About ⋆ An Old International

About

‘Whether the historians like it or not, football cannot be taken out of the history of the modern world and the history of the modern world is unevenly, but indisputably etched into the history of football.’
David Goldblatt, The Ball is Round


This is in a nutshell the purpose of this blog: The history of the game and its surrounding circumstances. Readers of a certain age will certainly be aware of the name An Old International. This was the byline of a sports and football writer in the North-East of England, Lancashire, Merseyside and Greater Manchester who started writing for the Manchester Guardian in the 1930s. His name was Harry Donald ‘Don’ Davies. He was also one of the first journalists to become aware of the importance of international football. Don Davies perished in the Munich Air Disaster on 6 February 1958, alongside eight of the so-called Busby babies and colleagues. At the memorial service for the victims of the disaster, Donny Davies was described by Neville Cardus, the distinguished cricket writer as

‘the first writer on Soccer to rise above the immediate and quickly perishable levels of his theme and give us something to preserve. Old International was not only the best of soccer reporters; he was also something of a poet.’


This blog however, is certainly not aiming at being a reincarnation of the ‘Old International’, Don Davies, far from it. However, having lived in Germany, England and now France and after watching and having played football in these three countries, the name does have some sense of reality to it.

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