Retro Round-Up: 7 June 2013

What a week it's been in the world of football nostalgia, but then again, when is it never a bad week in the world of football nostalgia?

To prove the point, here's our selection of the best retro football stuff we could find on the web from the past week or so, starting with something that we just missed out on when we published last week's round-up...

Just what does it take to refresh a team's club badge? Dotmund has the answer in fabulous cartoon form over at Twohundredpercent...

Carlsberg doesn't do 'rolling back the years', but if they did, here's how they'd get the 1998 World Cup team back together again, courtesy of Who Ate All The Pies...

How things have changed... West Ham celebrate victory over Preston in the 1964 FA Cup Final by filling the cup with... milk? See for yourself over at Footysphere...

Some magnificent pieces of football artwork rightly exhibited for a wider audience in New York, as described by Old School Panini...

We happily acknowledge the likely legends of future nostalgia here at The Football Attic, and to that end we salute The Two Unfortunates' selection for their best kit of 2012/13. Rise up Nottingham Forest fans...

While we're on the subject of great kits, check out this absolute belter from the Brighton & Hove Albion archive - brought to you by The Goldstone Wrap...

Regular Attic fanatics will know that we recently reviewed the first Admiral Book of Football, and here's Paul Bowser writing about his own edition for Got, Not Got...

A lovely tale of Subbuteo playing past and present awaits visitors to The Daisy Cutter...

FootballGaffesGalore continues to find lots of lovely video clips of retro football for us to enjoy. This selection features Birmingham City prominently, but also look out for a rarely seen Sunderland away kit...

And finally, Robbie Fowler's low point in football (or 'high', depending on which way you look at it) is digitised for posterity by 8-Bit Football...

The Big Match - December 1969 - Part 2

Last week we brought to you 'The Big Match - December 1969 (Part 1)' from David Poza, creator of the epic 'On This Day' series on YouTube that showcases historical football matches for every day of the year. Here, we present Part 2!

DEBATE

So, game finished, 2-1 for the R’s and we are back to the studio with Jimmy Hill and our guest, a “handsome skipper Terry Venables” (would that sound acceptable today?) talking in very polite terms about the game itself. And for this, ladies and gentlemen, we see a SLOW MOTION REPLAY! For most of us, it seems very normal to have 450 replays focusing frame by frame on how good a player moves his hair in order to head a ball, but in 1969 we had to wait to the end of the highlights to see the goals and some actions with the voice of the protagonists.

Sat in the marvellous “glam rock” studio, both Hill and Venables discuss the first goal by Birmingham, pointing out the poor defence they had when they conceded the goal (Venables points out that they will be practising that sort of free-kick on Monday).

And then, another big development appears: A camera behind the goal, which was very advanced at that time, and twinned with the slow-motion it gives us the chance to answer a question Hill poses: “Did Barry Bridges touch the ball in the first goal before the ‘keeper gets it?” The slow-motion machine stops and... definitely, he touches the ball before. So, no chance for a 6-year-old lad who might consider writing to Brian Moore and asking about it!

The Birmingham defence is also mentioned, because Venables thinks that with that defence (two players going to head a ball with only one QPR player) they would not be able to beat Chelsea in the Cup the following week (and they didn’t - they lost 3-0).

Jimmy Hill finally is very scared about the reputation of both teams’ players as hard men, because in the Sunday papers that morning the reader could see three players were booked. He thinks they could bring the game into disrepute, but in fact one of those bookings was a very funny moment when a Birmingham player makes a “fantastic” save.... on the halfway line!

Another booking was merely for a QPR player showing dissent. If Jimmy is seeing today’s football (I’m absolutely certain that he is) he must be very proud if a team finishes the game with only one booking. We all know that in those days the game was very hard, but Hill seems to think that three names taken means big trouble for the future of the sport. Nowadays, we have Pepe, the Dutch team in 2010 World Cup Final... and nobody is yelling “They are spoiling soccer!”

MORE GAMES

Here, Jimmy apologises again when presenting the Sunderland vs Manchester United game. He said in the beginning that it was Joe Baker’s first game for The Mackems, but Brian Moore corrects him. You wouldn't see this these days, what with having Twitter and Facebook to correct it!  In fact, it was Joe’s first goal for the team from the north-east. So, time for the presentation of the game, and this is one of the most famous sentences used by the anchormen when presenting a match:

"Let’s just watch it now, with pictures by Tyne-Tees Television, and the commentary by Geoff Thomas."

No caption to mark the game, but a picture of the new scorer. And this game is one of the strangest I have seen on The Big Match. Apart from seeing the goal and some near misses, accompanied by the “over-excited” commentary of Mr Thomas, there's something missing...

Where is Manchester United's goal?  Where is Brian Kidd’s effort to make it 1-1?

Unfortunately there were technical troubles during two minutes of that game and it was during that time he chose to score the goal! So for all Manchester United fans from London (still no “glory-hunters”) there's a huge disappointment; waiting nearly 50 minutes to see the goal, and nothing! Also, notice the heavy fog at Roker Park. Where is the ball you may ask? I certainly don’t know!

Time for the last game, Ipswich Town vs Tottenham, with pictures from Anglia Television and Gerry Harrison is the commentator. We have a caption to show which game we're seeing. And at Portman Road, one of the rarest cameras we have seen to cover a game: behind the goal. Anglia, and his director, Bob Gardam, had many problems placing a camera where it is natural to have it; at the halfway line, and decided to put it in behind the goal. It was also common at Norwich until 1972.

