I am an optimist by nature so I am hoping that my OP title will prove to be true.
At the risk of being misty-eyed about Spangles in the 1970s, I have a memory of something football-related from that time that I’d like you to help me with.
Many football grounds at that time displayed letters on or near the big scoreboard. They would be AA BB CC and so on. There was some significance to this in relation to half time scores, I think. A code in the programme so that you can work out what the score is…? I get the concept (I think) but – why? I know it’s interesting to know but why did some grounds do it and others not? Did it have something to do with the pools?
My recollection is that the letters, A, B, C etc related to matches that were listed in the programme, and then underneath they would put the half time score. Thus, if at halftime you would see A with 0-4 underneath it, you would refer to the list in the programme, see that A referred to Arsenal v Tottenham Hotspur, and conclude that Spurs were well on their way to a famous victory….
At Pittodrie Park, Aberdeen the half-time scores were carried round the edge of the pitch on an enormous wooden structure by two hapless young boys. Some of us looked over the shoulders of the only rich bastard who could afford the threepenny programme and tried to work out the codes to see if it was Hamilton Academicals 6 Alloa 0 or the other way round. The rest of us kept warm by pelting the hapless young boys with orange skins and chuckies. Happy days
Did they do this as a public service? Even I, as a child, had a tranny in the 1970s.
I’m guessing most people wouldn’t have a radio at the ground, and this wouldn’t have even been practical before the early 60’s. i wonder when it stopped..?
Speaking of Spurs – they didn’t have any adverts around the ground until, I think, the late 80s.
Tchoh! Ruddy posh kids, showing off their electronic toys. We’d have stolen your batteries and snapped off the aerial.
*wipes snotty nose on sleeve, pulls catapult from back pocket of shorts*
But…but…you needed a tranny to listen to Radio Luxembourg under the pillow at bedtime (LBC at the weekends though).
I know a tranny. He’s called Brian during office hours.
I remember those half-time scoreboards at all the major London grounds in the early seventies but have no recollection whatsoever when they disappeared.
Till apparently the early nineties in Scotland http://scottishleague.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3485
Who would have taken a radio with an aerial to a football match? Just medium wave required so the aerial would have been wound round inside.
Early 1980’s. Easter Rd (Hibernian). Guy in front of me wearing headphones. At half time I asked him what the scores were. ‘Sorry mate, I’m listening to Kid Creole and the Coconuts.’
That made me laugh an awful lot. Thanks!
In a pub in Sutton, Surrey back in 1990 a lone guy sitting at the bar was wearing a football top that was unfamiliar to us. The replica kit industry/three different away shirt designs were not quite around yet, so if you were wearing a football top it was usually one you could recognise.
We thought that it must be Italian, perhaps. When he spoke he had a booming South London accent.
He looked a bit fearsome/grumpy/drunk so we didn’t bother him and tried to sneak a look at the crest on the front when we got drinks in. Eventually after about 6 pints I plucked up courage to ask. He flashed me a look of pure aggression but it quickly settled – “Fawlkirk” , he said – like it was obvious.
Spurs? No adverts at the ground until the late dire 1980s? I don’t think so.
Spurs virtually invented ker-ching.
Possibly, there may have been no adverts along the shelf bit as the wall was made of an ornate iron pattern but otherwise …
You’d always position yourself near one of the men with a radio tucked under their arm after the game. The radio would be on loud so everyone else in a twenty yard radius could listen to the final results. “Turn it up, mate!”
Following this guy (there was one at every ground) was also an excellent way of avoiding crowd trouble at away games.
A very communal experience if Arsenal, Chelsea or Tottenham lost. I still know EXACTLY where I was when Arsenal lost to York City (Brisbane Road) and Wrexham (The Dell).
I will dig into the books later, but I have this memory that they resisted having adverts around the white perimeter wall.
They did this at Hillsborough. Between 1985 and 1990 I was in the St John Ambulance brigade in Sheffield, so on the days that Barnsley weren’t at home I would cover whatever match was taking place in Sheffield. We generally play at home on the same day that Sheffield United do, with Hillsborough being a bit closer to Oakwell, so it tended to be the Wednesday matches I’d cover. They put the score board thingies across from the corner where I was usually sitting. As I recall, they had all the first division scores, plus all the local ones, so it used to be agonising watching Barnsley lose by way of someone changing the numbers on the wall at the side of pitch! There was one match at Chelsea where we lost something like 5-3. I thought the bloke putting the numbers up had gone crazy. Usually we’d watch the match whilst waiting to see whether we’d be called upon, but I couldn’t take my eyes of the latest score boards.
Wednesdayite here Paul, and yes I remember this service well from the 60s & 70s. You’re right, the numbers related to the other matches in Wednesday’s division, plus the other local clubs. Mr Celebration is right in thinking the A-Z code was printed in the programme, but only a maximum of 24 letters of course, I and O being too similar to 1 and 0 and the potential for confusion.
Sometimes the scores were also displayed on the electronic scoreboard above the Kop. This was installed for the 1966 World Cup and was a far cry from today’s big screens, being more like one of those matrix sign thingies you see on the motorway. By the 70s, the scoreboard was increasingly unreliable and was as likely to display gobbledygook as correct information, so the letters method probably lasted longer than they expected it to.
What always amused me as a child was that after the match, news vendors outside the ground were selling The Star, Sheffield’s evening paper, with the exhortation “half-time scores.” I wondered why anyone would be persuaded to buy it just for the half-times, when you could just wait an hour and buy the Green ‘Un, the famed Saturday evening sports paper, which not only gave you the full-time scores but reports as well. Happy days, even though we were shit as usual!
As others have outlined, the AA, BB, CC etc. was part of the byzantine half time & full time scores, that were of a piece with monkey nuts, inaudible tinny Tannoys & Gents loos literally ankle deep in wee.
However , does anybody else recall the ‘Football Combination’ ? , which as far as I ever worked out, was a low powered gamble based on what your teams reserves were doing on the same afternoon. I never participated, but remember watching bemused as people forked out 25p or 50p to get some kind of tally card off a bloke wearing a white butcher’s coat with a fag hanging out of his mouth, which they later ticked off & then presumably chucked away – as I never remember ever hearing anybody shout ‘ woo! I’ve won!’
I think it might have just been a southern thing, but am open to correction. I assume it was there to appeal to blokes who’d bet on 2 raindrops on a window pane & the club got a cut.
A far cry from the corporate sponsorship of airlines & multinationals.
I thought that the Football Combination was the southern reserves league (back when clubs had proper reserve teams), equivalent to the Central League that ran up north.
Yes I think you’re right there about the Combination league. Back when I was a nipper, we had a family holiday in Ireland and at one point we picked up a hitchhiker from Australia. I was about 8 and viewed him with wide-eyed wonder. An Australian! Wow. So I yabbered away at him the entire time, poor sod. This was the summer, so the Australian football scores were broadcast in order to satisfy the needs of Pools customers. I asked him why there were so many goals in their games…? He didn’t really answer IIRC (probably sick of me by then) so for a long time I just thought Australian football was this amazing goal fest every time.