Commercial Break: Match Weekly 'Quiz Disc' (1981)

Back at the start of January 2014, we recorded Football Attic Podcast 15 on the subject of Shoot! and Match magazine, and as has become traditional, we put out an appeal ahead of the recording to ask for your memories of either.

While many people regaled us with their remembrances of Shoot's League Ladders, two of you tugged our coats to tell us about a long-forgotten give-away gift in Match Weekly magazine.

Andrew Rockall said at the time: "Match gave away a flexidisc record with a quiz on it. Hoddle, Peter Withe and stretching my memory I think… Alan Kennedy were the contestants. Hosted by Mike Ingham, it was a three-parter and the discs were coloured 7-inch."

The Football Attic Podcast 18 - World Cup Top 3s

The 2014 World Cup is less than a month away, so what better way to mark that occasion than by talking for an hour and a half about previous World Cups? We've done that before? What? Naaaaah! This is different cos like we are doin top 3s innit. Sick blud!

So sit back and hear all about the spectacular Soviet goal machine, Bulgarian tantrums and Scottish capitulations!

And just what is Rich's problem with 2002?

Download:
Subscribe on iTunes or download here. Alternatively, catch The Football Attic Podcast on Square One Football Radio.

See also:
The Football Attic Podcast archive

FIFA World Cup - In captions (Part 3)

The concluding part of our series looking at the style and design of TV captions during the World Cup.

World Cup 1998

The French have a saying: 'plus ça change'. Roughly translated, it means 'the more things change, the more they stay the same.' This was a fair description of the captions seen during the 1998 World Cup, albeit with a little bit of animation thrown in for good measure.

Where USA '94 had been all about the blue rectangular panels that displayed informative text of all kinds, France '98 tweaked things slightly by using a blue ribbon motif and bulky lettering. Any names that were displayed showed only the surnames most of the time, but the captions appeared in the wake of a football that swept from left to right, leaving behind the text, a pinched-in-the-middle ribbon and a fluttering flag.

Football Attic Podcast 18 - Get involved!

Attention audio aficionados!

We're pleased to announce that we'll be recording our 18th Football Attic Podcast over the weekend of 24/25 May 2014, and as ever, we'd like you to be a part of it!

Once again, we'll be focusing on the World Cup, but this time we'll be picking our favourite three memories from each of the tournaments we've seen. And you can join us on our trip down memory lane!

We'd like you to pick one tournament and choose your favourite three memories from it. Once you've done that, simply send them to us using one of the following three methods:

By website:
Use the 'comments' link below and type in your text

By Twitter:
Cram your memories into 140 characters or less at Twitter.com/footballattic

By Facebook:
Share your favourite moments with us over at Facebook.com/TheFootballAttic

We'll do our very best to read out as many of your comments as possible, and we look forward to hearing from you. Thanks for taking part!

Panini: Mexico 86

As far as my own childhood sticker-collecting activities are concerned, Panini's Mexico 86 collection was the very pinnacle of all that I did. Slightly too young to fully appreciate the 1982 World Cup when it arrived, the 1986 tournament began when I was 14 years old, my eyes wide open and my head already crammed full of football knowledge.

At the time, I lived for this most wondrous of sports, the collecting of football stickers and very little else. It was World Cup time again, and I was ready to embark on another campaign of buying, peeling, sticking and swapping.

Home and Away: A different way

You can always rely on Football League Review. The match-day programme insert seen by millions of football fans during the late-60's and early-70's regularly supplied a constant stream of news, opinions and features to get the average fan talking in-between weekend matches.

The remarkable thing about it was its ability to generate ideas for making the game better in some way. Whether it was the lack of goals being scored or the increase in player indiscipline, the Football League Review could always be relied upon to come up with suggestions both serious and silly.

One such idea that I stumbled upon recently centred on the exciting nature of those matches played in the European Cup, UEFA Cup and Cup-Winners Cup. The article in question suggested that the suspense created when clubs try to win a tie over two legs, home and away, could also be replicated in the Football League.

FIFA World Cup - In captions (Part 2)

Continuing our series looking at the way information was displayed on our TV screens during the World Cups of the past...

World Cup 1982

The 1980's had finally arrived and Spain welcomed football fans around the planet as host nation of the 12th World Cup. With 24 teams now involved, the competition looked set to be more exciting than ever before, but if TV viewers were hoping that the on-screen presentation had moved on to a higher level too, they'd have been a little disappointed.

Yet again, a standard, fixed-width yellow font was used throughout the competition, not dissimilar to the one used four years earlier. The captions on which it featured also had a passing resemblance to the Argentina '78 variety, from the rarely-seen titles showing the name of the tournament and venue, to the player names displayed during every match.

Attic Kit Collection Book - Now Available!

It's been a long time coming with many many MANY weekends spent photographing kits, editing said photos and then writing stuff about each one, but it's finally here!

The finished product is a 98 page hardback featuring over 200 different kits (almost my entire collection).

At present there's only a few copies available and will be done on a first come first served basis. If by some miracle those sell, I'll see how many extra copies are needed and order some more, though I think I've only got a few more days to do so, so be quick!

The price is £29.99 + P&P 

Not cheap I know, but that's economies of scale for you...

UK Postage is £3.90 2nd class or £4.30 1st class. If you're outside the UK, I'll give you a postage quote before you commit.

So, if you want one, fill in the form below and I'll contact you to sort out payment etc.

UPDATE: Please note these are now Sold Out!