Footy Book Review

It's been my good fortune recently to pick up four new books on different aspects of football nostalgia which, although small, are no less interesting to read.

I thought I'd tell you about them as they'd make a jolly good Christmas present for football fans of a certain age - that is if you don't steal them away to keep in your own collection first!

Studs!: The Greatest Retro Football Annual the World Has Ever Seen
By Barney Ronay
Hardback
Amazon UK Price: £5.99

Anyone here used to buy Shoot magazine when they were younger? I certainly did - mainly for the big glossy team pictures that adorned the centre pages every week. I used to delicately detach them from the staples and stick them up on my bedroom wall, a habit which lasted all the way up to, ooh, last Tuesday, I should think.

Anyway, enough of my personal hell. Shoot magazine was the ideal comic for youngsters everywhere back in the 1970's and 80's. It featured the latest football news, big pin-up photos of all the big stars as well as interesting articles looking at their private lives away from the bright lights of stardom.

Looking back, it was all a bit limp and cheesy, but that was surely the one thing that was good about it. If you want to find out how limp and cheesy, you have two options: 1) Buy some old copies of Shoot which are still available via eBay (more of which on another blog post), or 2) Buy Studs, a new book by Barney Ronay which compiles the best bits from nearly 20 years of the classic footy weekly.

In this book, you can find out just what was going through Bobby Moore's mind when he was arrested for stealing that bracelet in Bogota, the person that Alan Hansen most wanted to meet when he was playing for Liverpool (and no, it wasn't the club's defensive skills coach) and what went on in an average day in the life of George Best.

Not only that, but there's all the regular features that kept us occupied every week, such as You Are The Ref and the all-important quiz page. If all that isn't enough, you can marvel at the hairstyles and erratically trimmed moustaches that were rampant in the game back in days of yore, so if a bit of happy memory-jogging is the sort of thing you like, you'll do far worse than putting this in your Amazon UK shopping basket.

Flick to Kick: An Illustrated History of Subbuteo
By Daniel Tatarsky
Hardback
Amazon UK Price: £6.39

If I wasn't reading Shoot magazine as a kid, I was probably playing Subbuteo. The table football game that no-one ever played on a table was perfect for those wet Sunday afternoons when you wouldn't dare pull on a pair of boots and play football in the park.

As mentioned previously on SPAOTP, Subbuteo was the ideal combination of a collecting hobby and a game that was dead easy to play. All you needed was a pitch, a couple of teams and enough space in your bedroom to use both.

Subbuteo has a long and interesting history, starting off in the days when players were made of cardboard, through to its heyday in the 1970's when World Championships were played and sales were at their peak, even going through to the the 21st century when its existence looked to be virtually at an end due to lack of interest.

Author Daniel Tatarsky goes to great lengths to tell us about the game's creator and the many years of development that Subbuteo endured. There are lots of excellent photos to illustrate the story including some of that show how the Subbuteo brand even ventured into other sports such as cricket, rugby and angling (don't ask).

For anyone like me that used to play the game, this is a great book that fills in the gaps of Subbuteo's history that you were blissfully unaware of as a kid. Informative and entertaining in equal parts.

True Colours 2: Football Kits from 1980 to the Present Day
By John Devlin
Hardback
Amazon UK Price: £9.89

Next up is True Colours 2, a book which, like it's predecessor, devotes itself to documenting the many and varied football strips worn by club and country alike from the 1980's through to the present day.

It's amazing how many fans are so interested in footy kits. When you think about it, they're just bits of fabric that help distinguish one set of players from the other, but therein lies the fascination. Over the many decades that the game's been played, every team has adopted it's own colours and designs resulting in a greater following from the fans through a stronger sense of identity.

To that end, John Devlin has skilfully put together a second book full of kits - 20-odd years worth for each team - which this time features the main teams from the lower divisions. After the success of book 1 which did the same for those teams in last season's Premiership, this one repeats the formula by not only showing the kits but also analysing the trends and reasoning behind the strips worn by each team.

As an added bonus, this book also shows the outfits worn by the five 'home' nations since the 1970's, so if you want to know when Scotland favoured a bit of tartan on their backs or when Wales showed off the biggest dragon since St George was a lad, this'll tell you everything.

Another fantastic book for all you kit lovers and a perfect accompaniment to the first edition, which is still available.

Swap Yer: The Wonderful World Of Football Cards And Sticker Albums
By Rob Jovanovic
Hardback
Amazon UK Price: £7.19

Finally we have a book that should make former devotees of Panini stickers and collector cards break out in a broad smile. Rob Jovanovic tells us how the self-adhesive stickers of today developed out of a need to sell more cigarettes at the end of the 18th century to become the multi-million pound business that it is today.

It's a fascinating book which makes you realise just how long people have been striving to complete their sets of football player pictures. The cards given away with cigarettes 100 years ago were printed in black and white and were rather formal by today's standards, but as printing techniques improved, so did the quality and diversity of the images.

We see how the 1970 World Cup was used to kick-start Panini's long and illustrious place in football sticker history and how those little sticks of pink bubble gum played such a vital part in Topps' collector card range. There's also the chance to giggle mischievously at the frankly ridiculous hairstyles of yesteryear, just as you can with the 'Studs' book.

As with all the other titles featured above, this book is well-researched, well-written and packed full of pictures to maximise your enjoyment. No football nostalgist should be without it!

