LaticsPete

50 Years of Shoot! Carlton Books, 2019 Hardback £18.99 The start of the 1969/70 season, one that saw Everton win the Div 1 title for the seventh time, witnessed the birth of one of the longest running football magazines ever – Shoot!. There can hardly be any football fan who hasn’t, over the succeeding 50 years, read a copy, and many probably either kept back copies or cut out photos for scrapbooks or the wall. And who didn’t keep the magazine’s “League Ladders” pinned up, religiously moving the team tabs up and down after each set of matches? For nearly thirty years it was a weekly, bringing a frequent and regular diet of interviews, news, gossip and pieces by star players. Before the internet and when football on the tv was a rarity it was this colourful piece of print that helped satisfy the thirst for anything about the game. It couldn’t be described as a home of in depth writing nor of long pieces of analysis, but each page was lively and, certainly for younger readers, packed with both trivia and opinions that seemed to engage. It was the place where you could learn that Eric Gates thought that Glenn Hoddle was too erratic to be in the England team and that Osvaldo Ardiles’ favourite food was Roast Beef and Italian (though presumably not on the same plate). One of Shoot!’s staples was pieces written by star players. Beginning with Bobby Moore, others like George Best, Malcolm Macdonald and Phil Thompson. Kevin Keegan, in one of his columns, was an early advocate of switching from the goal-average to the goal-difference system we now use. Gary Lineker, fresh from his transfer to Barcelona from Everton, tipped his old club to win the 86/7 title. He was right too. Meanwhile Eric Cantona described “everyone connected with French football is a liar and a cheat”. Shoot! Loved the big statements, they were great headlines! Its frequency made it able to comment on and preview the big games that were on. Whether it was important League fixtures, Cup matches, or internationals then Shoot! had an angle. Franz Beckenbauer is interviewed before the Nations Cup matches with England in 1971 – “we are a better team”, and Mo Johnston and Ian Durrant before a Celtic v Rangers clash. Some of the coverage can inevitably be seen as a product of the time it was written: “The Black Explosion” when “at least half the clubs in the First Division have a black player on the staff”. “Stars War” looks at potential British targets for foreign clubs: Bryan Robson at £3m, Gordon Strachan, £2m, and Gary Shaw, £1m, are some of the possibilities. This book, a compilation of the magazine’s output, captures the excitement, controversies and trivia of those former times. It’s an entertaining piece of nostalgia and worth dipping into time and again.

Forgotten Nations Chris Deeley Pitch Publishing 2019 Softback 224pp £12.99 The match between Padania and Szekely Land had not, I admit, registered on my football radar. I’ll happily look at match stats from any non-league competition you want to put in front of me, but these teams I could tell you nothing about. Mea culpa probably as this game determined 3/4th places in CONIFA World Football Cup in 2018. Explanations are needed straight away. Last year the Confederation of Independent Football Associations, made up of “international” teams unable to join FIFA, held their third world tournament in the Greater London area. There are ten criteria for joining CONIFA, although a potential member only has to meet one to join. Hence there is a large disparity in the origins and composition of the teams in it. Padania as a region is based in Italy’s Po Valley and is the creation of the Lega Nord, the right-wing Italian political party. The Szekely Land team is based on ethnic Hungarians located in Romania. It, of course, is not to be confused with the Hungarian minority teams from Slovakia, Serbia, or Ukraine. Currently there are 58 members of CONIFA, geographically spread across the globe. The 16 who made it to the 2018 World Football Cup each had interesting journeys to get there, in some cases literally in others in terms of creation and organisation. The very nature of the CONIFA criteria make it possible for teams that can be said to have an agreed geographic location to play teams of exiles, or from somewhat hypothetical boundaries. No matter who there’s always an element of political controversy attached. The very fact that they aren’t teams from countries recognised by FIFA, nor by the UN as a self-governing territory, begs the question “Why are they in that situation?”. The Chagos Islands, in the Pacific, is a territory from which all Chagossians were removed by the UK in order for it to be leased to the USA as a military base. Northern Cyprus is just that, the area in the north of the island that’s only recognised by Turkey as a nation state. Cascadia stretches from British Columbia in Canada to all or bits of nine US states. It’s a concept that is increasingly being adopted by white survivalist groups. So, it’s all a political minefield but one that seems to operate relatively harmoniously on the football field. The author describes the backgrounds to the origin of several of the teams, who comprise their players, their supporters at the tournament, and does so in a clear, if individual, manner. Sometimes it feels as if he’s writing for a non-football reader, however there’s a wealth of information that will hold the attention of football supporters. Bubbling along underneath the mainstream of FIFA, UEFA et al, CONIFA is an interesting and brave concept. Maybe its criteria are too wide and the potential for political causes to hijack it is there, but currently the positives of Padania meeting up with Szekilians outweigh that. By the way, the former won 5-4 on penalties.

