Heroes & Villains, the Aston Villa fanzine
Heroes & Villains => Heroes Discussion => Topic started by: Chico Hamilton III on February 23, 2012, 10:11:02 AM
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My youngest is 6 next week and has very recently discovered a passion for anything football related. I took him to his first Villa game last year against FC Smethwick ( what an introduction to Villa - seeing us lose at home against Albion for the first time in 32 years...) and he loves the Villa. He's Matchattax mental as well
Thinking of getting him a subscription to a football magazine for a present. He's a bit young for an H&V subscription . Any ideas what the best kids' football magazine is? it's been over 30 years since I last collected my Shoot league ladders. I'm guessing that all magazines nowadays are very much adverts for the big 4 clubs?
Any (serious) suggestions?
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Chico MOTD mag is a bit like a comic but certainly suits my 9 year old. Generally has some good pics in as well! The last one I saw had a poster of Petrov in. Match Attax give aways are fairly common as well.
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Cheers Chief - didn't realise there was an MOTD magazine. I'll take a look
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MOTD magazine eh? Are the Villa articles all on the back page in the last sentence?
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My son gets Match and Match Of The Day. Both come out every week on a Monday or Tuesday. Lots of free Match Attack cards and although there is always a poster of a player from one of the 'big clubs' there are a few posters in each week so he gets his fair share of Villa ones over a season. He likes reading the transfer gossip out loud to me too so that can't be a bad thing. And don't worry, to my knowledge MOTD mag has never included an audio CD of 'Lawro's' views on the game.
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There has to be a gap in the market for something like this......
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/sep/17/football-comics-will-buckley-sport (http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blog/2009/sep/17/football-comics-will-buckley-sport)
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Cor, league ladders. They bring back some memories.
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Is Claret and Blue magazine still going? Although if he's 6 he might be a bit old for it.
League ladders were ace. Until you lost half the tabs.
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This particular league ladder wasn't the best though - but happy memories nevertheless.
http://retrodundee.blogspot.com/2010/06/shoot-league-ladders-196970.html (http://retrodundee.blogspot.com/2010/06/shoot-league-ladders-196970.html)
By the way, anyone interest in old football memorablia/junk should get hold of Derek Hammond's "Got, Not Got" which came out just before Christmas. Brilliantly and lovingly written – the sort of book you can't put down once you start.
Some cracking stuff in there for those of us brought up on subbuteo, Casdon Soccer, league ladders, the Wembley board game, Roy of the Rovers, the Park Drive Football Annual, The Football League Review and Esso World cup coins etc etc.
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Chico - I've got some old copies 'N. Soul' magazine if he wants them.
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Back in the day it was:
Blue Peter
Shoot
TISWAS
The Left Side
Celtic
... oh, what? Mags, today? No idea, Chico!
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MOTD magazine is the ideal companion to the TV programme in that it is has similar patronising style suited to those whose football brain is not yet fully developed.
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I thought Gary Penrice was a good signing after reading some back issues of Match.
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Think there is (or was until recently) a 'Kick' magazine for kiddies which has a lot of posters in it.
I bought Match until into my teens. Those team trackers were a nightmare. Spend all evening carefully rearranging the tabs after the latest set of results only to be woken-up at 3am by the feckin' chart falling from the wall due to the weight and all the tabs falling all over the shop. I usually gave-up by the end of August.
Match seemed to dumb down a lot. In the early 90's it was quite witty, aimed at teens I suppose but gradually they changed their demograph. Must have realised that the money was to be made from under-12's buying it via their parents.
90 minutes was also a decent read back in the day.
WSC is the one quality regular football magazine on the go these days. Great to see that it's still surviving, and with next to no advertising in it too.
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Think there is (or was until recently) a 'Kick' magazine for kiddies which has a lot of posters in it.
I got him that a few weeks ago - poster of Robbie Keane in the middle. Looked a bit crap though ( I read it from cover to cover on the bog).
Does Shoot still have "Tartan Talk" with Danny McGrain ( alternating with Derek Johnsotne) and Andy Gray's column?
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Kick has closed.
You're looking now at MOTD mag or Match; they're pretty much the same in terms of content. But as a former employee of Match I wholly recommend buying that!
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Is World League Soccer still going?
Also, does anyone remember a comedy football mag called the 'Onion Bag' Circa 1992
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Is World League Soccer still going?
Also, does anyone remember a comedy football mag called the 'Onion Bag' Circa 1992
I do. I think former H&V cartoonist Jon Mulcreevy did something for them.
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Just make sure what you get him has something like this in it.
(http://www.footybits.co.uk/images/youaretheref005.jpg)
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How about 90minutes?
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Just make sure what you get him has something like this in it.