The game finished 2-0 for the Tractor Boys, and we finally mention two things: another delightful scoreboard, and one of the last games of Jimmy Greaves in a Spurs shirt (at least on TV) until he joined West Ham. Here, he wears the number 8.

So, three games, a different commentator, a camera behind the goal, a goal missing, Terry Venables and his stupendous haircut and of course, Jimmy Hill. As this was the last edition of THE BIG MATCH of the 1960's, Jimmy sums up by wishing all of us a happy New Year. Finally some new year predictions are shown (the actual outcome is shown in brackets):

• Arsenal – Winning the Fairs Cup (ACCOMPLISHED)
• Chelsea – Win the League Title (Not at all - they won the FA Cup)
• QPR – Win promotion to Division One (They finished 9th, despite winning that day)
• Orient and Luton – Promote to Division Two (ACCOMPLISHED)
• Brentford – Promoting to Division Three (Finished 3 points behind)

So, 2 out of 5, Jim. Not bad! See you in 1970 (or we are in 2013?) with a goal by Barry Bridges. And with that, the show finishes with scenes of Loftus Road emptying, along with its terraces and floodlight pylons. Bring them back I say!

A huge thanks to David for this excellent piece! If you'd like to share your nostalgia memories with us, why not get in touch? Just drop us a line to admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com and we'll do the rest!

Rebadge the badge

You might be surprised to hear this from us, but the world of football nostalgia isn’t as perfect as it might seem. Oh sure, we’ve allowed entire months to pass us by while thumbing through our pile of old Panini albums, but that’s not to say everything in this Elysian netherworld is as cracked up as it ought to be.

Take football badges, for instance. At first sight, nothing could be finer than a vast array of club insignias displayed in collective formality, each using colours and motifs to represent a team you probably don’t support and could care much less for. Yet each one has been crafted and honed by skilled artists and designers to symbolise the hopes, ambitions and dreams of an ever-changing army of players and fans alike.

At least that’s what you’d think. Unfortunately some club badges, historic and long-standing though they might be, are far from perfect and... well there’s no easy way to say this... are in need of an update.

Normally such talk of modernisation is an afront to our very nature, but here at The Football Attic we believe perfection is achievable if you wish hard enough for it. So let’s see if we can identify those club badges that are long overdue a refresh and work out how to make them better.

Southampton

On the plus side, there aren’t many English football club badges that have a football scarf on them. Come to think of it, there aren’t many that have a halo on them either, but the inclusion of both here somehow add too much quirkyness and informality to the Saints motif. At least there’s some sort of Southampton coat of arms on display, but even then it’s possible to argue that it’s not the most evocative example of local heraldry.

So what can we replace it with?  Well perhaps a saint of some sort... the patron saint of sailors, given that Southampton is one of England’s major sea ports. A picture of St. Brendan, then, framed in a circular ribbon featuring the words ‘Southampton Football Club’ with small anchor motifs dotted in the sky behind our newly-chosen saint. What more could you ask for - it’s got history, reverence, local history and not a single scarf in sight.

Birmingham City

You’ve got to hand it to the St Andrews club - they had international ambitions, but they came to nought. Their current badge, implemented in 1976, features a ribbon and a globe atop an old-fashioned football the like of which one associates with Bobby Charlton and 6-3 defeats to the Hungarians. Original, distinctive, but starting to look a bit tired now. Let’s see what we can change it for...

How about a football featuring a stylised swirly-whirly pattern in blue designed to look vaguely like Spaghetti Junction, the famous motorway interchange resident in England’s second city since the mid-1960’s? Below it in a suitably serifed font could be the name of the club and either side of the ball could be ‘18’ and ‘75’ to show the year in which the club was formed. A modern logo-style badge, admittedly, but one that would see it through another decade or two before the inevitable next redesign.

Norwich City

English club badges featuring birds of one sort or another come ten-a-penny, but not many feature a sweet domestic caged bird constantly fearing its inevitable destiny in the jaws of the humble family cat. Yet that very creature, bright yellow upon a green shield and perched on a ball, has survived well since its inception as part of Norwich’s club badge in 1972. The canary. that is - not the cat.

The problem is, it’s a bit boring, frankly. Canaries by their very nature have little to offer beyond tweeting incessantly until someone tells them to shut up. (Any comparison with Stephen Fry, incidentally, is entirely inappropriate.) Far better, perhaps to have the magnificent spire of Norwich Cathedral on display within a similar shield, flanked on either side by lions (given that there’s one on the Norwich coat of arms). The finishing touch?  The name of the club written in full below it in a modern, bold, sans-serif font. Piece of cake.

Blackburn Rovers

Ah, that trusty old red rose. How very redolent of natural beauty, how very English, how very... badly drawn. Time to get rid of it, methinks. I mean how you can you have a team known far and wide for wearing white and blue halved shirts and not have that incorporated into the badge, for heaven’s sake?

Here’s how you do it. First, you take a circle, slightly stretched top to bottom to make it an oval of sorts. Across the bottom, you have some black wavy lines to depict the ‘burn’ bit of ‘Blackburn’ (it means ‘river’, you know). Above it, the oval is split in two vertically so that the left half is white, the other is blue. In the white half, you have a picture of a mill to reflect Blackburn’s heritage as a wool-weaving town, and on the other you have a sheep - the provide of the wool. As ever, the name can go below somewhere, preferably in a font such as Times New Roman. Heritage, colours and relative imagery, all present and correct.

So there you have it - my own masterclass in how to freshen up those tired old club badges. Nothing could be simpler, and if you wish to prove that by suggesting redesigns of other club badges, drop us a line to admin [at] thefootballattic [dot] com or leave us a comment on this post. We look forward to hearing from you.