Collectables in 1980/81: Part 2

The second and concluding part of Greg Lansdowne's look back to the football sticker and card collecting scene at the start of the 1980's.

Having launched in 1978, the Daily Star felt confident enough to chance its arm in the football sticker market just three years’ later.

Although it would turn out to be a one-off, ‘Top British Teams’ was a decent effort from the newcomer.

Peter Batt, Chief Sports Columnist of the Daily Star, misjudged his audience in the foreword, however, by pitching it more to adults rather than the accepted target market of kids:

“Middle aged dads browsing through these pages will be instantly reminded of those magical pre-television days when the football circus came to town once every fortnight.

“If I close my eyes I can still inhale the steamy aroma of wet mackintoshes on the crowded top deck of the bus transporting us to wonderland.”

With 412 stickers, the Star opted for two First Division players to a sticker – slightly bigger than the Scottish versions we became accustomed to with Panini. Most were paired in the same clubs but occasionally you would get a Coventry player (Mick Coop) with a Nottingham Forest (Garry Birtles) or David Langan (Birmingham City) with Nicky Reid (Manchester City).

Where the newspaper differentiated from conventional albums was in the shape of their landscape publication, which gave them space for 14 individual player shots (as opposed to 13 from FKS and 12 from Panini that season).

With room for an extra squad member or two, Top British Teams featured a fresh-faced Ian Rush in what Americans would call his ‘rookie card’.

Nominally the players were ordered alphabetically but Ryan came after Suddaby for Brighton and Bannister after Hunt for Coventry when spelling went awry. There is even a rare shot of Clive Allen in an Arsenal shirt... albeit shoved in between Peter Nicholas and Neil Smilie at new club Crystal Palace.  

Claudio Marangoni (Sunderland) and Steve Archibald (Tottenham) compete for the worst superimposing job, the latter of which looks like his head has been placed on Lou Ferrigno’s body.

Claudio Marangoni, Steve Archibald and Garth Crooks

Selected Division Two sides were afforded 12 smaller-sized stickers (Chelsea, Newcastle, Swansea, Sheffield Wednesday, West Ham) while 11 stickers were given out each to Aberdeen, Celtic, Dundee United and Rangers in the Scottish mix. These were sold as four to a sticker.

A swanky competition finishes the album, to win a complete ‘Video Outfit’ - in conjunction with JVC - by naming your best Great Britain team and a slogan for them! A closing date of November 30, 1980 indicates the album came out early season, meaning a lot of credit should be given for putting together, in the main, a worthy first effort.

Less credit goes to Topps for their album-less Footballer ’81 set.

Topps/A&BC had previously brought out series after series of impressive individual player cards but the latest effort would prove the beginning of the end (as just one more set was produced for English football thereafter before the US company took a lengthy hiatus from the UK).

Just as Panini would innovate from Modena and then transfer those ideas abroad, Topps’ US head office would set the guidelines for any tinkering to their products. So it went, Footballers ’81 imitated the same three-players-to-a-card format being used for American sports at the time.

Notwithstanding some bizarre card ordering, the basic premise saw players divided into club sides based on the 1979-80 First Division placings. In between fourth-placed arsenal and Nottingham Forest, in fifth, were the top scorers for the previous season’s Division One teams.

Leeds United and Norwich City were separated by England players; Manchester City and Stoke City were bracketed by internationals from Scotland, Northern Ireland, Republic of Ireland and Wales; at the end were an assortment of Division Two players.

So far so moderate.

But then you find Larry Lloyd marooned from his Nottingham Forest team-mates, in with Manchester City. Quite why Billy Gilbert of Crystal Palace and Gary Owen of West Bromwich Albion are stuck together before the Second Division players is another mystery.

I will spare Topps’ blushes and leave their ‘out of ordering’ there.

Known as ‘pink backs’ (each Topps set used a different colour on the reverse to differentiate itself), Footballer ’81 packs were an attractive offering to any would be collector: nine picture cards (albeit three cards divided into three each), plus one of 18 ‘Super Star Posters’ and a stick of bubble gum.
Problems only start to arise when one looks deeper into the collection.

With just 198 mini-cards to the set, there really is no need for some of the players to crop up three times (as the likes of Paul Mariner, Glenn Hoddle and John Robertson do for their club, country and as last season’s top scorer).

Some of the photo selections also leave a great deal to be desired. Manchester United’s Ray Wilkins in a Chelsea kit (whom he left in the close season of 1979) appears quite reasonable compared to Southampton’s Kevin Keegan in a Liverpool shirt (a club he departed in 1977).