(http://www.footybits.co.uk/images/youaretheref005.jpg)
Takes me back to one of my favourite ever fanzine pieces from a Rangers jobby called Follow, Follow, in the aftermath of the Durrant/Simpson unpleasantness. The 'you are the ref' question was 'Jim Bett stabs Rangers Ian Durrant to death and buries him in a shallow grave on the touchline, do you:
A - Call the police and abandon the game.
B - Show a yellow card to Bett and warn him about his future conduct
C - Show a yellow to Durrant for leaving the pitch without permission.
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Favourite car - Sierra XR4i
Favourite food - Steak & Chips
Person you'd most like to meet - The Queen on Cup Final Day
Music - Phil Collins
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I kept going with the same set of League ladders for about 5 years when I was a schoolboy. Of course the cardboard tags started falling apart with some and you had to use a sliver of cellotape to hold them together. When Cambridge United and Hereford were elected to the league to replace Bradford PA and Barrow, I made my own cardboard tags for them complete in appropriate team colours. Very Blue Peter I know - although I found bog roll cardboard too thick to fit into the slits on the ladders so had to cut them out from my packet of Woodbines.
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League ladders were my forerunner to Football Manager.
I put each division's teams into a hat and drew them out randomly, first team out finished bottom, next one second bottom and so on until the last one out were the champions (and no cheating). Do this for all four divisions and carefully annotate the resulting tables into a notebook.
Then relegate / promote the teams in the relegation / promotion positions (and make a new team for a random non-league team to replace the team bottom of division four, always Tamworth first up of course!), and do it all again.
I think I had about fifty seasons in the notebook, don't remember many details but I know Villa only won the first division once and were a bit of a yo-yo club, Cardiff city were very succesful as I remember, and Leeds amusingly dropped all the way down the leagues into non-league obscurity never to be seen again.
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I did something similar with my league ladders during close seasons. But instead you would actually play out an entire seasons set of fixtures determining each result by utilising one of the rollers from the Owzthat cricket game. If it came up Owzthat that counted as scoring nil.
(http://www.vintagetoysgames.co.uk/images/owzthat_vintage_bp_hinged.jpg)
However, because the Owzthat roller had no five on it I eventually made my own roller. This involved writing the goals to be scored on a six sided pencil and rolling that instead. Of course you quickly learnt how to roll the pencil to your advantage and the Villa always seemed to do rather well.
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Favourite car - Sierra XR4i
Favourite food - Steak & Chips
Person you'd most like to meet - The Queen on Cup Final Day
Music - Phil Collins
Miscellaneous dislikes - Smoking, long journeys home after an away defeat
Favourite away ground - Anfield
Favourite all time XI - Brazil 1970
If you weren't a footballer what job would you do - P.E teacher
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Favourite car - Sierra XR4i
Favourite food - Steak & Chips
Person you'd most like to meet - The Queen on Cup Final Day
Music - Phil Collins
Miscellaneous dislikes - Smoking, long journeys home after an away defeat
Favourite away ground - Anfield
Favourite all time XI - Brazil 1970
If you weren't a footballer what job would you do - P.E teacher
Favourite newspaper - The Sun
Music - Diana Ross/George Benson
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When I was a pre-teen kid, there was a football magazine called Goal. Anybody old enough to remember it? It was a brilliant read at the time. I've still got some of the issues from 1969/1970. I'm a bit of a hoarder...
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I did something similar with my league ladders during close seasons. But instead you would actually play out an entire seasons set of fixtures determining each result by utilising one of the rollers from the Owzthat cricket game. If it came up Owzthat that counted as scoring nil.
(http://www.vintagetoysgames.co.uk/images/owzthat_vintage_bp_hinged.jpg)
However, because the Owzthat roller had no five on it I eventually made my own roller. This involved writing the goals to be scored on a six sided pencil and rolling that instead. Of course you quickly learnt how to roll the pencil to your advantage and the Villa always seemed to do rather well.
Sometimes an extra roll would be necessary for time added on or a ridge in the carpet.
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My 8 year old has a subscription to MOTD and enjoys it, if only for the free Match Attax cards that seem to be a regular giveaway.
Chico, I went onto the Match Attax site and did one of the personalised cards for him and stuck a couple in some packs, his face was a picture when he found himself in the packs, easy to do and think it was only a fiver.
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WSC is the one quality regular football magazine on the go these days. Great to see that it's still surviving, and with next to no advertising in it too.
WSC is far and away the best football magazine out there... Probably not for a 6 year old mind!
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WSC is the one quality regular football magazine on the go these days. Great to see that it's still surviving, and with next to no advertising in it too.
WSC is far and away the best football magazine out there...
No it isn't.
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Roy of the Rovers