I have been looking through and reading a few of my fanzines form backing in the eighties today and it was very enjoyable. By the mid-eighties, nearly every football club had unofficial fanzines, which were not always welcomed by the clubs who saw them as competition for their official match day programme? Myself I still bought both but preferred the fanzine because the articles and comments were the conversation we would hear on the terraces.
They were once an integral part of the match day experience if you couldn’t wait or missed a game you could pick one up at Spillers Records in among the music fanzines. The reasons behind the growth is clubs marginalised fans in the 80s. Fans wanted more from the clubs than the run-around back then it was the fans who were the cash cows not TV money. It was the fans money the clubs wanted not their voices unless they were chanting for their team on match day.
The match programmes were a bland read and god help me I still collect them. The chairman and manager of the day would tell us fans not to worry despite losing the last four games there is light around the corner yes everything is sweetness and light. Player’s profiles and the odd stats and reams and reams of advertisements, which adds to the blandness of a programme.
Criticism via the fans in the programme was unlikely the letters page if there could be bother to print would be of the same blandness. It was left to the local paper and then fanzines until the internet to put fans views forward.
Fanzines were a place where ordinary fans could vent anger, have a joke, or recommend a good pub at the next away match.
What fanzines that are about today are polished and professionally glossy booklets and look more like the match day programme but still more interesting and far removed from the DIY production back in the early days but as their popularity grew and money was made the printing production was improved. One of the most popular fanzines at my club was ‘Bluebird Jones’ full of Cardiff related cartoons…. The fanzine was created by Mike Urban who sold thousands of copies at City games between 1993-1995, with each comic containing 32 pages and selling for just £1.
My favourite character is 70s MAN, who after a bizarre gardening accident is put into a coma for twenty years. On waking from the coma his only desire is to return to the football terraces but now things have changed and move on.
A few other Cardiff fanzines worth a mention are Bobbing Along, Intifada, and O Bluebird of Happiness.
I was angry and passionate about my club more than today back in the eighties as a fan we had a torrid time flicking from one disaster to another. The only highlights were the promotion 1983, Jeff Hemmerman great memories and 1988 promotion under manager Frank Burrows. The dark side was the double relegation to the basement of the Football League, Division 4 back then. Fanzines helped me through it reading what I was feeling.
I lived around the corner from Ninian Park, well the corner, and a bit and sometimes if I wasn’t at the game during those dark days the crowd were so small I could hear the players shout to one another.
Plenty of ammunition for the fanzine warriors and I have not mentioned managers, he coughs - Alan Durban reams to write about there. Normally come match day on Sloper Road some nerdy looking guy would be standing there holding up copies of a fanzine with a plastic shopping bag at his feet full of them. You could guarantee some dumb wit would ask him if it was the official match day programme. If you couldn’t get a copy outside the stadium, you could end up chasing a seller around the terraces. I remember don't what the policy was selling a fanzine inside the ground but i didn't see anyone chasing them around the ground.
A few hardy publications remain loyal to the printed word in the battle was the internet.
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