Brian Kidd would be forgiven for struggling to remember which club he was playing for at that time as he features on a Bolton Wanderers club card in painted on, badgeless, kit as well as on a top scorer card for Everton in Manchester City apparel.

I could go on... but it would be easier to put this collection out of its misery.

As a postscript, Topps did bring out an album for its ‘Footballer’ set in 1981-82 but there was a reason that collection was to be their valediction in England.

With the sketchy competition outlined, it just leaves Panini’s ‘Football 81’. As a previous Football Attic post has already done this album justice, I will close with some embellishing from Peter Warsop, who was the sales and marketing manager at WH Smith Distributors at the time, responsible for, among many other publishers, the sales, marketing and physical distribution for Panini UK:

“Nineteen seventy eight was a great year for Panini on football. As well as the World Cup we sold over 80 million packets of stickers on the Panini ‘Football 78’.  Nineteen seventy nine was down 10% but 1980 and 1981 shot back up to above 1978 levels. During this period we did market collections heavily but I put the main growth contributor down to completely overhauling the distribution system; this was done by reducing down fairly considerably the numbers of wholesalers involved. Those that remained had to provide agreed levels of service to retailers and their performance was carefully monitored and performance reviews given at regular intervals. Both wholesalers as well as retailers were put under some pressure to reward our marketing investments and due to the high volumes being achieved this worked in everyone’s favour.”

With the Daily Star bowing out after one year and FKS and Topps signing off in 1981-82, the path was well and truly clear for Panini to dominate for years to come.

Got any memories about the cards and stickers you collected back in 1980/81? If so, drop us a line and tell which collections you favoured most or those elusive players you needed to complete your sets!

Meantime, as ever, our sincere thanks to Greg Lansdowne for his wonderful blog post, and don't forget, you can buy Greg's book, 'Stuck on You: The Rise & Fall... & Rise of Panini Stickers' from Amazon UK and all good book stores right now (prices vary).

See also:

• Collectables in 1980/81: Part 1

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Collectables in 1980/81: Part 1

Once again it's our absolute pleasure to welcome back Greg Lansdowne who this time takes us on a sticker-packed trip down Memory Lane to the start of the 1980's. Here's Part 1, with the concluding part coming soon to The Football Attic website.

By the time of the 1980-81 season, resistance to Panini’s allure in the football collectables market seemed futile.

An irresistible mix of self-adhesive stickers, up-to-date strips, official club badges (in foil!) – all readily available to a hypnotised audience – made Panini the album to collect.

And yet…

FKS and Topps had been left bloodied and bruised following the entry of Panini into the UK mix from the late 1970s. Prior to that, the pair had dominated the collectables scene with their picture stamps and card sets respectively (Topps having bought out A&BC in 1975).

Rather than bowing out gracefully they carried on for the 1980-81 campaign, like washed-up boxers getting off the canvas on the count of nine to take another beating.

Panini’s ‘Football 81’, Topps ‘Footballers ‘81’ and FKS’ ‘Soccer 81’. What more could any collector need?

Why, the ‘Daily Star Top British Teams Football Album’, that’s what.

Each of Panini’s rivals provided a style of their own but none came anywhere near to putting up an offering likely to compete with the market leader.

It is possible to encapsulate this collectables season in one player: Peter Withe.

The legendary striker had just signed for Aston Villa that summer, at the start of a season to remember for the Villans.

Looking back at that Championship-winning squad in Panini’s double page spread, there sits Withe, in the bottom row of the second page, looking resplendent in the claret and blue outfit for which he is best known.

From this collectables high point, it quickly descends among the rivals.

While Panini traditionally waited until January to get their album out – ensuring the current season’s kits could be utilised – the rush to be first to market among competitors had more negatives than upsides.

Hence, Withe appeared in Newcastle United kit – from where he had moved in the summer of 1980 – in the Daily Star album. Topps opted to paint a claret and blue strip over one of Withe’s many former outfits.

Neither of these were satisfactory but FKS really pulled the stops out when it came to committing a Peter Withe fashion faux pas. If it wasn't bad enough to use a picture of the forward in the shirt of local rivals Birmingham, Withe had left that club in 1976 and played for a further two clubs since (Nottingham Forest and Newcastle).

Despite this oversight (among others), FKS did put up a reasonable showing with their Soccer 81 album. At 450 stickers, this was a comprehensive set that is mostly (if not solely) let down by copyright issues. With Panini having long since agreed deals with the English and Scottish Football Leagues, as well as their respective players’ associations, FKS needed to tread carefully.

