Todays Fanzine of the day comes to you from late 1985 as Maidstone United plied their trade in the Gola league. SAM is one of those “sort of a fanzine” issues, something from round the edges that is a supporters association effort but was sold at the ground and didn’t just focus on coaches and the best pubs to go to. Anyway, It’s on the list because it sure has the look and feel of a fanzine, just look at that caveman logo and then there are the contents!

There is an editorial From the Chair that calls for reorganisation of the league system in a perfectly sane and rational manner. The irony of this is that a reorg’ went ahead soon after and has promoted professionalism much further down the pyramid but the clubs named, Scarborough, Altrincham and Maidstone have not benefited that much, with catastrophic consequences for Scarborough and Maidstone.

In case you don’t have access to wiki; In 1988 the Stones left their ground in Maidstone as it wasn’t suitable for the Football League. The switch to ground-sharing with Dartford perhaps predictably caused average attendances to fall from around 2,400 to 1,400. Next there was the promotion to the football league in 1989 that this article craved but this had been achieved through enormous expense… they tried to get back to Maidstone by spending 400k on a piece of land without planning permission…etc etc and by 1992 they were gone. Trevor is not the only person in the zine sporting what can only be described as a mullet par excellence.

There is gentle hello from committee member John who is producing his first fanzine and hopes you like it (well done Alan, it’s great) plus the obligatory name list of said committee. It’s a real piece of it’s time and all very lovely

The centre spread could easily be two devilishly hard Spot the Ball contests. Love that Altrincham kit even if it is shown in black and white. I downloaded another B&W photo just because, ypu can imagine the red and apparently this was available as a Subbuteo set.

There are a couple of great match reports with an FA Cup trip to Fareham including getting directions from a boy on a bike, TV coverage, a farm shop and meeting Dartford and Weymouth supporters at a service station. Classic Saturday afternoon fare and also included is a list of ex Stones who were involved in the FA Cup in December 1985 because you never know when you will need such a list.

The report from Bromley is less eventful until the chairman nearly gets arrested.

The Bits and pieces stuff is superb non league fare, a basket of fruit for a player who has had his shin broken in 2 places, an INCREDIBLE woodwork statistic and a Gola league “A” graded grounds list that might reasonably be called sketchy.

Because this is a fanzine with space to fill there are then a number of pages clearly just photocopied from a book, all about their next FA Cup opponents Plymouth (Stones lost 3-0). This is where mullet 2 appears, a classic from Dave Smith.

I shouldn’t get you too excited but there is also a feature that will appear in #FloodlightFriday this week. The first time such a double has been achieved in the same week by a fanzine.

But there is more…There is also a focus on club goalie Derek Richardson. I’m never going to compete with @theskystrikers (you absolutely MUST follow him on Twitter or Bluesky) on this but the fact that Del boy has “buying and selling” listed as a hobby and has Allo’ Allo’ as his favourite TV show are VERY 80s.

Now I always check on the players in these pieces to see what happened to them and it’s a nice little fact that the two other results in Derek’s fave games list were 0-0 vs Leeds and 6-0 vs Telford, three clean sheets! But I looked further and it turns out Derek was the first black goalkeeper to play in the First Division since Arthur Wharton, not Alex Williams as has become accepted fact. This seems to have happened because of a splash of publicity and some disgracefully lazy journalism surrounding Alex’ autobiography.

You can read Derek’s extraordinary story here https://www.thepinch.uk/p/derek-richardson-setting-the-record including his struggles at Chelsea and 31 appearances for QPR 4 years before Alex. Well done the The Pinch, a great spin off from the equally excellent and still active print fanzine DEM Blades.

So this 25p, 24 page photocopied pamphlet records a fact that should absolutely be remembered and celebrated but is sunk below a bunch of publicity driven pieces. Alex is a hero and a legend for sure but Derek should also have his story told.

“Sort of fanzine?” No, this is a bona fide fanzine, I’m limiting this to 850 words despite the fact that there is a lot more, at least two other bits for other articles and amazing adverts from the 80s. It might not have criticism of the club but the Stones were doing well in 1985. It also accidentally records history and beautifully sets out social history, brilliant stuff and even includes two SUPERB mullets.