Dunphy's BBC debate a nostalgic reminder of English crisis never being far away

The former RTÉ pundit was at the centre of a conversation that shows much has changed in the sport but self-interest is always rife. 

ON THE LINE: Eamon Dunphy makes his case, alongside Jimmy Hill, in the 1993 debate at at the BBC. 

Nostalgia for the 1990s remains heavy. Just look at all those stadiums and parks the Gallaghers are filling. Football from the late 20th century has a similar cachet. No video assistant referees, no sportswashing; just good, hard, honest, simple fare, when men were men and pressing was what you did to your Burton suit. If the past is a foreign country then a recent BBC Archive release is a primary source of a time when the continental import remained exotic and not the dominant division of labour.

“Is English Football In Crisis?” asks an edition of On The Line in October 1993, broadcast the night before Graham Taylor’s England played a key World Cup qualifier in Rotterdam. You know the match: Brian Moore correctly reading Ronald Koeman’s free-kick – “he’s gonna flick one” – and the pathos of Taylor’s hectoring of the linesman as England’s hopes of qualifying for USA ’94 sink into the briny.