For me although being serious it was still fun, managers hadn't done their worst, skill and pace still got full value, fitness hadn't made the pitch smaller, and tactics where to charge forward scoring goals.

If you didn't experience that era it's a bit like never having witnessed Garfield Sobers, the fun version of Viv Richards.
Yes football was more violent at times but players of skill could make defenders look inept, viewd today it would look amateur and inept but at the time it was a whole lot more exciting and romantic.

You could tackle and men were men...... no rolling around feigning injury

Eh?

You've already asked about football from the past, why ask again?

Or have you forgotten about your previous post?

Mr. spades looked good in shorts

Someone on that thread asked to look down the other end of the telescope, and he was right.

PLAYING: lacing up (under/over/round) those leather studded, hard-cap boots before the game, getting a big slide tackle in as a winger tried to get down the line; ciggy at half time, communal bath with those big blocks of soap.
WATCHING: standing on the terraces singing & swaying, changing locations at half time, drama of the half time scores on the alphanumeric scoreboards, players who were "of the people" and you could relate to.

You never saw the clarets on tv (nor anyone else) so your werent so upset of offside last minute penalties!

I could play then.

Those were the days, when Norman Hunter could end a player's career without even being booked.

Not having to remortgage the house to be able to afford a season ticket, a dozen or so away games, train tickets and enough booze to keep me suitably topped up throughout.

To anybody who says they miss the old school tackles, I implore you to play in the Sunday league and watch some bald bloke called Dave, who's come off an all day session, try to break your leg with a two footed tackle and then play it off saying 'your just being soft'.

The smell of dubbin
Wooden football rattles
Standing on the bee hole end and running for cover under the longside when it rained hard.
Goalies wearing flat caps
Trainer running on with a bucket of icy cold water and a sponge.

I was able to play back then.

- Cheaper.
- You stand with your mates without employing a project engineer.
- We had top quality players that would be sold on and replaced by somebody else who of equal quality from the youth team.

Jumpers for goalposts of course!

7 quid to watch a game of footy instead of 40 !

The Watney Cup.
Players wearing shirts numbered 1-11.
Terraces.
Barry Davies and Gerald Sinstadt.
Outfield players having to play in goal for an injured keeper.
Teams taking the FA Cup seriously.
The Texaco Cup.
Quagmire pitches.
No international breaks.
Divisions 1,2, 3 and 4.
The European Cup only for the league winners, none of this bloated Champions League nonsense.
The European Cup Winners Cup.
No transfer window.

The Longside.

That weird free programme that you got with your programme.

Stimerol choddy

Jimmy Greaves started to get nervous at Clow Bridge, on the Spurs team bus,, and wished he were somewhere else instead of playing Burnley.

RingoMcCartney wrote:The Longside.

That weird free programme that you got with your programme.

Stimerol choddy

That was that Football League thingy? I used to like that, if after scouring the pages (didn't take long) it mentioned Burnley.

Standing on the Longside.....then at half time fighting my way ro that stinking red brick toilet.... happy days

The old offside rule and indirect freekicks inside penalty area.

The smell of transvasin

Playing on muddy pitches

Playing on icy pictures

A beer from the corner of the bee hole end / longside

Waiting for the other half time scores to appear on the hoardings

No prima donnas who fall over if their hair gets ruffled / players taking a two footed lunge at the back of the legs and getting up to get on with the game

and less so - the smell of the bogs at the back of the bee hole end

Gattuso giving players a reason to stay down.
Black boots.
World class players who are actually 'world class'
Italian teams being superb.

Victory V Lozenges - what did they do to them?!

Gerald Sinstadt's overcoat

Wingers who used the full length of the pitch and actually crossed the ball into the box.

And not wingers who find a half yard of space, feign to cross it and then pass it backwards to a player. That player then passes it to another player about 5 yards outside the penalty area, and then it's worked around to the winger on the opposite side.

There's a bit of a lull in play while the other winger looks to see if he can find that killer pass where the ball can be walked into the net. He can't find it though, so it's passed backwards again and worked all the way around to the opposite wing.

