Tuesday 27 November 2012

Official Programme of the 1970 World Cup

A cheery red cover invites you to thumb through the 66 pages of this souvenir programme created as a guide to the 1970 World Cup. Priced at just six shillings (or 30p for any Brits harbouring decimal thoughts a year ahead of their time), this was the official handbook guaranteed to help you get the most out of the FIFA’s ninth global tournament.

Sunday 25 November 2012

Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 2


It's time for Round 2 of The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever!

Round 1 ended on Friday and the results can be viewed here.

But now it's time for the big guns to enter the fray as the 32 seeded sponsors join the tournament!  At last, Crown Paints, Wang, Sharp, etc, get to flex their sponsorship muscles!

Not only that, but as you'll see, the sponsors themselves have been granted a makeover courtesy of John Devlin, author of football kit bible True Colours.

Our sincere thanks and gratitude go out to John for not only kindly allowing us to use his fantastic illustrations, but also for working so quickly to get the images to us. John's work can be found at the True Colours site and he is also on Twitter so pay him a visit and give him a follow.

Rules:

1) You are voting for the SPONSOR, not the team that it adorned.

2) Voting for Round 2 closes at midnight on Friday 30th November

3) This is a bit of fun... if you don't like the results, take a deep breath, smile and accept that democracy is flawed... ;-)

Let battle commence!

Friday 23 November 2012

Match of the Day - Episode 1 (1964)

The first edition of the BBC’s Match of the Day programme was aired on 22 August 1964. Shown on BBC2, it was the first time people in the UK (albeit only in London at first) were able to watch football highlights on their own TV screens.

Despite initial fears that it might lead to fewer people going along to watch matches in person, it went on to become an institution of British broadcasting and a go-to programme for British football fans everywhere.

Sunday 18 November 2012

Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 1 (Matches 17-32)



It's finally here! The Vote for the Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever!

Matches 1-16 kicked off yesterday and now it's time for the Sunday fixtures to take their place.

Just to repeat the Rules:

1) You are voting for the SPONSOR, not the team that it adorned.

2) Voting for Round 1 closes at midnight on Friday 23rd November

3) This is a bit of fun... if you don't like the results, take a deep breath, smile and accept that democracy is flawed... ;-)

And so... let the voting commence!

Saturday 17 November 2012

Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - Round 1 (Matches 1-16)


It's finally here! The Vote for the Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever!

As mentioned previously, this will be a knockout tournament comprising 96 teams. 32 of these have been seeded and will only appear in Round 2.  Therefore, Round 1 will be 32 matches between the 64 non-seeded teams.  NB, the list of seeded teams can be found in the post linked to above, so before I have to explain where Wang or Crown Paints are, take a look!  ;-)

I've split the First Round into two parts. This is so the page doesn't get ridiculously long and also because setting up the polls is taking longer than planned!

Rules - Just a few things to mention:

1) You are voting for the SPONSOR, not the team that it adorned.

2) Voting for Round 1 closes at midnight on Friday 23rd November

3) This is a bit of fun... if you don't like the results, take a deep breath, smile and accept that democracy is flawed... ;-)

And so... let the voting commence!

Friday 16 November 2012

Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever - 1st Round Draw


The 1st round draw has taken place and here it is in full:

NB...Voting instructions will follow soon :)

Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever 1st Round Draw (64 non seeded sponsors)



Chang (Everton) v Poll Withey (Norwich)
NTL (Celtic & Rangers) v NOBO (Brighton)
Peugeot (Coventry) v T-Mobile (WBA)
Bukta (Hibernian) v Reg Vardy (Sunderland)
Solvite (Watford) v Oki (Portsmouth)
Candy (Liverpool) v Fly Virgin (Crystal Palace)
Ora (Barnsley) v Laver (Sheff Utd)
Philips (Man City) v Maxwell (Derby)
British Caledonian (Brighton) v O2 (Arsenal)
Panasonic (Nottm Forest) v Autoglass (Chelsea)
Coors (Chelsea) v JVC (Aberdeen)
JCT600 (Bradford) v Britannia (Stoke)
Ind Coope (Leicester) v Lewisham (Millwall)
Auto Trader (Reading) v Ericsson (QPR)
Saab (Man City) v (BT) Cellnet (Middlesbrough)
Skol (Nottm Forest) v Ian Skelly (Motherwell)
Courage (Reading) v Samsung (Chelsea)
Motorola (Motherwell) v GMB (Fulham)
Auto Windscreens (Birmingham) v Dagenham Motors (West Ham)
Greene King (Ipswich) v Ricoh (Stoke)
Unipart (Oxford Utd) v Truman (Wimbledon)
Carlsberg (Wimbledon) v Carlsberg (Liverpool)
Subaru (Coventry) v JD Sports (Oldham)
Greenalls (Newcastle) v Good Year (Wolves)
Dr Martens (West Ham) v ICI Perspex (Blackburn)
Hewlett Packard (Tottenham) v Capital One (Nottm Forest)
Elonex (Wimbledon) v Shipstones (Nottm Forest)
Bass (Derby) v Muller (Aston Villa)
Sanderson (Sheff Wed & Southampton) v Finlux (Sheff Wed)
Granada Bingo (Coventry) v Carling (Celtic & Rangers)
Vaux (Sunderland) v Wrangler (Notts County)
Fly Emirates (Arsenal) v Fisons (Ipswich)



