Well, 2 out of 3 ain’t bad as Mr Loaf used to say. It’s back to the “Great features in fanzines” folder this week to have a chuckle at some of the great and not so great ideas that appeared over the years. These might be born of frustration, boredom, the fact you had a Super 8 camera or rising bile. Whichever it was they’ve stood the test of time.

With added stats

First up is a feature that appears reasonably frequently in fanzines, an article which might just be entitled Why? In this case it comes from Falkirk Unofficial Fanzine (FUF) issue 10 from 1989 covers the incredible record of Gerry McCoy. Who? I hear you say, well just look at the stats in this article.

It’s a great fanzine article, transfer rumours, the point illustrated by Gerry being pictured in Dumbarton and Partick kits and complaints/rumours about the board. You can understand their frustration, 115 goals in 236 appearances is some strike rate. Gerry McCoy is overlooked from most records because he didn’t score 200 goals and he was seen as basically “a fox in the box”, a poacher but as the article points out “goals are the only things that count in football and no matter how much better your team is, if you can’t score you don’t win” I think it’s great that a player like Gerry is eulogised in print and that I can read and write about him here 36 years later to highlight it.

This being a fanzine of course the story doesn’t end there. The editorial of the same fanzine admits they have jumped the gun and Gerry is indeed now back with the Bairns, news which broke after they’d gone to the printers…a classic fanzine mishap. Does the editor apologise to the board? Well he gets close enough before berating them on missing out on Kenny McDonald for the sake of 10K. Kenny would score 131 goals in his 323 game career and Gerry failed in his 2nd spell at Brockville with 4 goals in 20 appearances, you can’t have everything.

20 Year of Videotape

There was once a fanzine called Haggis Supper, a fanzine all about following Scotland on their many and varied travels. In issue 1 from 1998 there is one of those little pieces that are a reminder about the way were were, a review of a video that has recently gone on sale. Let’s face it, most of these videos were dreadful things and an absolute rip off at £10 but then you come across a review like this for “Twenty Years In The Tartan Army”; Three hours of grainy football, drunken travels, people in fountains and everyone in front of the camera believing they are the new Billy Connolly…come on, this sounds brilliant.

The other great thing is do the contents (if not the format) sound remotely out of date 28 years on? Not a bit of it, this video chronicled the glory years of watching Scotland with massive highs and the horrific low of Jock Stein’s death. The only remaining footage of Paul Sturrock’s first Scotland goal, incredible film from Argentina 78 and a chronicle of how the Tartan Army’s ranks swelled and developed at that time. The review even claims that wearing a kilt is the “easiest way in the world of attracting the opposite sex” ignoring the beer guts and tight fitting polyester shirts accompanying them in many of the shots. According to the creator, “Very rarely would you see a kilt in the 70s, kilts were really for weddings” when he started filming

A couple of years ago to mark the 50th anniversary of the filming commencing when he was 15, Ronnie McDevitt, a “blond haired waif from Fife” was interviewed for the brilliant Scottish football programme “A View From the Terrace” with this mini video feature appearing. This is well worth your 8 minutes of your time, it is simply beautiful, an incredible record of football and social history.

When you compare even these highlights to things like the bloody awful Tartan Army ‘Bring it Home’ guff released earlier this year it makes you appreciate this footage even more, especially the silent bits.

Childish and Petty? Yes. Brilliant? Absolutely!

This feature appeared in the September 1990 issue 12 of Man City’s King of the Kippax. A 5 to 1 clock face featuring caricatures of the City team from twelve months before when City had enjoyed a 5-1 victory against local rivals Manchester United.

It’s a great fanzine (time) piece; celebrating a derby drubbing a year on, great design, great caricatures and of course fills the whole back cover page. I wouldn’t have been surprised if this wasn’t framed and hung in homes on the blue side of the city. Thankfully it wasn’t cut from this copy so we can enjoy it 36 years later.

What is even more beautiful is that the faces are arranged in the 1-12 clock positions based on the line up positions that day (squad numbers weren’t introduced until 1993) For the record that was Cooper, Fleming, Gayle, Redmond, Hinchcliffe, White, Bishop, Brightwell, Lake, Morley, Oldfield – With Beckford as the sub.

I don’t know what all the fuss was about really, it wasn’t even City’s biggest win over Manyoo at the time, that came on 23 Jan 1926 with a 6-1 drubbing at Old Trafford. Now a caricature clock face of that would have been something. I wonder if the more recent times when City have put six past their local rivals will remain on the record..

Rising Bile

Sheffield Wednesday fan Craig Robinson contributed this smashing little piece to Spitting Feathers for issue 31 in 1997. Of course things like this are a matter of opinion but you have to say this is a pretty good list.