YAWN.

Buxtonclaret wrote:That was that Football League thingy? I used to like that, if after scouring the pages (didn't take long) it mentioned Burnley.

Was it called the "League review" or "Football league review"?

When you watched an international tournament and teams still had some mystery about them.

You'd watch Brazil and be amazed at what they did.
Watching Italy turn up with what were generally the best defenders on the planet.
The dutch imploding in a race row, again.

Seeing these magical players starting to arrive the then Premiership, Gullit, Zola, Bergkamp, Cantona, Juninho and hoping that all the foreign players were as good as they were.
They were players who captured your imagination, made you think they could do anything with the ball.

If you wanted to watch Italian football you had to wait until the footy show on the weekends.

RingoMcCartney wrote:Was it called the "League review" or "Football league review"?

That's the one.
Still have a copy somewhere from the late 60s, with an article on the Cricket Field stand being the first in the country with central heating!

'Jumpers for goalposts of course!'


You had jumpers? You were lucky.

Goalies who didn't wear gloves
Goalies who wore gloves with those little rubber pimples on them
Open sewer toilets
Crowd surges
Away games which were all standing

Trying to get in a ground paying the kids price when you were over age, I finally had to pack it in when I grew a beard though

The Long Haired Maverick...
Currie, Bowles, Hudson,Best, Marsh, Worthington

Archie Claret wrote:The Long Haired Maverick...
Currie, Bowles, Hudson,Best, Marsh, Worthington

What about JJB? (Joey, Jeff and Boyd)

Aside from maybe the lower cost?

Nothing for me, thanks.

As a child of the 80's, the answer is absolutely nothing.

Football was on its arse.

I miss the lack of squad depth and needing players who played everywhere. There was something so comical about seeing Graham Branch play everywhere. Nowadays it's rare to see a player who plays comfortably in lots of positions and there's no worth to them in teams like there used to be.

Oh and then there's players standing on their feet and knowing that a player inside the box yours or opposition would always try to score rather than dive.

I'm not sure that Graham Branch was very comfortable in most of the positions he played.

Seeing Bob Lord's grumpy face sat in the stand

Doing somersalts on the green crash barriers before the match started and the ground was half empty

Watching Jimmy Holland with his bald head and little legs running across the pitch.

The guy selling Pinks after the match

Teams coming out individually rather than this walking out together shaking hands and posing for cameras.

Terracing, big problem with all seater stadiums is being unable to move from a clown sat near you.

Free train tickets on washing powder boxes to London for games.

No mobile phones/ipads in grounds.

Selfie sticks not invented.

Food not charged at restaurant prices in grounds.

Muddy pitches. Was possible to do a 20 ft sliding tackle.

In mid-winter I used to tease the groundsman at the Prarie 'will it take a stud?'.

He used to reply 'go forth and multiply' or words to that effect.

Being allowed into Gawthorpe to watch training sessions and then having a kickabout with the players afterwards.

When you had 5 forwards who could score nigh on 20 goals a season.

It was easy to identify a player who hadn't done anything in a game, they were still clean and not covered in mud.

A family friend engineer with Granada used to get me in free .I get to sit behind the commentary spot .Great till we played Arsenal and I was asked to move at half time by the technicians as my unkind comments 're refs parentage was coming over the commentary.
We had also been a top side with only Everton and Arsenal having more seasons in the sun

Half time fag.

Lost penalty spots.
One sub.
Number 78 bus.
Pint for 26p.
Welly was still a pub.
Half time in the Long side.
Meeting mates on the ground and standing where you liked.
Cup draw outside TV shop.

RingoMcCartney wrote:The Longside.

That weird free programme that you got with your programme.

Stimerol choddy

As others have posted: "Football League."

I got a letter published in FL in 1968/9. I think I claimed Burnley fans made more noise than ManU fans - it was just that there were more of the latter....

"Post-truth" almost 50 years before anyone had heard the term...... or was it?