As a result, the club badges are artist’s impressions – with varying degrees of inauthenticity.
Leicester City’s resembles a primary school art project; Manchester City’s elaborate badge was just too much like hard work; by the time they got to West Ham United they had completely lost interest!

Although the desire of Panini’s competitors to get their collections out early meant a large chunk of the head shots were taken from the previous season’s press call, this wasn’t as much of a problem at the time, as it was less noticeable with kits barely changing from season to season.

Except Brighton & Hove Albion had made a drastic alteration, for example, ditching their blue and white stripes in 1980-81 for an all blue shirt, making it obvious FKS and Daily Star were using dated photos from 1979-80.

‘Soccer 81’ opened with a review of the previous season, plus a swift welcome from Bobby Charlton at the bottom of the article (“I hope you enjoy collecting and swopping Soccer 81”). Also featuring a competition tie-in with Charlton’s soccer schools, the England great would later shift allegiance to Panini as the decade went on.

A continuing issue (not quite on the scale of the FKS ‘Soccer Stars 80’ album) was the presence of two clubs sharing each double page. It saved on paper but was not pleasing to the eye.

As has been recounted in other articles (as well as in my book ‘Stuck On You’) one of the more piquant aspects of these old albums (for the anally retentive football fans among us) is the errors that, pleasingly, crop up quite regularly.

In what one can only assume was an undetected cock-up by a photographer when captioning, Gordon Cowans appears as both himself and Des Bremner in not just ‘Soccer 81’ but also the Daily Star album.

Eccentric kit choices are also to the fore with, for example, Plymouth Argyle’s Brian Bason in a Chelsea shirt, despite having left the Blues in 1977.

Scottish clubs are featured prominently in equally-proportioned stickers to their English counterparts. To distinguish them, they are bordered by Scottish flags – except FKS forgot to add them in some instances, such as Paul Sturrock of Dundee United.

Similarly, a section of ‘USA Star Players’ (with players from the NASL) were framed by American flags, giving us a rare opportunity to collect UK domestic stickers of Franz Beckenbauer and Gerd Muller among others.

FKS were pioneers in the recycling movement by offering a discounted Umbro sports bag – as endorsed by Gary Owen – in exchange for 20 empty packets.

While Panini benefited from the huge promotional push of giving the ‘Football 81’ album away in ‘Shoot!’, FKS carried on their relationship with ‘Scoop’, - a comic that eventually ceased publishing in October 1981, the same season in which FKS also gave up the ghost.

Greg Lansdowne concludes his round-up of the collectables scene of 1980/81 later this week here on the Attic website. Meantime, our huge thanks to Greg, and to Alan Jenkins of Football Cartophilic Football Exchange for unearthing the above image of the rare FKS ‘Soccer 81’ album 'free with Scoop'.

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Videoblog 6: The Encyclopedia of World Football (Marshall Cavendish, 1980)

Way back in July 2013 when we recorded our podcast on Football Books, Rich asked Chris whether there were any books he loved enough to warrant him running back into a burning house to rescue from its raging inferno. Chris answered that one particular title would be worthy of that life-threatening course of action, namely the Encyclopedia of World Football.

Sixteen months on, Chris finally tells you all why he loved the book so much in Videoblog 6 (see below). For fans of football kits, badges and general miscellanea, this is a great old book that's well worth hunting down on eBay and other online auction sites.

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FKS: Soccer Stars 80

It's my firm belief that FKS should probably have been renamed 'NCM' around the start of the 1980's. 'Non compos mentis' is a fair description of what their football sticker collections were like back then, such were the variable standards employed throughout.

The new decade should have brought about a new dawn for FKS and its sticker albums in the UK, but instead they continued to churn out yet more of their basic, plain-looking stickers that were not dissimilar to the ones they were making a decade earlier. Look closer, however, and you'd have marvelled at some truly laughable examples of photography in the images that were featured, setting FKS well apart from the equivalent merchandise being made by Figurine Panini at the time.

To begin, there was the eye-catching front cover of the Soccer Stars 80 album. Overall, it had a more modern look than the corresponding Panini offering, although the picture showing West Bromwich Albion seemingly playing St. Mirren may have been every bit as baffling as some of the stickers inside. Along the bottom, a caption indicated that the English First and Second Divisions were featured among the 48 pages, and for good reason as this was the first time that Second Division teams had appeared in an FKS collection.

