I was out for a few celebratory drinks with a bunch of librarians the other week …This is not the start of a Bob Monkhouse monologue, it’s true as we celebrated winning the Sporting Heritage award for volunteer team of the year for our work on the Voice of the Fans exhibition. I may have mentioned this before but if not here is the lovely award.

The conversation veered wildly between all sorts of exciting/ controversial topics- page numbering, ISBN numbers, fanzine issue numbers, advanced scanning techniques and cataloguing were just some of the areas we covered. I know!

When I explained to the gathered librarians the slapdash approach to page numbering in many fanzines they were aghast. When I added to this the way issue numbers were treated and the ongoing issues this has with my cataloguing efforts, well you could hear the tuts at the next table.

Take Nothampton’s What A Load Of Cobblers (WALOC) for example, I recently acquired two issues from the 1995 – 96 season (finished 11^th in league 2 Larry Grayson was playing for them) and did a little fanzine of the day piece about Volume 8 Issue 6, despite my fury are having to search for match results in the zine and then looking up Northampton’s result record vs Scarborough on the superb 11v11 website ( https://www.11v11.com/ but I warn you, the hours just fly by..). All of this lead to discovering that Volume 8 issue 6 means April 1996…BUT THEN the next fanzine in my pile was WALOC Volume 8 issue 3 WITH THE BLOODY MONTH AND YEAR NOTED…get your act together you bastards!

Everton’s When Skies Are Grey and York’s Y Front have both admitted to me that they misnumbered issues in the past and what about The Absolute Game’s numbering system for their Scottish fanzine. …actually, I secretly love this system!

Anyway, we also discussed reading lists so here is my list of great fanzine books you can ask for at your library or purchase at bargain and not so bargain prices from eBay.

In the best tradition of fanzines the list will take up lots of space so I don’t have to write too much more this week;

Fanzine Books

• Foul; Book of Football no.1 & Best of Football’s Alternative Paper
• The End Compendium
• Simon & Glynis Wright, Steve Carr Is That the New One? The history of Grorty Dick
• The Escaped Horse Collected Fanzines
• When Saturday Comes (WSC) books
• The 1^st Eleven
• Late Tackle
• Half Decent Football Book
• Shot

Richard Haynes

• The Football Imagination: Rise of Football Fanzine Culture

Steve Redhead

• Post Fandom and the Millennial Blues
• Subcultures, Club cultures
• The Passion and the Fashion
• Sing When You’re Winning

Compilations

• Survival of the Fattest (8 editions covering 1989 -1999)
• Twelve inches High
• Get Your Writs Out
• Whose Game Is it Anyway?
• El Tel Was a Space Alien
• The Best of Football Fanzines

Plus of course the excellent Nutmeg magazine and When Saturday Comes who carry on with a fanzine ethos.

Bugger, that’s only about 400 words so far so, as I have copies of all of these let me tell you a little more about some of them to see if you’d like go out and source them. There are 3 categories

Rare and HOW MUCH?

Two books in this category; The End compendium and Foul; “Book of Football no.1”. I’ve seen both of these going on eBay for £100 but if you’re lucky and find a house clearance in a shop that doesn’t know what they have you might get either for £20-£50

Both are crucial books in terms of documenting football fanzine history, The End as a fanzine would be mimicked by many, Viz and Loaded for a start owe a lot to it and those Ins and Outs lists you see everywhere? Yep, The End started that. See last week’s blog for for more https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2025/11/27/it-was-a-despondent-time-and-we-wanted-to-take-the-piss-the-end/

As I’ve already written in another blog the story behind Foul book 1 is also something else. You can read it here https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2025/08/28/foul-i-fought-the-law-and-the-law-won/ but in summary, famous people in fanzines, creativity, massive influence on the media to this day, first general football fanzine and the first (of many) to fall foul of the law, BECAUSE OF THIS BOOK in this specific case!

Foul is worth getting for the Spot The Brawl feature alone

A bit academic but excellent

Any of the Richard Haynes and Steve Redhead books are well worth searching out if you are even vaguely interested in fanzines and fanzine culture. The most comprehensive list of fanzines collected in one place before ours is in the Redhead book Post Fandom and the Millennial Blues and as Richard helped in compiling this list his work is an excellent read.

At this price you’d be mad not to

Only one place to start really, Simon & Glynis Wright, Steve Carr; “Is That the New One?” tells the complete story behind the classic West Brom Fanzine Grorty Dick with proceeds still going to charity as Simon is such a legend and all of his works are prima dacie evidence of just how creative and accomplished self-published works could become.

At the other end of the league scale, I can highly recommend “The Escaped Horse Collected Fanzines” from the Thornton-le-Dale village team as they plumb the depths of the Scarborough and District League Division Three . This is classic DIY fanzine stuff, completed by a bunch of mates in the pub it never aspires to reach great heights, but it does all the same. An A to Z of things related to their North Yorkshire village team which has “Ipswich” as the entry for I because they “couldn’t think of anything beginning with I” is surely worth your time.

As for the Survival of the Fattest series, ask your library first but if not, eBay periodically has copies available. They aren’t fanzines as such, but season reviews written by editors and contributors to fanzines up and down the land and as such have a much more entertaining, gritty and interesting outlook. They are also a good reminder of some long-lost fanzines.

Twelve inches High, Get Your Writs Out, Whose Game Is it Anyway?, El Tel Was a Space Alien are all best of books from 1989-1992 and as such are all superb.

There are some great online resources as well (Complete collections of Nottingham Forrest (sic) and County fanzines Brian and Pie are available for example but that’s not print so I’m not publishing the addresses!)