Its a funny old... lottery

Tonights “Euro Millions” jackpot is a ‘colossal’ £75m.

Just imagine what you could do with that amount of money. According to Middlesborough valuations you could buy SIX Stewart Downings. Do you see how easy it is to waste such fortunes?

If you are having help picking the winning numbers, here’s a scientific approach we have adopted at SPAOTP, using this weekends football matches to assist us.

‘Winning Numbers’
2 – The amount of goals Middlesborough will score.
3 – The amount of goals Middlesborough will concede.
14 – The amount of formations used by Rafa Benitez in the match against Aston Villa.
28 – The amount of ‘incidents’ Arsene Wenger doesn’t see in the game against Everton.
33 – The minute Chelsea take a 1-0 lead against Sheffield United.

‘Lucky Stars’
1 – Jens Lehman – saves a penalty against Everton.
3 – Alan Pardew will be thanking his ‘Lucky Stars’ as West Ham pick up 3 points against Blackburn.

There you go. Enjoy the £75 million, wont you?

It's a funny old... Cup

Written by Kedge

Yesterday I was full of the joys of spring as my local side, the Mighty Blues (Southend United) had won away to Leeds United in the 3rd Round of the Carling Cup. This joy was just slightly diminished when I realised that my favourite team Manchester United’s match against Crewe was only being shown on Sky Sports. I’ve switched from Sky to cable and no longer have a subscription to Sky Sports. Then this morning, joy of joys, I find that the 4th round draw has paired Southend and Man U together with a tie at Roots Hall. My first thought was “Got to get tickets for this!”

Then I thought, “OK… Where does my allegiance lie? With my local club or with the big boys from 200 miles away?” And the answer was instant! I want Southend to win. No two ways about it. My local club comes first. That’s the way it has to be. My first experience of live football (watching, not playing) was at Roots Hall. I followed them throughout my childhood and into adolescence, and despite my passion for Man U, when it comes to the crunch, it can only be Southend that I will be cheering for.

On a lighter side, Chris was regaling us with the words from Monty Python’s ‘Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life’, and last night’s local paper had coverage of West Ham’s defeat. They cover all the Hammers’ matches as they consider them to be the local ‘top flight’ side. They certainly took Chris’s words to heart with the headline:

‘Hammers Lose Again (but at least they scored a goal)’

Parks

How easy it is to take for granted something which holds great significance for us. Things that we see every day so often fade from view because we don't look at them with the necessary sense of perspective.

Such is the case for our local parks. In every town in every corner of Britain, you'll find a green space providing a home to a few trees, some grass and any number of further embellishments that make it unique from the one down the road, the one across town or the one you've never seen in a completely different area altogether.

For those of us that grew up living and breathing every moment of our lives high on the joy that football gave us, the local park was the best place to go to kick a ball around and live the dream that we, too, were the superstars of our day. That vast expanse of grass long vacated by sunbather and dog-walker alike was like having our very own Wembley to play on for the day. No cuts or grazes here - this was the lush surface that repaid the love we had for it with the sort of safeness that no concrete pavement could provide.

Better still if the grass had just been cut by the Council Parks Department. That unique smell drew you in the moment you passed the vandalised 'Welcome' sign by the gates. With ball in hand, your stride lengthened ever so slightly as you made your way to that place where you always played - your pitch. The ball would be tossed in the air and as it fell again, the inevitable volley would come as it was kicked high onto the big green, followed by an excited run in pursuit of it.

I remember so many happy days playing football with my friends in the park. While others would use a pile of old coats as goalposts, we had the luxury of two young trees spaced (ideally) the right distance apart to constitute a goal frame, albeit without the cross-bar. One of us would elect to go in goal first - often me - and everyone else would play outfield.

And off they'd go. A series of passes would neatly and tentatively be made from one to the other, waiting for the moment when someone would fashion a set-up move that resulted in a final flourishing shot or header towards the expectant keeper. Goals weren't scored as often as we'd like, but when they did arrive, they were usually greeted with a disproportionately gleeful celebration that sent the keeper on his way to fetch the ball that was by now half way to the other side of the park.

Sadly for the goalie, this long walk to retrieve the ball became the bain of our afternoon. Only the promise of an occasional spectacular save made the job worthwhile, but for the greater part it was a diet of tedium and tree-gazing as the wait for another shot went on.

But at least they were lovely trees. We'd sometimes sit under them when the weather became too hot or too wet, our backs propped by the huge, rippled trunk. We'd stop to rest and catch our breath, taking a while to finish off our drinks and talk about all kinds of unimportant things. Big willow trees, they were, yet their shadow never seemed to fall on us as we played football in our collective boyhood idyll.

We'd carry on playing, but by now our legs were growing tired and weary and the chance to score that one last memorable goal gradually diminished like the sun which so often warmed our backs. By unanimous vote, we'd eventually call it a day, pick up our things and go, walking slowly home with the satisfaction that we'd performed as well as any multi-million pound player could ever hope to.

All a distant memory, and yet the park where you used to play is more than likely still there, still retaining a modest, silent beauty, silent as people pass it by as though it wasn't even there.

It deserves more respect than that. Parks are responsible for so many of the happy memories we hold, so let's celebrate them for what they are and what they've given us. If you get the chance, pay a visit to your old park, or if not, go and make use of the park round the corner from where you live.

It's a privilege to have such a wonderful resource on our doorsteps, so make sure yours doesn't get taken for granted.