Just football memories, you know when cricket was played in the summer and we looked forward to winter for the football. Internationals were played once or twice a year. Even our younger posters will have memories of the good old days with Sepp Blatter.
Nobody on here is old enough to remember when internationals were played once or twice a year. They've been about 10 internationals played in 4 or 5 periods in every year I've been alive!
OK not 2 or 3 (figure of speech) but not until 1958 were more than about 8 played and crucially these were played in May June before the season started. During the season 4 were played. That was in 2 periods not 4 or 5. In other words the season of club football was largely free from interference from Internationals.
As a kid I loved listening to the radio on a Saturday afternoon...that music for results was fantastic
Getting the Evening news late edition at the station on the way home for the results and write ups , the half time scores on the boards and checking them up in the programme , just turning up to the game and paying at the turnstile ( even better, knowing which bloke was on the take and bunging him a £1 and 5 or 6 could get in . Players numbers 1 to 11 Watching the scores on the TV " ticker tape " FA Cup draw on a Monday Percy Dalton peanut man
It was Friday night for us. Despite having done the ****ing thing for years and the cost bring exactly the same, week after week, my parents NEVER had the right money.
Wandering up to the top floor of Allders to check the scores on Ceefax Because the High Street branch of Dixons stopped doing that as people couldn't get in or out of the store. Or moaned as they only showed PL scores, when Palace were in the First Division...
Going round my grand dad's and sitting in silence when he checked the pools , he never won a thing by the time I was 18 he was gone I did them for the first time and won £ 86 which at the time was 4 weeks wages to me , would have loved to have seen the old codgers face
Game in the local park until it was too dark to see each other, then across the road to the well lit Tesco carpark to continue. Two overturned trollies as goals. Really trained our accuracy with those. Usually got around 10 mins in before security chased us off. Glory days.
A game in the school playground with one of those orange plastic balls (partially deflated ) that turned to rock if the temp dropped below 70 degrees, they stung like hell if you got one to the face
Lunchtime matches at primary school, I was at a small village school and was one of the better players we always played 5 of us (the better players) against about 15 it was 74/75 and the five us were always Cruyff, Neeskens, Rep, Rensenbrink and Krol..and we normally won. Rush goalkeepers of course. I also recall some fearful beatings that we took in school matches we had just 1 class per year group with 14 boys in the fourth year, (we always had at least 3 third years in the team) and we played the big schools in Canterbury who had 3 & 4 classes to pick from, we once turned up with 9 and lost 22-0, another time we lost 17-1 (i scored the one!), there were a couple of close games where we lost 5-2 and 4-1 and then we finally played another village school and won 4-3 I scored 2 including the winner and that goal, which was coming up for 50 years ago, I can still picture in my mind alongside the joy on my team mates faces as I ran towards them arms aloft.
In the late 70s I had a Saturday job in a shoe shop and on FA cup final day I sneaked a radio/cassette player into the stock room and listened when I could but also recorded the BBC commentary and listened to it in the evening.
Some years there was a Friday night programme "Who's Going To Win The Cup?" filmed with four pundits eating dinner. Or something like that.
They were called 'Wembley'. **** alone knows why? Everyone thought that you could fix a minor puncture by heating the plastic up to cover the hole. It never worked for more than a few seconds.
These ones, but they were much better than Which were great for curlers but the slightest breath of wind would make them virtually unplayable. Then you had the boy who would bring their laced up leather ball that was great until it rained
When the football & cricket seasons allowed people like Jim Cumbes and Chris Balderstone and even Ian Botham to play both professionally.