I have published this before because of the remarkable picture of Pele from his dust up and whether or not it is real as the internet is very misleading about the actual result of the game (https://footballfanzineculture.blog/2026/06/04/creativity/) I still ahve no resolution on that.

The thing that irks me about this list is that it misses out the classic Norman Hunter vs Francis Lee melee in 1972. Now that was a scrap. But it is worth going back to for a couple of other items in the list..there is some rewriting of history, not sure Johnny Giles did swing out at KK for having an “offensive haircut” but it would have been justified if he had. Talking of haircuts the Macca-Grobs thing was a bit of handbags but McManaman would have been quite within his rights for lamping Grobbelaar for that ridiculous pig tail he sported at the time.

I also decided to see if there is an update on this list post 1997 but by some quirk of the internet, search engines being flooded by Sky coverage in the PL era I’d guess, with the exception of Dion Dublin vs Robbie Savage (2003) and Zidane on Materazzi (2006) most of the lists that come back are best teammate brawls so here are the top 5 teammate scuffles in the PL era. As you all know, nothing existed before that.

• Kieron Dyer Vs Lee Bowyer (2005)
• Graeme Le Saux Vs David Batty (1994)
• Ricardo Fuller Vs Andy Griffin (2008)
• Emmanuel Adebayor Vs Niklas Bendtner (2008)
• Craig Bellamy vs John Arne Riise (2007, includes bonus golf club)

Balance

So we can’t be accused of favouritism (in Sheffield anyway) we’ll now include a piece from Sheffield United’s Flashing Blade issue 5 from 1989. Not that this is relevant but this was A (POSSIBLY THE) SEASON THAT CHESTERFIELD DID THE DOUBLE OVER THE BLADES, 5-2 ON AGGREGATE!! For your pleasure here’s the entirety of the 3-1 massacre at Bramall lane on Saturday 2nd January 1989 with quite brilliant biased commentary to boot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rI59bRAe8mA It’s my blog, I’ll put what I want in it!

1 hour 45 minutes later….back to the article and our correspondent is sick of reading anodyne clips about players in programmes (nothing has changed really has it?) so comes up with his own for the lads turning out for the Blades in the old 3rd Division…and being beaten twice by Chesterfield.

There’s some great stuff here, Tony Agana with the ‘uncanny knack of making the easy chances look hard‘, Peter Duffield ‘Currently trying to get the pitch lengthened so his crosses stay on the pitch‘ Mark Todd, “A threat to the kop with his “bullet like” 20 yarders’ Best of all though Chris Wilder is described as ‘Ice cool, curry freezes in his mouth’..what the bloody hell happened to him? Answers on a postcard.

Yes yes I know Chesterfield were relegated and United promoted at the end of the season but 5 bloody 2, the double!

Settled Bile

Creativity in fanzines never came much better than when the creators gave away a free gift. In issue 1 of Torquay’s Bamber’s Right Foot they really pushed the boat out to commemorate their arrival on the fanzine scene with this absolute belter of a freebie, far more practical than vouchers for the buffet bar or a season ticket.

BRF was the longest running (1992-1999) and perhaps the best Torquay fanzine and Torquay’s fanzine panopoly a good marker for just how amazingly quickly and prolifically the fanzine community grew. Over the years Torquay (TORQUAY!) had 9 different fanzines, all from an outpost while they traversed the nether regions of the football league. Quite remarkable.

Infinite Improbability

The Hitchhikers Guide, or rather Douglas Adams explained the infinity improbability drive thus; “Scientists already understood how to generate small amounts of finite improbability by linking a sub-meson brain to an atomic vector plotter in a Brownian motion producer (like a hot cup of tea). Creating an infinite field seemed impossible until a student realized that absolute impossibility is itself a finite improbability. By inputting that calculated value into a finite generator and adding a hot cup of tea, the infinite drive materialized. When activated, the ship traverses every conceivable point in every universe at once, causing bizarre, highly improbable events to happen nearby”

Why am I telling you this? Well West Ham’s Never Mind The Boleyn must have been near one when in issue 4 of 1990 they decided to publish this, Your Summer Holiday: Camping

Honestly, I have no clue. We haven’t mentioned music yet this week, but the name and cover styling of issue 4 and all of the issues of Never Mind the Boleyn more than cover that so lets leave it there.

The Final Whistle

It’s all there, pieces about forgotten players with sensational stats, a sort of apology, a film that should be in the National Archive, sassy clocks, fights because of haircuts, music, poison pen pics and camping advice.

Simple or elaborate, extremely creative, great ideas, piss takes and social commentary, fanzines had the lot and in abundance too. (We’ll cover the Bernard Manning interview mentioned below when we can think of a category to fit it into!)

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