The following article did not appear in a Racing Club Warwick programme due to postponement.
This week’s edition provides a second instalment for those of us who remember how things used to be at football matches in the years BP (“Before the Premiership”) and, for any youngsters out there, another opportunity to have a good laugh at the no so golden olden days.
Things you don’t see at football any more #5. Advertising on player’s shirts is a relatively new phenomenon. But how many of you have seen senior teams turn out in shirts without a club badge? Well incredible as it may seem these days, many clubs even in the top flight didn’t sport a club crest on their shirts until the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Some clubs, such as Spurs and Arsenal have had a club crest on their shirts for decades but I can distinctly recall seeing both Crewe Alexandra and Rochdale in plain red and blue shirts respectively without an emblem in sight. Some clubs did sport a club crest but these were changed with seasonal regularity. Take Leeds United for example. “LUFC” adorned their shirts in the early Revie years but, as the glam rock days of the mid-70’s arrived, this was replaced by a horrible “LU” badge resembling the yellow smiley face badge favoured by acid house aficionados. Next up was a badge featuring a peacock before this gave way to the white rose of Yorkshire. And I’m pretty sure that there have been a couple of changes since then! Tradition? Why bother when you can flog a few more souvenirs? And, when you think about it, if you don’t keep a badge long enough for it to become “traditional” then who can criticise such changes? These days we are now beginning to see advertising on both the front and back of a shirt and some clubs also sport advertising on their players’ backsides (well their shorts anyway)! How long before footballers begin to look like Formula One motor racing drivers and when will we see the first corporate sponsored tattoo?
Things you don’t see at football any more #6. This one’s cheating really as it relates to club nicknames which you used to hear rather than see. Nicknames come and nicknames go. For some clubs, the nickname endures. West Brom for example are well known as “The Baggies”. But have you ever heard anyone referring to them by their other nickname? Do “The Throstles” ring any bells? Thought not. Spurs’ similarly are rarely referred to as “The Lilywhites” these days. Indeed does anybody really know what colour lily white is? Sounds like one of those exotic paint mixtures that you can buy at Do-it-all doesn’t it? When I was a lad, Crystal Palace’s nickname was “The Glaziers” whereas today you’ll never hear a Palace fan referring to them as anything other than “The Eagles”. And Brighton & Hove fans reinvented their nickname when they developed an acrimonious relationship with their (fairly) local rivals Palace and became known as “Seagulls” in response to Palace cries of “Eagles”. The derivation of Racing Club’s nickname “The Racers” is clear but what was it in the Saltisford Rovers days? “The Salts”? “The Condiments”? Older fans please do tell!
Things you don’t see at football any more #7. Homemade rosettes and particularly the “Up for the Cup” two-tone rosettes complete with a little silver FA Cup and the name of your team. Such items were dragged out once a year for FA Cup Third Round day having been lovingly crafted by your mum or your granny several years earlier when your team last put a cup run together. When did you last see a fan resplendent in a rosette? Come to that whatever happened to homemade souvenirs. Back in the 70’s when knitting was still a normal pastime for most women of a certain age it was common to see football fans sporting a (normally very long) scarf that had been crafted by the fireside matriarch. Indeed the more expert knitting mums could pick out a team’s name on your scarf although I suspect that, whereas Bury fans would have possessed a named scarf, supporters of West Bromwich Albion were probably not so lucky!
Things you don’t see at football any more #8. Goalkeepers wearing a green shirt. Once upon a time all keepers wore a regulation green jersey. I can still recall the stir created by Bayern Munich and West Germany’s Sepp Maier in the early 1970’s in his extremely baggy padded shorts and Mickey Mouse gloves (huge and white just like the famous mouse’s!) but even he dare not depart from green. Occasionally you might see a keeper with a yellow version but most of the time it was green. Then came greater television exposure and the self-promotion possibilities of a day-glo orange number or a multi-fluorescent outfit (courtesy of Campos of Mexico). We all knew it had gone too far when David Seaman turned out in a mainly red multi-patterned affair – ridiculous David but perhaps designed to deflect attention away from that pony-tail! And as if to prove that nothing is sacred, the 1990’s saw the first keepers that I can recall wearing short-sleeved shirts. Nowadays keepers seem to have settled on a matching shirt and shorts ensemble: either silver-grey or black. Much more sensible and perhaps a throwback in its own right to the great Russian keeper Lev Yashin? Thinking about it I’m sure that there were many keepers in the 1970’s who didn’t bother with gloves. I doubt that we would we see such a thing today!
If you think I’ve missed one of your old favourites that you don’t see any more, drop me a line or buy me a beer in the clubhouse and I’ll think about including it in a future issue.
Keep the faith!
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