The National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace in south London, England is a large sports centre and athletics stadium. It was opened in 1964 in Crystal Palace Park, close to the site of the former Crystal Palace Exhibition building which had been destroyed by fire in 1936, and is on the same site as the former FA Cup Final venue which was used here between 1895 and 1914.
Crystal Palace Football Club is an English professional football club based in Selhurst, South London, that competes in the Premier League, the highest level of English football. They were founded in 1905 at the famous Crystal Palace Exhibition building and played their home games at the FA Cup Final stadium situated inside the historic Palace grounds. The club were forced to leave the Palace in 1915 due to the outbreak of the First World War, and played at Herne Hill Velodrome and the Nest until 1924, when they moved to their current home at Selhurst Park.
Selhurst Park is an association football stadium located in the London suburb of Selhurst in the Borough of Croydon. It is the home ground of Crystal Palace Football Club playing in the Premier League. The stadium was designed by Archibald Leitch and opened in 1924. The stadium has hosted one international football match as well as games for the 1948 Summer Olympics. Part of the stadium incorporates a branch of Sainsbury's. The stadium was shared by Charlton Athletic F.C. from 1985 until 1991 and then by Wimbledon F.C. from 1991 until 2003.
Wimbledon Football Club was an English football club formed in Wimbledon, south-west London, in 1889 and based at Plough Lane from 1912 to 1991. Founded as Wimbledon Old Centrals, the club were a non-League team for most of their history. Nicknamed "the Dons" and latterly "the Wombles", they won eight Isthmian League titles, the FA Amateur Cup in 1963 and three successive Southern League championships between 1975 and 1977, and were then elected to the Football League. The team rose quickly from obscurity during the 1980s and were promoted to the then top-flight First Division in 1986, just four seasons after being in the Fourth Division.
Iain Dowie is a football manager, sports pundit and former Northern Ireland international footballer.
The 1997–98 FA Premier League saw Arsenal lift their first league title since 1991 and, in so doing, became only the second team to win 'The Double' for the second time.
Michael Gordon Harford, is an English former football player turned manager. He is currently the caretaker manager and chief recruitment officer at Luton Town, a club where he has spent a large portion of both his playing and non-playing career. In addition to two separate spells as a player at Luton, including as part of the team that won the League Cup in 1988, Harford has been the club's director of football, first-team coach and manager; the latter role saw him lead Luton to victory in the Football League Trophy in 2009.
Vasilis Lakis is a retired Greek footballer. He was nicknamed "Turbo" for his speed when attacking along the right wing and ability to provide accurate crosses for the strikers in the area.
Mark Abraham Bright is an English former footballer who is now a sports pundit on BBC, British Eurosport and Al Jazeera, as well as a coach at Crystal Palace.
Terence William Fenwick is an English football coach and former player. Playing as a defender, he made a total of 455 appearances in the Football League, for Crystal Palace, Queens Park Rangers, Tottenham Hotspur, Leicester City and Swindon Town.
Peter Nicholas is a Welsh former professional footballer and Wales international, now football manager.
Alan Desmond Lee is an Irish former footballer who played as a striker; he is now working as an academy coach at Ipswich Town. He scored 119 goals in 547 appearances in a 19-year professional career in the Football League, and won 10 caps for the Republic of Ireland.
George Ebialimolisa Ndah is an English-born Nigerian former professional footballer who played as a striker from 1992 until 2006.
The English Football League play-offs are an annual series of association football matches to determine the final promotion places within each division of the English Football League. In each division it involves the four teams that finish directly below the automatic promotion places. These teams meet in a series of play-off matches to determine the final team that will be promoted.
Dekel Keinan is an Israeli footballer who plays as a central defender for Sacramento Republic FC.
The English Football League Championship play-offs are a series of play-off matches contested by the teams finishing from 3rd to 6th in the EFL Championship table. The semi-finals are played over two legs, with 3rd playing 6th and 4th playing 5th, with the return fixtures following. The final is played at Wembley Stadium, although from 2001 to 2006, it was played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff while Wembley was being rebuilt.
Bjørn Rune Gjelsten is a Norwegian businessman and Offshore powerboat racing World Champion. He was also a joint owner of Wimbledon Football Club and involved in the controversial relocation of the team from London to Milton Keynes.
The 1985 Kenilworth Road riot occurred before, during and after a 1984–85 FA Cup sixth-round football match between Luton Town and Millwall on 13 March 1985 at Luton Town's Kenilworth Road ground. It was one of the worst incidents of football hooliganism during the 1980s, and led to a ban on away supporters by Luton Town which lasted for four seasons. This itself led to Luton's expulsion from the Football League Cup during the 1986–87 season. The club also began to enforce a membership card scheme, which Margaret Thatcher's government attempted to have adopted at grounds across England. Kenilworth Road was damaged, along with the surrounding area, and a year later was converted to an all-seater stadium.
Wimbledon Football Club relocated to Milton Keynes in September 2003, 16 months after receiving permission to do so from the Football Association on the basis of a two-to-one decision in favour by an FA-appointed independent commission. The move took the team from south London, where it had been based since its foundation in 1889, to Milton Keynes, a new town in Buckinghamshire, about 56 miles (90 km) to the northwest of the club's traditional home district Wimbledon. Hugely controversial, the move's authorisation prompted disaffected Wimbledon supporters to form AFC Wimbledon, a new club, in June 2002. The relocated team played home matches in Milton Keynes under the Wimbledon name from September 2003 until June 2004, when following the end of the 2003–04 season it renamed itself Milton Keynes Dons F.C..
The Football League play-offs for the 1996–97 season were held in May 1997, with the finals taking place at the old Wembley Stadium in London. The play-off semi-finals will be played over two legs and will be contested by the teams who finish in 3rd, 4th, 5th and 6th place in the Football League First Division and Football League Second Division and the 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th placed teams in the Football League Third Division table. The winners of the semi-finals will go through to the finals, with the winner of the matches gaining promotion for the following season.
