Football Fanzine Frolics
I made the cut again!
Fanzines eh? That return to an almost ancient time when independent publishers in league with fellow fans of film but more especially underground music and then football, produced fan magazines written by and for the fans. Some were works of art. Many have come and many have fallen by the wayside and if you were a collector like me in the early 1990’s, many were hobbled and cobbled together and held in place by a couple of rogue, out of place staples, and a whole lot of love. I jumped aboard the fanzine train in its virginal phase and transition from underground music and twenty something culture talking point three decades or so ago and as well as collecting this independent Liverpool Football Club fanzine from the beginning, I bought and collected as many from other British clubs as I could find and that my meagre budget would allow. Three decades and more later I’m still a fanzine reader and as “Red All Over The Land” (locally and more affectionately known as simply RAOTL) approaches its 30th birthday, I’ve been lucky enough to contribute eight or nine articles in recent times and have somewhat taken over the “Yesterday’s Papers” column. As I’ve said here on far too many previous occasions to mention, every time a piece of my writing is featured in a fanzine I collected avidly since the mid 1990’s, I couldn’t be more honoured.
So I made the cut again with
“Aldridge, Barnes and Beardsley, and the start of “The Unbeatables”
and a rambling tale about schoolboy friendship, travelling to London with a naive innocence just to see my football team play and here, the opening day of the 1987/1988 football season on a sweltering August Saturday with a sock full of fake gold and the wild banging of an open train door the basis for a tiny story and a tall tale of schoolboy mates and a smiling memory of my oldest friend. There’s some football thrown in for good measure, but it’s not about the football. Not really.
You can read it in full here if you wish.
Peace.
Thanks for reading. I write about my lifetime love affair with the Mighty Reds of Liverpool enough to lovingly fill two books to date with a third in the offing come Summer 2025. Be silly not to show them off really. Beautiful aren’t they? Look a pip and a dandy all wrapped up beneath a football fan’s tree this Christmas. Put a little bow in the corner, maybe a mini handwritten greeting card on the front? I’ll leave the wrapping details to you.
Anyway, my pride and joy:
"Chasing the Impossible and a Sword of Damocles" - link to Amazon
"A final word from The Boss" - link to Amazon
