A league cup game taken seriously by both clubs, in front of a packed crowd, something of a rarity today. [video=youtube;m0IkTri3l_E]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m0IkTri3l_E[/video]
Football has changed almost beyond recognition, but I don't think that's a particularly good example. In 1981 90% of the players were British, admission cost pennies comparative to today, even taking into account inflation. Football was played on Saturday afternoon or Wednesday night, only one sub was allowed, MOTD or the occasional midweek highlight programme were the only TV programmes and they used 4 or 5 cameras to cover the match rather than a dozen+. There was no undersoil heating, pitches were quagmires instead of billiard tables and floodlights were poor. Catering consisted of either meat or meat & potato pies, nuclear heated Bovril or weak tea. Burgers if available were odd pink things that contained very little actual meat and they came served on soggy white buns with soggy tasteless onions. Programmes cost 30p and were in black and white. Oh, and 80% of the ground was terracing. Those were the days.
Money There a lots of reasons for the changes but they all come back round to money. I went to Wembley to see England V Sweden I didn't pay but the seats would be £250 each they are cushioned in the corporate area. The bars etc are more like those you would find in a new shopping center. I couldn't concentrate on the game everyone around me was chatting about work and their plans for the week end. I v been to see 3 non league games this season £6.00 entrance £1.50 burger pint in the bar after £2.00. I love football and love watching great players the football I want to watch is Barcelona. but the atmosphere and passion for the sport isn't the same as it was. The FA have sold out and wasted all the money Wembley cost 1 billion and now the FA loose money every year to pay back the debt.
Having a players name on the back of a shirt and paying top dollar for the privilege was unheard of. Being a walking advert was a rarity. Kick offs on a Saturday were 3pm and only 3pm. None of this 1245 or 1745 bollocks. No fixture would get shifted to a Super Sunday and Ryan Giggs was in his 34th season with ManU.
Those certainly were the days. There were only TWO live club games all season. That would be the FA Cup and European Cup final. So that made these two games extra special. You didn't need a ticket (apart from the two main games Everton and Man United) so you could decide whether you wanted to go to a game at noon and not three weeks beforehand and you also didn't need a bank loan to go the game. I used to leave our house with just 50 pence, at about 1PM saturday, jump the 12 bus and be at anfield by 1.30. 30 pence into the boys pens, 10 pence bus fares and the other 10 pence would either get me a bag of chips or a bag of onions off the hotdog man and I could go the game on my own at the age of 12/13. Players actually played for the love of the game rather than for the money. Agents were few and far between and there were no image rights, etc. Some players actually travelled by bus...could you imagine a modern day footballer lowering himself to use a bus these days? Even league 2 players drive around in top-of-the-range cars.
Agree, love the fact that a day out was so cheap and grounds were much bigger with more people but you could still just pop down and go in. I watch lower league football so obviously isn't as bad as PL experiences, but it still is bad, just on a smaller scale. The football is still good, however we still have the boring little modern grounds with small attendances, adverts still about, expensive prices, a lot of players think they're better than the 100k or so a year. I never experienced 80's football and I really wish I could. Just sad how football is getting worse and worse each day, one day it really will probably make me lose love for the game. I first started watching football when I was about 7, in about 2002-2003 and I still remember it being quality, I guess everyone loves it better when it was their first time because it was new. All I know is, perhaps years ago everyone dreamed of being big time but I'm not sure if I really would to be honest.
I remember leaving home on Saturday mornings for away games with absolutely no idea where the cities were we were going to. Many a time we'd turn up at Piccadilly station only to find our trains were leaving from Victoria, so we'd have to leg it across Piccadilly and down Market St. to get to the right station. Obviously there was no internet, no mobile 'phones, everything was word of mouth, so you just followed other people and hoped they knew where they were going. In those days the trains were 'football specials' with no amenities whatsoever, but that usually meant you had a fair chance of not paying. You'd often have to walk a mile under police escort to get to the ground, but they'd try and get everyone in because if they left you outside you might get into bother.