Football Monthly (November 1983)

The perm or the straight-cut?  This was the question perplexing grown-up kids and young adults alike in February 1983 when they bought the latest issue of Football Monthly.

The subject, Bryan Robson, was seen on the front cover and on page two, the latter being an advert for New Balance boots. The Manchester United and England star claimed he’d helped the company to “shape, test and refine” their boots under every possible playing condition - “including World Cup competition.” Judging by the picture on page one, he’d had also had a similar involvement with the production of hair-straightening equipment too.

Thursday 15 November 2012

Coming Soon... The Greatest Shirt Sponsor Ever


If you follow us on Twitter, you may have seen us banging on about the Greatest Sponsor Ever tournament we've got lined up. Well, now we've finally decided on the classic sponsors that have made the cut. It's going to run as a knockout tournament, pitting classic sponsor against classic sponsor over several rounds. Think of it as the FA Cup, only ironically about sponsors, not ruined by one... ;-) To make the numbers even, we had to whittle down our initial list of over 120 classic sponsors to 96 on top of which we've seeded some so they won't have to scrap out the First Round.

Wednesday 14 November 2012

Great Tracksuits of Our Time: No.4 - John Bond special

Towards the end of September 2012, John Bond, a man who possessed great talent as a player and a manager, died aged 79. Though he spent 16 years playing for West Ham United, he will perhaps be best remembered for a long managerial career that took in Manchester City and Norwich City among many other clubs.

Football Remains

That's what we were going to call this blog site. In the weeks leading up to 14 November 2011, Rich J and myself toyed with lots of different names, but eventually The Football Attic ran out the winner.

Though we remain satisfied that we made the right choice, there's no denying that Football Remains also had something going for it. It worked on different levels, making reference to the fact that 'remains' is a way of describing something that's left behind, like the memorabilia washed up on the shore from football's constant tides. It also conjures up images of a decapitated body after a particularly gruesome murder, and that's ostensibly why we didn't ultimately choose that title.


It does, however, reinforce the fact that with every passing day, month, year or decade, football continues to offer up all manner of different ways to be nostalgic. It's that very notion that inspired Rich and myself to create this blog site, and though it was based on a personal passion we shared for the sport, we weren't quite sure how many others would share it with us.

To be quite truthful with you, we probably didn't give the matter enough thought before the project got underway. For instance, how often can you write about Panini sticker books without sending your audience into an outright torpor?  At what point would the mention of Subbuteo prompt a regular visitor to engage in an irresponsible act of violent behaviour?  These things matter, you know.

As it is, we must have had an underlying belief that there was an appetite for the sort of articles we wanted to write, not least because of the growing disaffection among football fans for the modern game. Much talk has been heard from supporters over the last year or more about the various crises and controversies that abound in football these days. Whether it's racist slurs between players or greed and bankruptcy affecting clubs, it's no wonder fans are looking for something that reminds them of all that's best in The Beautiful Game.

And that's why we continue to do what we do. Though some people might think of football nostalgia as lightweight and clichéd, we believe it has more to offer than that. By looking in detail at the plentiful bounty that football has given us over the years, we can all remember why we fell in love with this glorious sport of ours in the first place.

Thanks to your support and contributions to this website over the last year, we can say without doubt that football remains and finds itself in excellent shape to entertain us for many more years to come.

Sunday 4 November 2012

Neil Cotton: Five shirts from my past

In the latest in a long line of excellent guest posts from writers far and wide, The Football Attic welcomes Neil Cotton from the blogsite Row Z. Neil's unearthed some long-forgotten football shirts from his wardrobe and here tells us how he came to own them and the memories they bring back...

The writer and philosopher Walter Benjamin once said that “Every passion borders on the chaotic, but the collector's passion borders on the chaos of memories” and chaotic certainly seems a good word for the football shirt collection which I recently uncovered nestling in an unassuming, perfectly square cardboard box which had in turn spent the best part of a decade residing forgotten at the bottom of a wardrobe. This seemed to be a collection without a theme or any other sense of order, but as I unwrapped each shirt memories came rushing back as if each were a tiny time-capsule.