I’ve wondered a few times if I could get a magazine sized piece (about 2000 words) from researching and writing about a “randomly” chosen fanzine so let’s find out, shall we? For an added bonus there will be Chesterfield FC facts.
I’ve run a couple of pieces on Rotherham’s Windy & Dusty (But Definitely Not Merry) on social media as fanzine of the day but I always find it difficult to keep the content to a small, contained thread. So, I’ve “randomly” chosen Windy & Dusty (W&D) vol 1 no 5 for this test (FOR THE LOVE OF GOD just number them sequentially lads!) V1 n5 translates as August 1991…but as issue 5 comes in August preseason surely it should be volume 2 number 1…Don’t get me started.
We find our fanzine heroes spreading their windmill sails with Rotherham still at Millmoor, freshly relegated to Division 4 or League 2 as it’s now known. A great little fanzine with most of the things you’d expect and some big added bonuses.
The cover is ace for a start, terrible copy of a photo BUT colour trim. It also gives you some indication as to the contents which I always think is a good selling point. If you remember your TV, in March 1991 Icke, dressed in a turquoise tracksuit he claimed was the “colour of love and wisdom,” declared to the nation live on Wogan that he was a “Son of the Godhead” a master spirit at the centre of creation. So obviously he’d choose to apologise in a Rotherham fanzine. Well, in true fanzine style there is nothing from Dalton or Icke, no apology, nothing. It seems they just wanted to catch your eye, something the windmill had already done for me.
The editorial welcomes the new season in spectacular fanzine style, with our editor in a dudgeon about the sale of Clive Mendonca and muttering about sinister motives whilst hardly being a fan of our Clive.
So what happened to United that season after the outpouring of anguished despair from our editor? You guessed it, they finished 2nd and were promoted back to the 3rd division or division 2 as it would briefly be called after the bloody Premier League appeared..
Lies, Damned Lies & Pages 8-10
There are some quite brilliant “statistics”. Someone has put together a table of opening day results over the preceding decade for all the clubs in the league. How, why, when, what are all questions that might arise but put them aside and just enjoy the magnificence of this table. It’s not as if Rotherham have a particularly great record either but they do finish above Arsenal so that it the angle our heroes go with. You’re all looking for your team now aren’t you. (Chesterfield are a respectable 21st)
I know you’re also all desperate to find out who the Millers played so included below are the 10 previous 1st day results for them including scorers. I’d like to think a version of this statistic will now be more widely used, perhaps as a replacement for xG as it makes more sense.
Forward with the Millers!
There is a lovely little message from the club secretary..from August 1977. What about those season ticket prices, including league, North Midland League AND Northern Intermediate league matches. What more could you want?
Anyway, the secretary noted that in the close season
- The club had installed new floodlights
- Won the Sheffield & Hallamshire county cup
- In the previous season Alan Crawford had set a new club scoring record in the with 32 goals beating the record set.. by the current Rotherham groundsman when he was playing in 1947.
You don’t get this sort of thing any longer, nor the county cup, finally forgotten in 1993 after Barnsley’s 10th outright win (Sheffield United, 21, Sheffield Wednesday 11, Doncaster Rovers and Rotherham United 7 and Rotherham County 1 in case you were wondering)
Lovely stuff, except neither Alan nor Albert was in fact ever the record scorer for a season as Wally Ardron (PROPER strikers name) scored 38 goals in the 1946/47 league season with 2 in the cup. What’s even better is that that Albert played with Wally that season, the first of 3 successive runners up performances for the club in the third division North (only one team went up!) and Albert scored 19 goals!! It looks like Albert liked to spin a yarn or two in his later years…or perhaps the club secretary was incompetent, not that a club secretary could ever be useless.
Wally Ardron is a long forgotten but incredible enigma. He scored 229 goals in 327 games for Rotherham and Nottingham Forest and is still Forest’s 3rd highest scorer of all time. You want more? Well, on the 29th April 1944 he played in two matches in a day after finishing work… his schedule that day was reported to be
0215: Began shift as engine fireman on a train from Mexborough to Cleethorpes
1100: Railway shift ends
1500: Walter plays and scores in Rotherham United’s 1-0 win against Sheffield United at Millmoor.
1815: Walter, playing as a guest for Denaby scores in a 2 hour, 38 minute[1] Montagu Cup final replay which went to extra time and was played to a finish. The first golden goal?[2
The appearances are in no doubt, the shift and a story that he travelled between commitments that day by bike might be fanciful, but you wouldn’t argue with Wally by the look of him.
The story of the Montagu Cup itself is worth looking up, the oldest football final still played at its original venue[3] every Easter Monday at the home of Mexborough Athletic. The ‘other’ Hampden being on Hampden Road (Hampden itself is also named after a road, Hampden Terrace). It was first competed in the 1896/7 season and members of the Ardon family competed in the 1903, 1944, 1949, 1955 and 1958 finals!
Crawford is STILL the record scorer in cup games for Rotherham (18) and, crowbarring a Chesterfield reference in, he went on to score the winning goal for the club in their 1980/81 Anglo-Scottish Cup victory. Chesterfield still hold that trophy as Scottish clubs withdrew after that season supposedly because of lack of public interest. The 13,914 that packed into Saltergate as Chesterfield beat Rangers 3-0 on the night (4-1 on aggregate) in the semifinal might argue against that. (I still have my ticket)
All of this is part of a centre pullout of the team sheets for the two preseason friendlies from 1977! A proper preseason in August obvs. Now this might be of interest to a few Millers/Ayr/Barnsley fans but to the wider footballing public? Well, what if I tell you that Peter Springett was a member of the QPR team that won Division 3 and the League cup in the same season, 1966-67.
