I heard about this, disbelievingly, on the radio yesterday.

Guardian Linky

What a wonderful story.

They could have invited Barcelona, Real Madrid or Manchester United to inaugurate their fine new stadium. Instead a great Italian institution summoned the club standing 12th in the third tier of English football to join Thursday’s opening ceremony and, if there has been a more elegant gesture in the history of football, it would be good to hear of it.

For it was Notts County, in 1903, who answered the call of a Juventus member, an Englishman named John Savage, to send a set of the club’s black and white striped shirts to replace the pink numbers worn by the players of the Italian club since their founding by a group of students six years earlier. Thus did Notts, who were then midway through a spell in the old First Division, save Juventus from a century of being confused with pink-shirted Palermo.

It must have been a pretty cool experience for the Notts County players. I had forgotten that Juve got their strip choice from Notts County…a piece of trivia, I’d heard years ago.

new the trivia did not know the recent story.

I just realised it was that **** Lee Hughes that scored Notts County’s equaliser. KInda put a downer on it for me now.

wendyball is for jeyers.

jus’ sayin’ like.

pointless posting on threads of no interest to you is for knobends

jus’ sayin’ like

nice story that, although i don’t find it that hard to believe. i know from my travels that most people still consider this the spiritual home of the game and the tradition of our football is held in higher regard than we often imagine.

“disbelievingly” was probably an overstatement 🙂

I remember a chap from Notts County ages ago being interviewed telling the presenters that it was likely that they’d be playing at Juve when they opened the stadium…now, “disbelieving” was not an overstatement back then.

Btw tm, I missed your kind invite to the Dartmoor ride (you posted on a thread, and I didn’t revisit the thread till a while later)…and not visiting the other forum that much, I hadn’t seen any mention of it. As it happens, I wouldn’t have been able to make it anyway, but it sounds like you all had a good day. I promise to try and make the next one.

no bother, there’s a bunch of guys coming down from clevedon in october for a group ride so maybe next time 8)

I heard this and thought it was quite cool. I do like this kind of thing.

Talking of elegant gestures – former Celtic player John Kennedy, who had his career ended in his early 20s by a shocking tackle in an international friendly a few years back – had a benefit match played for him between Celtic and Man U legends recently. Full 60,000 sell out at Celtic Park and he donated the proceeds to the East Africa appeal.