I've watched a Doc about hooliganism in the 80's on Youtube, the football specials were absolutely spot on for the regular hooligan travelling away, until the Police cottoned on and done something about it. I then remember Cass Pennant, who was obviously known to be part of the ICF saying after the Police clamped down on the football special trains members of the ICF collected vouchers for free first class train tickets out of Persil boxes therefore they could outsmart the OB. Great watch.
Got rooks of programmes from the 1950's and 60's involving teams like Wolves and Tottenham that Dad gave me around 25 years ago. Funny seeing ads with the local chippy or a garage in them. Also on the back page there are the lineups and also a section for the halftime/fulltime scores. On quite a few of the programmes there are actually the scores written in that would have been announced at halftime and fulltime.Unsure as to how many fans actually take a pen to matches these days. Now you can get scores via mobile phones.
People pine for the good old days yet still fork out the moneys for tickets. We're our own worst enemy. Germany do it right (as usual). I doubt you'll catch zippy bitching about ticket prices.
Was n't all good mate. Monkey chanting aimed at black players went on, hooliganism was bad, shirts and shorts were dead tight and perms were in fashion.
Indeed. Certainly in terms of safety the game has improved massively since the 80's. People dying because of a combination of poor conditions and a culture of hooliganism, when attending a game of football, is just beyond tragic. If it means losing a bit of atmosphere that the terraces brought then I'm delighted that we've gone all-seater and lost the routine of over-zealous police herding football fans like animals into overcrowded feckin cages and wondering why things kicked off like they did (pardon the pun). At the end of the day, the people who decide the prices will always set them to what people are prepared to pay and nothing more. Football is a strange little world with it's own system of economics but at the end of the day the mechanics of price/demand/supply remain the same and as long as people are paying the price then they will continue to be charged at the same obscene rate, with rises of a few % every year.
Oh come on guys football has changed, the world has changed massively in 30 years aswell what do you expect? Im gonna go on a little rant here and i know your gonna think its easy for him to say as a 90s kid, as someone whos only ever known the premier league and sky era and as someone who never actually lived these" perfect heavenly days in which you stood in piss to watch significantly less fit athletes play in mudbaths while your crushed for 90 minutes hoping to not get your head kicked in on the way home" are you sure you guys arent just attaching more romance to it all because these were the days of your youth? Mars bars arent 5 p anymore, barbra windsor isnt shaggable anymore, move on and stop bemoaning and slighting the modern game which may not be as far removed as you want to think and just remember that if todays game was that bad and that far flung from the hallowed days of old youd walk away from it.. But you dont and never will because it remains the greatest, most addictive, rewarding and enthralling escapsim that the everyday man has. Now hear me out. I love football, i really do. Ive got a passion and a sustained interest in it that baffles even myself. I mean i cant seem to religiously study, and get continuous fascination and enjoyment out of any of the more essentially important things in life. So i may never have lived in the pre sky footballing world but beleive me my love of the game has ensured that i have studied it. i have even yearned for it at times cos it does look wonderful and romantic and theres no agents, theres no undeserving petulant multimillionaires, theres no coroporate bowl stadiums devoid of atmopshere, it feels like the fans were completely ingrained in the game and were the very fabric of it, instead of merely customers feeding a business as it appears to be today at times. My dad followed spurs everywhere from the 70s up to the noughties and as ive grown up hes regaled me with the stories of the old days and how much they meant to him. But is the modern game really that stomach churning a beast? One of my dads fondest memories was the momentous 3-1 f.a cup semi final victory over arsenal at wembley in 1991. He was at that game, he watched paul gasgoinces stunning peice of sporting history, the defining act of brilliance of a flawed genius, the 35 yard free kick that conquered an arsenal side who were unbeaten and heavily fancied to inflict misery upon us. He gets teary eyed when he tells me about those days and he had memories he'll cherish for ever for a pittance compared to todays prices. But i went to arsenal at home this season, i dont wanna ramble on too long , read my post recounting the day in the match thread if you wanna know how much