Classic Scottish hard man. He and Frizz were a tough double act.

When Footballers Were Skint Jon Henderson Biteback Publishing 2019 Softback, 308pp, £9.99 Was it a halcyon era when footballers weren’t allowed to earn above a certain amount, travelled on buses, and had virtually no say in where their next place of work was going to be? In a hen, for many players, it’s the norm to live in gated estates, drive several cars, and choose which club they will sign for, then it can certainly seem like it. Much of football now would be unrecognisable to those who played (or watched) it 40, 50 years or more ago. Has the change altered the very nature of the game and the relationships between the various groups within it? Is it that by returning to the past we are on, as the author suggests, “a journey in search of the soul of football”? The book is dedicated to Jimmy Hill, who as Chairman of the Professional Footballer’s’ Association, led the overthrow of the maximum wage (then £20 per week) in 1961. In force since 1901 (originally £4) it was a cushion for directors who could rest easy in the knowledge that players were unlikely to want to move clubs for financial gain. Of course, not every player achieved this maximum, and most were on reduced wages out of season, having to take temporary jobs whether it was labouring, decorating or whatever else was available. There is little bitterness about such a situation amongst the 23 former players the author interviewed. There seems to be an acceptance that expectations were lower and therefore less resentment is shown. Many footballers came from hard backgrounds, growing up in the 1930s and 40s, with job opportunities that were hard manual work. Pre-war many footballers were miners and the chance to play professional football, above ground even if for lower pay, was not to be turned down. Even later, in the 50s, Tommy Banks, Bolton and England full back, knew that he’d have earned more down the pit in Wigan. The stories that are told by the players range from signing on to finishing their careers. Long before club academies and agents, lads came to the attention of clubs in circuitous ways. Don Ratcliffe (Crewe, Middlesbrough, Darlington, Stoke) was spotted playing in the street by a shopkeeper and recommended. Tony McNamara (Everton) was spotted in the Catholic Young Men’s Society League and Bill Leivers, later of Manchester City, got a trial with Chesterfield partly because the club’s groundsman went to the same church. Many continued with another job as well as playing football. Tom Finney was famous as a plumber, Cliff Jones (Swansea and Spurs) finished a five-year apprenticeship as a sheet-metal worker, whilst Dave Whelan (Blackburn) took up as a market stall trader when he was injured. A financial and work environment such as this, allied to the experiences many underwent in the war, ensured that footballers were generally grounded in the communities in which they lived and played. They shopped, travelled, and drank locally, and tended to marry local girls. Football was the main entertainment for thousands of those whom lived nearby, accessible both in terms of location and cost. People didn’t have cars, there wasn’t a vast array of real or virtual leisure opportunities, and hence players of the town club were intrinsically part of the focus of the community. The links are no longer there for many, football and footballers have a different relationship with many of us. Even away from the gilded palaces of the Premier League many players are only associated with a club for short contracts or loans. The soul may not have completely gone but this excellent piece of sporting and social history writing certainly tells of its radical change.

Conor Ripley saved a penalty from Tom Eaves.

Then someone will say he’s been gone too long..,

Bradford City 2 Latics 2 Ht 1-1 Nepomuceno 15457

Why tell the opposition whether he is fit to play or not?

