BOBBY SMITH DELIGHTS US WITH HIS NOSTALGIC STORIES ABOUT THE OLD DAYS OF FOOTBALL
Monkey Nuts.
It might be sacrilege, but my introduction to football was on the steps of White Hart Lane, back in the late 1970s, as my dear dad, now departed, was a Tottenham fan. Match after match he used to drag me along to the terraces to see his beloved Spurs. Of course, I, as a then eight-year-old boy, could do nothing about it, as my appreciation of things Gold and Black had yet to be formed. It would not be until 1982 that I declared my team was Wolverhampton, with my dad heartbroken that I had committed such a sin. Anyhow, I digress; what I recall about my days ‘darn the Lane,’ even more than the exploits of Archibald and Hoddle etc, was the chap on the touchline who used to shout ‘Nuts, get your nuts, 5p a bag.’ Yes, way before Spurs went all prawn sandwich and vol-au-vents, they had a donkey-jacketed seller of nuts. Every now and then an arm would go up from the crowd and this guy snaked his way up to the arm’s owner for the said transaction to take place. I used to marvel at his skill as the terraces were packed to the rafters with 70s boot boys and assorted nutters, yet he always found his man (women were largely ‘exotic’ creatures in the 1970s not often found in such a habitat). I guess you can still buy nuts at Spurs, but they are probably of thepackaged and over-priced variety, doubtless with some infusion of whatever taste is trendy in Islington.
Three-Wheeler Cars near the corner flag.
Pretty much any TV highlights programme, such as The Big Match, Star Soccer etc, seemed to have a little green car next to the corner flag. They were nearly always the same colour and were called Invacar. With a splash of generosity, the British Pensions Department, now the Department for Work and Pensions, distributed these cars free of charge from 1948 through to the late 1970s. They had a top speed of 82mph and were powered by a 600cc Steyr-Puch engine. The government leased them to the drivers as part of their disability benefit, in a rare show of thought and compassion. A broadly similar scheme still operates today, under the mobility scheme, although the choice of transport is now a scooter.
Wingers on the right side.
Fed up with inverted wingers and the in-swinging cross? If so, then you will remember the days of the hit the by-line winger, who sniffed the whites of the lines like a tram. Up and down he ran, crossing the ball with an accuracy that varied from Tony Towner, a tad erratic, Timmy Steele, who was quick but had no end product and Robbie Dennison, simply the best. Of course, pretty much every team had a speed merchant whose sole task was to beat the full-back and cross it to either the near or far post. Oh, how simple football was in those days; none of this fancy false nine nonsense and obsessions with assists and possession. A striker existed to head the ball, the defender or sometimes a bit of both (Mr Bull).
4-4-2.
Personally, I loved endless games of 4-4-2, with the game squeezed into a small piece of grass about 10 yards each side of the half-way line. None of that passing the ball about at the back, just give it a good welly up the pitch for the midfield hardmen to battle for the ball. Nowadays, players who are supposedly ‘hard’ would be carried off after a single Keith Downing tackle. Pah! Southern softies the lot of them. A small caveat to this is the case of Northampton Town who, around 1988, reduced the squeeze to about 2 yards either side of the halfway line, leading to ridiculous amounts of offsides. George Graham, of Millwall and Arsenal, was clearly a student of the Northampton approach and applied their lessons to his championship winning teams via the upraised arms of Tony Adams and Steve Bould. Just a point on this; why did they never advertise under-arm deodorants at Highbury?
Decent music being played over the tannoy.
This is really a pet hate of mine. Over the years I heard some great music at Molineux; Sham 69, Die Toten Hosen, Buzzcocks, Mighty Lemon Drops are all bands I can recall being aired, either before kick-off or at half-time. Sadly, there is no originality anymore with everything being geared to a mass market. Believe it or not, pop pickers, there is a whole new world out there that is never exploited. Talking of which, it would be great if Dead Cities was played on the turntable before a match, just for the crowd reaction.
Scoreboards being updated via letters on black boards.
Yep, in days gone by, fans were kept informed of other scores via the use of a cunning football version of Countdown, whereby certain letters meant certain games with the numbers being the score. Sadly, after a few pints of cider, this went well over my head. Then again, one of the operators of said scoreboard also liked to drink a pint or two with me before the match, which probably explains why WBA were losing 3-0 before we even kicked off. To supplement this, some fans took to taking small transistor radios with them that took an age to tune before you got a BBC voice intoning the latest score. With said knowledge they would then whisper to people around them that ‘Mansfield Town are winning 2-0.’ Fascinating.
Orange Balls.
No, not a disease from one trip too many to Soho, these were orange balls that were used when the winter nights drew in and snow was in the air. My lasting memory of this was a Neil Masters thunderbolt shot from 30 yards that hit the crossbar, with snow going in all directions. Sadly, this was the highlight of Mr Masters career at the Wolves, unless you count numerous sessions chewing the fat with the physio.
Urinating.
Going to football in the 70s and 80s was akin to Glastonbury before it got all posh, circa 1990 onwards. None of these current day plush toilets with running water and soap. Oh no, you were lucky to get a cistern that wasn’t cracked, back in the day, and paper towels were an invention yet to cross the M-25. Then again, much of the crowd didn’t even use to bother with perilous trips to the toilet, being content to use the business pages of The Sun newspaper to relive themselves, apart from footie fans in the Liverpool area who thought the paper beyond even this use. Wet Leg indeed. Toilets were also a ‘good’ place to indulge in ‘conversations’ with the home fans during the half-time break. West Ham was the best example of this!
Mud.
Talking of Glastonbury…Pitches at matches in the 1970s, and even into the 1980s, were absolute glue-pits. How on earth players played on them I will never know. Players of the time had to work hard just to stay in control of the ball on pitches that resembled the rasputitsa, the season of mud that helped to stop the German Army outside Moscow in 1941 during the failure of Operation Typhoon.
Flat Caps.
Oh dear. Going back even further in time and we happen across the strange phenomenon of the flat cap, especially in the former mining areas such as Barnsley. Of course, I, being a fashion icon, could never possibly comment on such a fashion faux pas…
ARTICLE BY BOBBY SMITH
Ex-A Load of Bull writer who loves punk and Oi! music, Chris Woakes, Test Match cricket, Wolverhampton Wanderers, military history. Author of One Love Two Colours and The Armageddon Pact.