Inside, each of the First Division team line-ups consisted of 13 players, confusingly spread over one-and-a-bit pages. The extra 'bit' meant that some double-page spreads actually showed players from two or even three different teams. You wouldn't have got that in a Panini album, but then perhaps Panini had a bigger budget or better designers.

Each team section was titled in a never-more-Eighties green bubble font, followed by some rudimentary facts relating to the honours won by that team. There was also a handy grid showing their results from the previous season, with spaces provided for results in the current season too.

Sadly, FKS didn't bother with the team pictures and foil badges that were made so popular by their rivals, making do instead with the regular white-bordered player stickers bearing a name along the bottom edge. As for the photos themselves, let's just say they were... idiosyncratic.

While Panini standardised on 'head and shoulders' shots for their stickers, FKS were nowhere near as conscientious. They instead opted to raid image galleries, reuse old pictures from previous collections, take some of their own pictures and even paint over old pictures to form a tapestry of lunatic inconsistency.

If ever you're feeling depressed, just turn the pages of this album in its complete form to quickly cheer yourself up. Smile at Brighton's Peter O'Sullivan pinching his nose as he runs out onto the field for Brighton. Be amazed at Martin Peters wearing his Norwich City shirt from 1976. Laugh at Middlesbrough's Stan Cummins sharing his picture with one of his team mates, or Terry Cochrane proudly wearing his Burnley shirt despite having moved to Ayresome Park in October 1978. As for Trevor Francis, his shirt has had more paint applied to it than the Forth Road Bridge.

Uniformity was a key element of this collection - in more ways than one. Players were shown in their home kits, away kits, old kits, new kits, training kits, tracksuits and in Terry Cochrane's case, wrong kits altogether. The whole thing was a total hotchpotch from start to finish and could be considered to be 'interesting' if it wasn't for the fact that it was actually rather deranged.

In similar vein, the Soccer Stars 80 album featured a dozen England Under 21 players - six shown in the middle of the album, and six at the very end. None of the full England squad were included, though - just 12 upcoming young stars such as Russell Osman (in a grey Ipswich shirt), Derek Statham (distracted) and Kevin Reeves (asleep).

Luckily, higher standards were restored with the excellent gallery of Second Division team pictures, before leading into the Scottish Premier Division team pages that used the same format as their English counterparts. Then at the very end of the album there was the customary 'Special Offer' - something not unfamiliar to Panini fans. In this case, FKS collectors were invited to send off for up to 22 bronze medallions "each representing an English First Division Club from the current 1978/79 season." The front of each coin showed a club badge while the honours and cups won by the team were displayed on the back. Think 'fancy 2p pieces' and you're pretty much there.

With that, you have a full picture of FKS and it's floundering attempts to keep their foothold in the UK sticker market. Though they'd make further collections for another couple of years, they were finally declared bankrupt in 1987, never to be seen again.

It's anyone's guess what their stickers might have looked like had they still been around today, but my feeling is they'd be virtually the same as they always were. A plain white border around a randomly chosen photo - that was the FKS way for years and years. Unable to stray far from that tried and tested formula, it was perhaps this reason and this reason alone that ultimately proved the undoing for Britain's very own answer to Panini.

-- Chris Oakley

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Shoot! Soccer Quiz Book 1980

Regular Football Attic contributor Al Gordon of God, Charlton & Punk Rock takes us back to 1980 and Shoot! magazine's quiz book of the year ...

They say it’s the small things in life that count, well at least the less fortunate amongst us do. But a small thing for one person could be colossal for another, one man’s junk etc. And as you unwittingly stumble upon the discovery of one of these colossal moments, everything else in life fades away to a place it cannot hurt you, whilst you merrily immerse yourself with a relish (not literally you Americans) and a delight that you and only you could ever experience. I've just had one of these occurrences, totally unexpectedly, and apart from causing me to gasp loudly, it dominated my day as only football nostalgia can.

There is a lady at work, Sam, who comes from a large family with plenty of brothers. As she was rummaging through her mother’s loft for the Christmas tree and its assorted ornamentation, she discovered a box of old annuals. Look-in, Battlestar Galactica, all kinds of eighties memorabilia, but amongst these lay a little treat especially for the rose-spectacled enthusiast of the beautiful game. And there it was on her desk, unannounced yet boldly seductive, for me to enjoy. The 1980 Shoot! Soccer Quiz Book.

