WELL, there goes the final edition of the Sports Gazette, off the press, onto the vans and into history.
I've spent most of the week deep in the bowels of Gazette Towers down in the file room with a dust mask on going through dirty, fading historical documents of massive cultural importance, searching for some classic front pages of this much loved institution. It beats working.
All the major historical landmarks of the old club are there - Alf Common's debut, Camsell banging in his 59th, Clough scoring five in a 9-0 win, the Mannion match, Charlton's Champions, Orient, Wolves, Juninho's debut, the FA Cup final - and it has been brilliant. I just wish we had the technology, the time and the resources to make them all available to a wider audience and in a more accessible form but that is a project for another time.
But wallowing in nostalgia about the Sports - once the ONLY source of a comprehensive written record of Boro matches with a circulation of over 70,000 - made me think how that avidly reading this partisan publication was something that united tens of thousands of people every week in a mass collective cultural experience yet it was taken for granted and went largely unremarked.
And there were a host of other similar familiar rites and rituals of fandom played out across the country that have now faded into history with the rise of technology and the transformation of the game from working class niche obsession into a ubiquitous social presence and expensive family orientated leisure pursuit, aspects of behaviour that demonstrated and deepened our obsession, marked us out as 'true fans' and had saner individuals shaking their heads.
I remember, before the advent of the internet and Sky news and being out of Radio Tees transmitter range, following whole games via Ceefax, gazing intently at the screen anxiously watching as it flicked through the pages of lower league and Scottish results before finally refreshing the only page that counted and willing there to have been a change. I 'watched' an entire goalless draw away at Crystal Palace in this surreal fashion, powerless to vent my feelings at the players and nervous as goals flew in elsewhere. Almost everyone I knew who was a 'real fan' had done the same at some point, often drinking and cursing along and jumping through as many emotional hoops as watching a televised match today.
I remember, against my own better judgement and knowing from the off it was a pointless exercise, phoning ClubCall at the ludicrous rate of 25p a minute on the strength of a Teletext advert proclaiming "Scottish star signs" to pace anxiously up and down the five foot strip the cord allowed, urging the idiot to hurry through the expensive and ponderous preamble to be crushed at the news that it was Ronnie Coyle. I once even followed the second half of a game (Stoke away I think) on ClubCall, but obviously on a richer friend's bill not my own.
I remember the excitement of turning up at a game to find out the pre-match buzz was that Boro had signed a player out of the blue and no-one knew had a clue who it was, where they came from or had prepared an in-depth dossier based on internet research and Football Manager stats complete with links to YouTube video compilation footage of wondergoals.
I remember being bought a strip as a kid that wasn't official branded replica product. From Jack Hatfields. A red shirt that had a white hoop deftly sewed on at home. And being chuffed to bits. Could you even buy replica shirts then? I certainly don't remember any.
I remember not only travelling to an away game at Carlisle without a ticket but the gates being locked when we got there as it was a sell out so taking a chance and going into the home end and keeping schtum throughout a drab defeat thinking afterwards that even though we had lost it was probably a good thing because a goal may have prompted involuntary body language that would betray us and earn a good kicking.
Those things were common currency among fans everywhere, like throwing sickies and burying your third nana of the year because of hastily arranged second and third cup replays. And you tell kids these days that you went a whole year without watching a single live game on the box and they won't believe you.
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