Today’s #FOTD is issue 5 of long running Leeds fanzine The Hanging Sheep and comes with an ulterior motive. First though, let’s have a look through the excellent contents of this 40p belter from April 1989. The cover has the fantastic Hanging Sheep logo, the first time this logo appeared and one that would remain in place for every later edition. There is also news of this being a bumper edition and a simple but effective joke about local rivals Bradford’s hopefully imminent return to the lower depths (They would actually finish 14th, just 4 places below Leeds)

Inside there is a plea to fans of Manchester and Bradford City to be sensible with the zine and merch news with an appeal for supporters to come up with a clever slogan to go under the sheep logo. Unfortunately in the later copies I have there is no evidence that anyone replied as ads for T shirts don’t come up again, though I am missing a few issues and maybe they just sold out VERY quickly?! Shame as it is one of the great fanzine logos.

This zine was published in April 1989 with the editorial containing this absolutely horrifying description of a crush and a totally inadequate police response at Elland Road on March 1st. Just 6 weeks before the Hillsborough disaster it references the previous deadly crush at a Ibrox in 1971. The police clearly hadn’t learnt a thing in 18 years and sadly they wouldn’t for years to come.

To add to this depressing and prescient story there is a story from a recent away day in Brighton. Of course the fans shouldn’t have been on the fence but the police delaying first aid for 10 minutes? This used to happen all the time kids..

A review of the 2nd division toilets visited that year helps paint an even more colourful image of what being a fan was like. Mirrors and sinks at Ipswich and pink toilet roll at Swindon? Bloody hell.

On a funnier note there is a reminder of just how bad John Motson could be at commentary and an amazing letter from a fan. I assume he isn’t going to Elland Road any longer because 37 years on this must be driving him mad by now.

Finally, as with all Leeds fanzines there was a little bit of ribbing for Manyoo, in this case a fantastic little quiz. Unfortunately I don’t have the answers but Q3 resulted in some pretty bad karma.

Now for the ulterior motive..our great friends at Leeds United Nostalgia project have a full copy of issue 5 on their Flickr page (https://www.flickr.com/photos/202272334@N02/albums/) BUT they are desperately trying to get a look at a copy of issue 1 of The Hanging Sheep to publish on there. They already have issue 2-5 of this fanzine up there and a more or less full set of the iconic Marching Altogether up there along with many copies of Blue and Gold and various other great print features on Leeds United. You can read about their superb project here, they even made the programme this week!! Plus they post as @WindyLUcards on Twitter and @windymillerfiles.bsky.social on BlueSky

If you know of a copy or have one (yes, the British Library has one but it is down in that there London) please get in touch. I know the editor of THS was called Nick Stringer and if anyone has contact details please pass mine on to Nick as I’d love a chat. I know this because in one of my copies there is a very polite notice to the subscriber from Nick reminding his that is subs were due (just £2.4 for 4 issues!!) so of course if needed I can forensically identify Nick from his handwriting..