An Echo of Glory, our twenty part history of football in England and Wales, and this week, for the fourth episode in this series, the First World War has just ended and the football is back for a decade of intransigence, expansion...
Podcast 192: An Echo of Glory, Part 2 – Victorian Values
This morning sees the second episode of out podcast series An Echo of Glory, which tells the story of football in this country from its origins through to the modern day. At the end of our first episode the first FA Cup and first international match between England...
Podcast 191: An Echo of Glory, Part 1 – From Genesis to Revelation
We have a new podcast series for 2020, starting this morning. This is An Echo of Glory, a new, twenty-part series charting the history of football in England and Wales, from its codification to the modern day. This first episode is about how football came to be, from...