Shadowy Groups

Finally, I can’t resist including an actual fanzine in the blog because believe it or not there was a football fanzine by librarians. A copy of this august journal LAFF (Librarians As Football Fans) is available to read in the National Library of Scotland (NLS) and let me tell you, it is quite something.

Please note, it is not to be confused with LAFF Trek II, Wrath of Dijon (a Star Trek Fanzine from 1987 currently available on eBay for $58 including shipping from the US, it is 111 pages long) Game for a Laff covered a variety of topics and are said to be the group who first proposed a National Football Museum.

The arrival of this “shadowy” group was announced in the new fanzines section of WSC in January 1992. Having hotfooted it to the NLS for a look I was not disappointed…

There is an excoriating article on the use or more specifically, lack of use of ISBNs in football fanzines and magazines and people not mentioning libraries. Enraged and despite the free ad from WSC the suggestion is that they should get a “boot in the nuts award”. All of this is of course brilliant BUT, even better is that there is a handwritten note in this issue apologising for spelling mistakes in the last issues with a spelling mistake. Magnificent.

Coming Soon

King of the Kippax in the Golden Age of Football Fanzines, is the new Manchester City book available 8th December and will cover “Surviving punctures, crashes, breakdowns, roadworks, speed cameras, struggling to park, humping bags of zines to grounds, meeting fellow Blues and rival fans, friendships, camaraderie with ordinary fans, fanzine editors, ex- hooligans, contributors, subscribers. observing and sometimes chatting with players and ex players, rock stars, film stars, managers and ex managers, comedians, DJs, radio and TV presenters, politicians, MPs, Knights of the Realm, broadcasters, Chairmen, ex Chairmen and authors”…WOW!

The Final Whistle

Have I missed books, yes, absolutely and that’s part of the reason I’ve written this. PLEASE correct me, advise me and guide me to more of this type of sensational publishing, I’m all ears and want to collect and make sure there is a proper catalogue and collection of these brilliant, brilliant books.

Obviously, I can’t finish without providing a list of all the fanzines that are still in print, the rider being that a couple of these are not printed regularly, some were teetering on the brink last time I looked, and one has announced it will be shutting up shop at the end of the season. If I’ve missed you SORRY, please get in touch and my apologies for excel’s filter function being such a prick! Some of these are sort of fanzine adjacent but still worthy of being on the list as they are independent and  fan written.

I do have this list with all twitter/bluesky/facebook/insta/website addresses but honestly it looks a mess in this format so if you want that just email me on fanzinefc@gmail.com

So, this list is in honour of all the wonderful staff in libraries up and down the country but, in particular, everyone associated with Leeds Central Library  without whom none of this stupidity would have started.

LONG LIVE LIBRARIES

LONG LIVE PRINT

Fanzines still in print

Club	Title
1874 Northwich Victoria	2 Bags of Sand
Aberdeen	Black and Gold
All	Girl Fans
All	Groundtastic
All	Halb Vier
All	Levelling The Score
All	Lower Block
All	Nutmeg
All	Scottish Football Historian
All	Terrace Edition
All	The Football Traveller
All	Turnstiles
All	Welsh Football Magazine
All	When Saturday Comes
All	Where’s The Bar?
Arsenal	The Gooner
Arsenal	The Gooner Women
Barrow	Give Em Beans
Blackburn Rovers	4000 Holes
Blackpool	Now That’s What I Call Progress
Bradford City	City Gent
Brighton & Hove Albion	Dogma
Bristol City	One Team In Bristol
Carlisle Utd	Hit The Bar
Celtic	Barras Bravas
Celtic	More Than 90 Minutes
Celtic	Not The View
Celtic	The Alternative View
Celtic	The Shamrock a Celtic retrospective
Charlton Athletic	My Only Desire
Chelsea	CFCUK
Chester City	The Blue & White
Chesterfield	Legends of the Spire
Crystal Palace	Orneblikket
Dulwich Hamlet	Hamlet Historian
Haringey Borough	Ewe Tea Bee
Hereford Utd	Talking Bull
Hibernian	Who Ate All The Pies
Huddersfield Town	Smile A While
Ipswich Town	Out In Amsterdam
Leeds United	The Square Ball
Leicester City	The Fox (annual only)
Leyton Orient	Leyton Orientear
Leyton Orient	Pandamonium
Lincoln City	Imptoons Yearbook (annual)
Liverpool	Red All Over The Land
Manchester United	Barmy Article
Manchester United	Red News
Manchester United	United We Stand
Merthyr Tydfil	Dial M For Merthyr
Middlesbrough	Fly Me To The Moon
Newcastle United	NUFC Matters
North Ferriby	View From The Allotment End
Norwich City	Along Come Norwich
Nottingham Forest	Oh Mist Rolling In
Nottingham Forest	Trevor Francis’ Tracksuit
Portchester	Aranchione
Port Vale	Derek I’m Gutted
Port Vale	Vale Park Beano
Preston North End	The Nose Bag
QPR	A Kick Up the R’s
Salford City	The Old Dead Tree
Salford City	Dirty Old Town
Scotland	Scotland Epistles
Shelbourne	Red inc
Southend United	All At Sea
South Liverpool	The Fanzine With No Name /What The
St Johnstone	Allez Les Blues
Sunderland	A Love Supreme
Swindon Town	Loathed Strangers
Tottenham	1882
Wales	Alternative Wales
Watford	Golden Pages
West Ham Utd	Blowing Bubbles
Wigan Athletic	Mudhutter Football Express
Wimbledon	Wombles Downunder
Wrexham	Floodlights
Wycombe Wanderers	The Wanderer
York City	Y Front