OK, a bit obscure but his brother Ron wasn’t so bad either, also a keeper who played 33 times for England and was a member of the 1966 World Cup winning squad..
But that’s not what I’m here to tell you. What I really want to mention is that in the summer of 1967 QPR made a unique swap deal with Sheffield Wednesday with the goalkeeping brothers moving between the clubs! The only ever goalkeeper/brother swap deal ever?
Formula What?
The editor lived in Harrow so why wouldn’t there be an ad’ for a Formula 1 magazine? This was the in-house mag for Brabham racing & seems to have been published from Harrow as well otherwise I can think of no reasonable connection. It’s the only Formula 1 ad we’ve ever seen in a fanzine anyway.
Rotherham and Harrow are about as Yin and Yang as you can get but anyway, just enjoy the “available from” list for W&D.
Film Stars
Billy Mercer was the club goalkeeper and had mixed reviews in his time there before moving on to Chesterfield. Mercer was at the Hillsborough disaster as a Liverpool fan, seated in the upper tier of the Leppings Lane end, witnessing the terrible incidents and fatal crush below. The first time he returned to the stadium was 8 years later to play in an FA Cup Semi Final replay for Chesterfield.
Back to W&D, why he was described as Edward Scissorhands in this ad? I’ve no idea, maybe someone just liked the film? Did he burst a ball with a punch one time? Maybe they thought Billy looked like Johnny Depp (he didn’t) Any Rotherham fans out there please let me know.
There are a number of famous faces who are Rotherham fans; The Chuckle Brothers, Howard Webb, Chris Wostenholme off of Muse and Matt Nicholls of off Bring me The Horizon plus actor Dean Andrews. Not a bad list all said and done.
Ins and Outs and Poetry
The End started the Ins and Outs list trend (https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2025/11/27/it-was-a-despondent-time-and-we-wanted-to-take-the-piss-the-end/ ) and W&D do it justice though what Herringthorpe Leisure Centre has done to receive their ire is not stated.
This fanzine just keeps on giving, following on from the editorial with faint praise for Clive Mendonca there is an ode to the departed striker. Now there are many examples of poetry in fanzines, but few this concise and pointed as Mendonca left for local rivals Sheffield United.
Rotherham went on to get promoted this season without him and Mendonca went on to have a successful career at a number of clubs. His hat-trick for Charlton in THAT 1998 championship play off final is the stuff of legend and was the last one to be scored at the original Wembley Stadium for an English league team. Mendonca also scored a penalty in the subsequent 7-6 penalty shoot-out win after a dull 4–4 draw with with Sunderland, Mendonca’s childhood team… Mendonca was last heard of working at the Nissan plant in Sunderland and if that isn’t enough coincidences for you then I’m lost.
Entertainment Section
We’ve explored the links between music and fanzines in the past, it was far from unusual for fanzines to have reviews of venues and gigs. The Smiths and The Wedding Present appear endless times, and we made an entire playlist of songs fanzines were named after[4]
Windy and Dusty wasn’t just any fanzine though, oh no. Their entertainment section eschews the glitz and glamour of the charts and post punk and reviews were instead from the local Rotherham clubs, working men’s, variety and otherwise. Yep.
Our hero’s start this edition with a mild complaint that the top acts are away in Blackpool or Skeggy for the holiday season but that they occasionally pop up in the Don valley, and the beer is cheaper than the pubs anyway. So why not take in Tanya Tavaro and Session a “well presented and dressed act” that is recommended. Before you rush off, yes I’ve googled them and the only record I’ve ever seen is a facebook post saying “she was in a band upstairs when Blue Moon weren’t on” This is on the “Golden Sands Camp Mablethorpe Memories” group page (Public and with 5,400 members). Christ, the things I do for you. Here are couple of pictures of a sierra outside a caravan taken at the sands.
Later in the piece (a full page is taken up with this) there are reports of risque jokes Barry St Ives and Jimmy Carrol is recommended if you are “broad minded” with Bobby Diamond being reported as “Very visual”
And then you come across this. Yes, loose woman and cruise specialist Jane MacDonald receives what can only be described as a lukewarm review. Again, to save you the time the internet told me this quite stunning factoid; “Cruising with Jane McDonald, debuted in 2017 on Channel 5, has spawned eight series and earned her a British Academy Television Award”..and people say TV is rubbish nowadays.
What the hell, this piece is so good I’ll leave you with the whole thing with its many and varied “stars”.
Final Whistle
2,163 words. There, easy and there is more in the fanzine that we’ve had to leave out!
You could do this with many fanzines, and I will from time to time but bloody hell fire, Windy & Dusty Vol 1 Issue 5 is brilliant, a bizarre collection of semi random stuff that enthrals, just what a fanzine should be.
34 years on the incredible creativity of so many fanzines is just astounding, all done without the use of the internet, recording social history, humour, club history, the long forgotten servants of clubs (who had a hazy memory of their playing career), the record breakers, it’s all there, all preserved.
Finally, not that I’m trying to prove a point against the local rivals of my youth, but when researching this article I discovered that the opponents that Rotherham have lost against in more league and cup matches than anyone else are Chesterfield (41 times).
Stick that in your windmill.
[1] https://www.montagucup.com/1944
[2] https://www.montagucup.com/wally-ardron
[3] https://www.montagucup.com/
[4] https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2025/05/30/the-list-playlist-side-1/
Football Fanzine Culture 
Leave a comment