"It will take a lot to remove a bitter taste from the mouth of many fans who once sported the team's colours". A sentence from the Latics' programme editorial of December 9th 1969, very nearly 50 years go. It was written at a dire time, probably worse than now, when , in a run of ten matches without a win (including an 8-1 drubbing at Peterborough) , the club was in grave danger of going under. Down in the basement slots of Div 4, Latics were , and again a quote from the programme, "under the hammer of auctioneeers, liquidators - and various other people who might have been called on to act on behalf of former chairman Ken Bates, who had a strong and understandable desire to get back his loan money". The programme was for a game that pretty much summed up the plight of the club. It was a FA Cup Second Replay against South Shields from the Northern Premier League. After a struggling 0-0 draw in the first match, Latics were humiliated at home, losing 2-1. The club was saved, mainly due to John Lowe, a director who came on board at about this time and took the "chance to check the files and weigh up a policy which the public are going to believe is sincere and in the right direction". Ironically, given current goings on at Gigg Lane, John Lowe had been on the Board at Bury but resigned in Oct ober 1969 because of "a disagreement over policy" and "Bury's domestic difficulties". Anyway he gradually righted the ship off the pitch and the appointment of Jimmy Frizzell as Manager did the same iin playing matters, keeping us out of the bottom four and gaining promotion the season after. I post this not out of a sense of "don't worry everything will turn out ok like it did before". Those of us who were around at the time know it was a really depressing period and the future was very bleak. It did work out alright - and from a worse position than we are now in - but I don't know if there are lessons to be learned. Maybe we need a new John Lowe, a man who didn't get into publlc wrangling, and who stabilised us for years to come. Could the FLG assume that mantle? I don't know .

As has already been said, Mboro did it with Downing last season. And it, under Steve Gibson, is an extremely well run club.

FG 1 Oldham 1 ht 1-0 Hamer 2654

Thanks 59 - at least I can let him continue the search!

This match was postponed on the morning it was scheduled to take place. Has anyone got a copy of the programme (or has heard of one in circulation) ? A York supporter has asked me to help in getting hold of one. Programmes for the rearranged match are easy to get hold of ( I seem to have three!) but not for the Dec game. Thanks

No, it’s not Steve Whitehall (Probably not a pun that’s appreciated by young people)

Bloody Southerners Spencer Vignes Biteback Publishing 2018 Softback 303pp £12.99 The legend of “Old Big Head” and his once seemingly inseparable right-hand man, Peter Taylor, is a rich one, a story that can polarise opinion. In 1973 one of the most amazing facets of it took place. Brian Clough, who had led Derby County to become English champions and European Cup semi-finalists, spoken of as England manager, joined Brighton & Hove Albion, skirting around relegation from the third tier. The period was certainly one of the most turbulent in Clough’s career. Sacked by Derby after being charged by the FA (for calling Leeds “one of the dirtiest teams in Britain”) and giving too much time to his media work, he was a hot potato. Someone who got results, but who was increasingly carrying a lot of baggage. An early Mourinho maybe, attracting a range of opinion and owning an abrasive persona. Down on the South Coast, Albion had never significantly troubled the honours board in their 72 years. They had, however, recently got a new chairman, Mike Bamber, a nightclub owner, property developer and with a fondness for celebrity. The lure of publicity and a genuine desire to create a successful club ensured that he pushed out the boat for Clough and Taylor, even knowing that a guilty verdict from the FA could lead to the former getting a long ban. So it was that the two signed five-year contracts on 31 October 1973. Was Halloween an omen? Nobody concerned thought it to to be with Bamber hoping for a bump in attendances and the managerial duo significantly increasing their salaries and being promised money for signings. Initially, results were decent (for a team sixth from the bottom of the division) but a horror story began. Dumped out of the FA Cup 4-0 by non-league Walton & Hersham, there then followed an infamous tv-covered game against Bristol Rovers at the Goldstone Ground. Simply outplayed they were beaten 8-2. The Clough “bounce” was truly over, probably not helped by with public and private withering assessment of his players. His style was not appreciated by many, neither was his absence from the club. Rarely at training, never travelling on the team bus, and zooming up to his home in Derby straight after matches. At the end of the season this distancing translated into not telling players they were being released, leaving them to find out via newspapers. And it was newspaper headlines when Clough himself left the South. Less than a year after his appointment, Clough was named manager of Leeds, the team he had branded dirty. The shock and ramifications, ending up with a mere 44 days in charge are well told elsewhere He didn’t take Peter Taylor with him, and this book suggests that money, always one of Clough’s interests, was a factor. But Taylor, always more hands on, took over as manager with the backing of Mike Bamber (whom Clough described as “the finest chairman” he’d ever had) and remained there until 1976, narrowly missing out on promotion. He died in 1990, he and Clough not having spoken for seven years. Clough, of course, led Nottingham Forest to European glory and his success and persona will mean that he will continue to be talked about for years. The author is not uncritical of him and he will always be regarded honestly as a genius with flaws. The book is open about this but it’s also a fine chronicle of those years in the 70s when Brighton dreamed big. If Mike Bamber was alive to witness more recent success, he may well have thought that it was all worth it.