As far as I can tell, this hardback offspring of the magazine was a yearly affair spanning a decade, the earliest I've found being from 1973, the latest 1984 although there may well be others. This particular copy had obviously gone to a good home as the crossword was correctly completed and a couple of the colour pictures of the owners’ favourite players had been neatly cut out and re-homed in a presumably bulging scrap book.

There is just the one crossword; it’s not that kind of quiz book. This is more akin to the pub quiz format, a book full of football questions with the answers given upside down at the bottom of the page. How many questions there are in total I do not know, and I'm sure as not going to count them for you, but I’d edge my bets at around four hundred. Thirty years ago one magazine employee must have spent a month every year compiling these; it’s easy to tell which he conjured up first as they require a little knowledge –

‘During his league career in Scotland, Manchester United striker Joe Jordan scored just one goal. Was it for Morton, Motherwell or Montrose?’

Remember this was 1980 and you couldn’t just get your smart phone out your pocket. Not that you’d need to for some of the others –

‘What colour shirts do Blackburn Rovers usually play in?’

That was obviously written on a Friday afternoon returning to the Shoot! Towers after a liquid lunch.

There are sections for just about every specialised subject, defenders, midfielders, managers, Welsh internationals, Scottish internationals, the FA Cup, the Scottish Cup, stars of the past and my favourite, soccer badges from the States. As I get older and my memory a little more distant, the questions do seem much tougher on the whole than they would have done then. Asking me scores and transfer fees from thirty years ago is testing, asking me which division the San Jose Earthquakes currently play in is just plain unfair. In fact any question from three decades ago with the word ‘currently’ in is rather flawed.

Of course with most of these old publications, the foremost pleasure is in the pictures. Photos of Trevor Francis running out in his Detroit Express kit, pages of wonderful Admiral shirts and tracksuits, Just Fontaine surrounded by half a dozen Adidas clad beauties adjacent to a jubilant Partick Thistle squad celebrating with the Scottish League Cup in the year of my birth. A percentage of these are in colour, the rest in black and white or a derivative thereof.

It was common in those days to give a coloured filter to the black and white image so that it appeared blue or red or some such which looks crude now but must have been funky and cutting edge in the sixties and just plain old affordable in 1980.

Page 32 is entitled ‘We put you on the spot’. Here there are four referees, Clive Thomas, Roger Kirkpatrick, Jack Taylor and Tom Reynolds. The question was to identify them; I obviously am far too young to remember any, but how I wish Kilpatrick still officiated matches today. Nicknamed Mr Pickwick on account of his astonishing sideburns, the quality of abuse Charlton’s covered end could shout in his general direction is somewhat staggering. Clive Thomas however looks like Mr Bean’s father. Scary stuff.

Having had my mind opened to these quiz books I searched eBay only to discover how readily available and inexpensive they are. Starting at just a couple of quid this particular Shoot! spin-off has evidently still yet to reach collectable status. I may just go to a boot sale on Sunday morning, there could be boxes of them.

Oh, and by the way, it was Morton. Just in case you were wondering.

Once again, our thanks go to Al for this great post. If you'd like to write an article for The Football Attic, contact us at admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com or catch us on Twitteror Facebook.

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ITV Saturday Soccer Special Annual, 1980

If, as a child, you saw this slim tome in your local bookshop back in 1980, you might have expected it to contain articles about football and ITV’s presentation of it. Sadly for anyone interested in The Big Match or On The Ball, this book featured only one such article, and at no point did it even mention Jim Rosenthal. Devastating as this is, I beg you to read on.

This was, in real terms, a football annual much like those produced by Shoot or Match years ago, but it’s distinction derived from the fact that it was a one-off - published purely to coincide with ITV taking over the prime Saturday night highlights slot from the BBC.

The acquisition of those TV rights came to be known as ‘Snatch of the Day’ as it was the first time the BBC’s Match of the Day had not been bumped from its traditional slot in the schedules. Having finally been given the go-ahead to switch from Sunday afternoons, The Big Match was finally where it wanted to be, and to celebrate, it produced... a children’s football annual.

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Panini: Football 80

I’m a big fan of the ‘white album’. Some say it epitomised the peak of popular culture around the time of its release but I have a more balanced point of view. For me, It was experimental in certain areas but also rested heavily on its obvious strengths to provide a combination that’s rarely been bettered. Perhaps we’ll talk about The Beatles later, but for now, let’s stick with Panini.

Football 80 was their third domestic sticker album for the UK and was the first one I ever owned. It had many familiar aspects retained from previous collections, but you could sense a notable intent to try out the occasional new idea and tweak a few things here and there too.

