Random pages from old programmes and stories behind them

[Foot of Astaire's]

When they did the Big Match Revisited on ITV4 a few years back, I was always surprised when Brian Moore read out letters and gave the writer's full address on TV.

Aye, I'd noticed that too. Given the story about Moore on the funeral thread it wasn't his worst bit of indiscretion!

[Sporting]

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[tee rex]

Continuing the intriguing investigation of "which other clubs' stuff is on sale at the club shop, and why?".

Exeter City programme, 1973: shoulder bags for Liverpool, Arsenal and Crystal Palace. The Big Three, as the media used to call them.

http://grecianarchive.exeter.ac.uk/i...133#gallery-12

[Various Artist]

From the Football League pull-out supplement 1973:

Apart from the perspicacity/timelessness of the comments therein, one thing that jumps out at me from that page is how universally the correspondents use the term "soccer". It's been discussed elsewhere how the modern-day insistence that it's some kind of 'Americanism' is clearly wrong, and certainly I seem to remember it was still reasonably common currency when I was reading Shoot! in the early '90s, but it was evidently very frequently and casually used at this point 20 years earlier again. Is it the post-1992 era of the Premier League and the concurrent general retrenchment of Cool Britannia and so on that shunted it out of use here, do we think?

[colchestersid]

Apart from the perspicacity/timelessness of the comments therein, one thing that jumps out at me from that page is how universally the correspondents use the term "soccer". It's been discussed elsewhere how the modern-day insistence that it's some kind of 'Americanism' is clearly wrong, and certainly I seem to remember it was still reasonably common currency when I was reading Shoot! in the early '90s, but it was evidently very frequently and casually used at this point 20 years earlier again. Is it the post-1992 era of the Premier League and the concurrent general retrenchment of Cool Britannia and so on that shunted it out of use here, do we think?

I'm not sure you can read too much in to that - the Football League Review (FLR) was consciously "modern" in outlook and likely replaced any references to "football" in the letters it published with "soccer". When it started in 1965 it was called the "Soccer Review"

The FLR was not well loved at the time but 50 years on it's a cracking read - take this page for example - it's a two for one with a frankly bizarre advert for club branded socks (self fitting in bri-nylon) and, 55 years before Covid, an article on the effect of a Polio outbreak on Blackburn's finances and crowds



Link as well to a fantastic website which has uploaded many of these

https://www.seagullsprogrammes.co.uk...-league-review

[tee rex]

I'd like to know more about those socks. Was there a high demand from Peterborough fans' feet? Is that the earliest "ding" for United or City?

[Sporting]

Ipswich 1973:

[Sporting]

Ipswich 1978:

[Sporting]

interesting article in League Football supplement 1973:

[Various Artist]

I'm not sure you can read too much in to that - the Football League Review (FLR) was consciously "modern" in outlook and likely replaced any references to "football" in the letters it published with "soccer". When it started in 1965 it was called the "Soccer Review"

Ahh, that's very interesting Sid. When I was scanning through the letters in search of any reference to "football" I did start to wonder if there was some editorialising going on, as there was such a blanket use of "soccer" it seemed more and more suspicious.

I guess a more pertinent question, then, would be was there some sort of concerted movement in the 1960s and '70s to introduce/popularise the newer name - at least on certain fronts?

[danielmak]

World Soccer Magazine started in 1960 if I remember correctly. This wasn't a US publication, which I know most folks on this board know. I have no idea why they chose Soccer instead of Football for the name. It seems like the US and Australia might be the two English speaking nations where the term Soccer is used as the main name to describe the sport. I can't believe that the publishers of World Soccer imagined that this name would lead to massive sales in the US and Australia, thus the name was required. I'm sure they were realistic that English speaking readers in Europe were the main audience.

[ursus arctos]

World Soccer was developed out of Soccer Star

[Forest Gump]

This illustration accompanied the Leyton Pennant (now Walthamstow) programme during the 1997-8 season. We've still got a few people around who were supporting us in the 90s, but no one has any idea who did the little doodle. I've always found it quite charming in an odd way, so have used it again in this season's Stow programme. While I'm on the subject, here's a link to download our most recent prog if anyone fancies a look. I'm already on our 8th programme of the season - I could do with another few months off.

[Forest Gump]

And on the subject of illustrations, I'm not sure how many club programmes have a drawing of a supporter's dog on them.

[Various Artist]

Lovely stuff FG, and quite surprising to see that the sponsor rates have barely gone up since the '97-98 season!


Also, Tyrone Hercules is an incredible name. I hope he's a pro wrestler now, at the very least.

[Capybara]

That's an excellent programme. I might have to pay Walthamstow a visit. Is Tyrone related to Cliff?

[Forest Gump]

Cheers Capybara! I'm lucky to have a few very dedicated contributors. I don't think Tyrone is any relation to Cliff, but I'm too young to remember him playing, so there might be a distant relationship.

VA - We sell this programme for the frankly ridiculous price of ?1 - that hasn't gone up since 1997 either. One of our sponsors is a printer, so we get them for free... Except for today when he called to say his printer was broken. Cue panicked phone calls to every printer in E17.