Indeed Bristol. "These are the times that try men's souls".

It was a joke....

The ever reliable (though Prediction League jammy beggar) MilnrowLatic collected his ST this morning. Sales are, according to the gentleman serving him, just about 100 down on last year. Yes, the extended reductions will have affected income, however if appears that there is still a significant proportion of supporters who have signed up again. Obviously KIG’s demographic analysis has underplayed the number of us over 50s that there are.

In. Prepared for promotion.

I’m a big traditionalist, and strongly dislike the trend to switch kick offs for tv purposes but wonder if Latics consistently starting at 2pm on a Saturday would have either a positive or negative impact

Re kick off times, I've got a 1952/3 Season Ticket that has the following info in it: Aug 23 to Oct 4 3.0 ko Oct 11 - Nov 1 2.45 Nov 8 - Nov 22 2.30 Nov 29 - Dec 27 2.15 Jan 3 - Jan 17 2.30 Jan 24 - Jan 31 2.45 Feb 7 - May 2 3.0 I wonder how many people turned up late (or early).

No you’re right. In the 50s certainly we had 2.15 and 2.30 Saturday matches. Evening games in Aug/ Sept were 6.30 Midweek Cup replays were afternoons - I remember going to the 2nd Round Replay against Chesterfield in 1960 ( end of November) so before floodlights. Tuesday afternoon and over 13000 there!

3-3 actually BP. Right number of goals though! Just over 14700 there

Not floodlights Andy. In fact we were the last League club in Lancashire to install them.

The Amazing Journey Matthew Watson-Broughton TechTo Sports, 2019 Hardback 274pp £19.99 Fifty years ago, two amazing events happened. There was, of course, the first manned Moon landing. An intrepid, courageous and thrilling journey that travelled somewhere that no human had been before. Just a month earlier, however, there was the culmination of a very similar trip into the unknown, and one that took people (from Tyneside at least) to previously unreached locations. Newcastle United won the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in their first European competition. It remains the last major trophy they have won. Briefly, for our younger readers, this was the predecessor to the UEFA Cup which itself transmuted into the Europa League. At the time, and this was its eleventh year, it was behind the European Cup and Cup-Winners Cup in terms of status but still had the glamour of international competition and had only been won once previously by a British club, Leeds United the year before. Newcastle had finished 10th in the First Division and it was only due to the expansion of the competition from 48 to 64 clubs that it got in as England’s fourth representative. It’s true to say that any emphasis on success by the club was a slow burn. Compared with the detailed planning and preparation that teams that nowadays carry out, it was almost a “turn up on the day and play” approach in the early rounds. Away to Sporting Lisbon in the first leg of the 2nd Round, there’s been no scouting of the opponents. At the airport on the way out Coach Dave Smith picked up a magazine that had a two-page feature on Sporting and reading that on the flight over was the extent of knowledge as to what to expect. Manager Joe Harvey was a great man-manager but not a tactician and would generally, when asked about the opponents by his players, tell them not to worry and play to their own strengths. It obviously worked as Newcastle disposed of Feyenoord, Sporting Lisbon, Real Zaragoza, Vitoria Setubal, Glasgow Rangers, and, in the two-legged final, Ujpesti Dosza to bring home the club’s first, and only, piece of European silverware. The book is written in a distinctive manner. The words are those of players, fans, journalists, and other were present for some or all of this “amazing journey”. The Newcastle side is set in a fictional recreation of the club’s celebration banquet whilst there are also similar get-togethers of players and others associated from other clubs in the competition. The style is of conversations amongst the participants and nearly all the words can apparently be attributed to those quoted, although they may have been said in written articles, other interviews and so on. There are wonderful anecdotes and recollections although, for me, the supposed conversations do come across at times as a little awkward. Notwithstanding that, this is a very good record of, and tribute to, the club’s triumph and an insightful look at a different and distinct period of European football.