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Pelé's Soccer, 1980

At what point does the human brain reject the hopelessly inadequate images of our youth and demand something with more detail and clarity?

This question is most apposite when discussing classic video games. Take Pelé's Soccer, for example. Here was an arcade football game created for the Atari 2600 which should have proved that technology had moved on from the days of ‘pong football’. The reality, however, saw you moving players around on your screen that looked like pixelated blobs. Quite honestly, they could have been anything.

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Dunlop boots ad (featuring Trevor Brooking), 1980

An additional item from the recently featured match-day programme of the 1980 FA Cup Final.

For the record, Trev didn't wear the boots shown in the picture at Wembley - he wore plain black ones - but for all we know they may have been Dunlop anyway. Either way, a quick phone call to Kevin Keegan's agent would have got him a better boot deal, to say nothing of an England shirt with a proper badge on it.

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FA Cup Final Programme, 1980

A quick skim through the Official Souvenir Programme of the 1980 FA Cup Final shows that it was a mixed bag of trivia, some of it dry, some of it brilliantly evocative.

Inside, we first see the Timetable and Programme of Events for May 10th 1980. The running order for the biggest afternoon in English football had a familiar feel; marching regimental bands at 1.10pm, the marching band of Kansas State University at 1.35, more from the regimental bands of the Guards' Division at 2.30 and again at half time, Abide With Me at 2.45 and The Duke of Duchess of Kent shaking hands with the players at 2.50. So far, so regimented.

On page 5, we get a word from Ted Croker, FA Secretary, who speaks of the growing trend for Second Division clubs to do well in the FA Cup Final (Sunderland and Southampton being recent examples at the time). This was a good omen for West Ham although, as Croker said, Arsenal "seemed to have reserved a permanent place at Wembley. This will be the club's third Wembley Final in succession – a record…" He signed off by telling readers that the Final would "be seen on TV in over 60 countries" and by hundreds of millions of people. It would probably have been more were it not for all those regimental marching bands showing up every five minutes.

Further inside the programme, there are detailed club profiles on Arsenal and West Ham along with full colour pictures of the two teams, in case you'd forgotten what they looked like. Furthermore, there are double-page profiles of the two teams to give some detail on the playing staff in each case. We're told that "in August 1977, [Pat Jennings] joined Arsenal from neighbours Tottenham Hotspur. Would Spurs have let him go for £45,000 if they had known he would play for their greatest rivals at Wembley in 1978, 1979 and 1980?" Probably not, but there again if my aunt had balls, would she be my uncle? The answer to both questions is likely to be the same.

The FA Cup Final programme of 1980 serves as much as a condensed reference book as any kind of souvenir. There are pages devoted to previous Cup Final results, Cup Facts ('compiled by Jack Rollin') and Goals Galore ('Scoring feats from past FA Cup Finals') but aside from the statistics and the plentiful colour action photos of both teams, the real charm can found in the filler material. Here, we get a perfect snapshot of the era through the adverts dotted willy-nilly throughout.

There's one for the Sunday Mirror featuring "Kevin Keegan of England and Hamburg – soon Southampton" who was writing a column for the weekend tabloid at the time. Keegan also cropped up in a small advert for Mitre Sports, alongside another for Adidas bearing a tiny caption telling us that Umbro International (Footwear) Ltd were "the sole UK distributors of Adidas products." Quite a sporting gesture on the part of the future England kit suppliers in more ways than one.

Elsewhere, there's an advert for the Victor range of men's toiletries - a useful reference for anyone wondering whether Brut 33 was the low point in male grooming products at the start of the 1980's. Another advertises Skol, surely as ubiquitous in pubs back then as pictures of topless models on Big D peanut dispensers and a predilection for cirrhosis of the liver and lung cancer among the regulars.

But for those wanting a lasting memory of a wonderful day at the FA Cup Final, page 48 of the programme was where it was all happening. There it was possible to choose your commemorative gift to remind you of the big day from a range of Wembley branded products. Blue and white wrist band? Certainly – that'll be 90p. How about a "slide card" as a pocket size-record of all FA Cup Final matches since 1872? No problem – 55p.

And if the 'Italian-made sports bag' didn't take your fancy (despite being made from 'durable nylon - £4.99') there was always the opposite page featuring 8mm soccer home movies. Two hundred feet of celluloid bliss – some even with sound – from just £8.30. What more could a football fan want? Perhaps a ticket to the upcoming Harlem Globetrotters game, but for that you'd need to contact the Wembley Box Office.

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