that meant to me. But all ill say is i relived my dads days of old there i really did, you try and tell me when in the days before that game my working week of mundanity has been undergone with a pit of excitment in my belly waiting for the weekend, you try and tell me when ive turned up at the ground 4 hours before kick off and ive immersed myself into a building atmosphere that makes the weight for kick off almost unbearable, you try and tell me when ive felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up when ive walked in the ground and gone weak at the knees at the level of noise emanating from the lane, you try and tell me when weve smashed in a screamer against the scum and im hugging strangers and the sound of the crowd feels like loudest, most deafenign and electric sound ill ever hear, when it soudns like the inner zeal that is compressed by the strifes of life erupting from the everyday people, you try and tell me that football has lost its soul. October 2nd 2011- a modern game that will have created a memory that will grow old with me. I saw my dad shortly after and i tried to tell him all about it but he just looked at me as if it say " I know son". I may have had to work a bit longer, get tht bit luckier to get a ticket and had to fork out a hell of alot more, but i still encountered those same heart stirring emotions that my dad had had all those years ago and it was proof for me that the days when your apart of something youll never forget were magical 30 years ago, there magical today and they will be magical in 30 years time yet. Money will never be powerufl enough to make that feeling of watching your team beat your rivals with a screamer, the elation of a last minute winner, the euphoria of goign to an away day, watching your side go 2-0 down and coming back to win 3-2, itll never be powerful enough to make that feelign any less indescribable then it was in the " golden years" and thats why deep down, we may have to pay more, we might not be able to go as much, and some of the essence might well have been stripped but deep down amid all the hyperbole, money and commercilias,, the very basic instintive allure of this game will never die. Its the way of the world now im afraid, music has got more commercilaised but that feeling when you discover a song that unlocks something within you will never change, it cost more to have a pint but a pissed up night with your lads will never change, it cost more to go to uni but the feeling of having wasted your money will never change. Im sure ill look back on these supposedly dark days for football with reverence and ill moan at the youth of today how football was better in my day and its all out of touch and gone to pot nowadys. Thats life!
There is no way you can understand what the older members mean Shelfside as they've experienced it then and now so can compare them both.
Shelfsideyiddo-U want 1970's football?....come to Presov and watch our local derby (anything goes free for all) with VSS Kosice our ground has terraces, shite facilities, crumbling stonework, no roof on three sides of the ground, violent policing, racism, hooliganism and old style fences and mentality. STILL, i prefer it to being sat on my backside in a bucket seat being told by some melt steward i can't sing! Slovakia....it IS 1974
I haven't been to a football match since the late 80s, Chelsea v Man Utd it was at the old Stamford Bridge. I used to go quite a lot back then because I like football and it was affordable to get in. Money has taken over the game now, having loads of dosh is all that matters now, I used to go as a young kid as well, like some of the guys above, It wasn't as dangerous as some like to make out. I went to my first match at about 12 with my old man, that was at Wrexham, I then went regularly for the next 3 or 4 years on my own or with mates, seen plenty of fights but never got involved or got a pasting off anyone. Looking back I think I enjoyed the atmosphere and the occasion just as much as the football, and I could easily afford it, I payed 30p at Wrexham and 50p at Old Trafford. At todays prices they can **** off, i am happy to watch what I can on the box, or the radio, I sat in the seats at the first 2 games I went to, then I went on the terrace after that, much more fun.
The very nature of fans has changed. I started going to Saints in the early 90's, and even then (which is recent history) it was incredibly different. 99.9% of people on the terraces were men aged 18-50 and working class. I noticed at St. Mary's last weekend that women have to queue for the toilets at half time now! Not saying that is a bad thing, but it is a good indicator as to how the fanbase of clubs has changed. The game is more geared to middle class kids now, with the 'matchday experience' as they call it all about competitions and selling merchandise. Saints have the best team we've had since I started going to games, the football is brilliant. But do I enjoy 'going to the match' like I did in 1994? Nope.
