MODERN supporters can instantaneously follow all the football scores on a Saturday by using the internet on their mobile phones.
But when I was a young kid growing up in the early 1970’s, the best way to keep up to date with results and match reports was to buy a Saturday evening ‘classified’ football newspaper.
Both the Evening News and the Evening Standard produced classified editions where I lived in the London area. These went on sale around 6pm on a Saturday evening.
So there would invariably be long queues of people waiting in eager anticipation outside my local newsagent for the little white delivery van to arrive.
Due to the extremely tight timescale in getting the newspapers written and finished, they would be quite rushed and higgledy-piggledy in presentation.
But that didn’t matter to me as I was just so pleased to access my vital diet of Saturday football facts and figures.
Looking back, this information was superb in view of the fact that matches used to finish at 4.40pm (there was only a 10 minute half-time in those days and very little injury time).
The front and back pages would display all the results plus the latest League tables. If there was any delay in a game finishing, that scoreline would be listed as “L-L”.
For example, “QPR L, Arsenal L”
The papers would then have a tiny ‘late’ column where these delayed results were squeezed in.
There were also reports on the matches played that afternoon. Journalists at the grounds would phone these in over landlines to copytakers at the newspaper offices.
The reports contained ball-by-ball detailed analysis up to about the 60th minute and then briefer facts after that due to print deadlines.
Elsewhere in the papers, there were feature articles on each of the London clubs which had obviously been prepared during the week. Some of the star players had their own columns which were ghost written by journalists.
I would of course read every word from cover to cover. Then my elderly Nana would have a quick look as she had to check her weekly football pools coupon. I don’t think she ever won anything though!
Sadly the London classifieds died out in the late 1970’s due to increasing distribution costs in getting these papers across the capital by 6pm.
However, similar publications continued to thrive around the rest of the country for many years and were often named after the colour of paper they were printed on.
Getting the train home. I miss the old classified football evening newspapers that used to be on sale at 6pm on Saturdays @fcbusiness
— Tony Incenzo talkSPORT (@TonyIncenzo) January 9, 2016
These included the Aberdeen Green Final, the Birmingham Sports Argus, the Bristol Evening Post ‘Green Un’, the Cardiff Football Echo, the Coventry Evening Telegraph ‘Pink’, the Derby Evening Telegraph ‘Green’, the Glasgow Sports Times, the Ipswich ‘Green Un’, the Leicester Mercury Sports Final, the Liverpool Echo, the Manchester Evening News ‘Pink’, the Newcastle ‘Pink’, the Norwich ‘Pink Un’, the Nottingham Football Post, the Sheffield ‘Green Un’, the Southampton Southern Evening Sports Echo, the Stoke Sentinel, the Sunderland Football Echo, the Wolverhampton Sporting Star and the Yorkshire Evening Post.
In my teenage years, I would buy these various newspapers at train stations when I was travelling back from matches far away on Saturday evenings.
The content was slightly different to the London format as it also included excellent Non-League reporting - not only from around local semi-pro clubs but from the realms of grassroots football too.
It was good fun to swap classified editions with other football fans I met on trains.
For example, if I was coming back from Sheffield and someone boarded at Derby then we would exchange our newspapers to get a different slant on the day’s football news. That kept me going until I arrived back in London!
However these provincial Saturday night papers have also ceased publication in recent seasons due to the huge expansion of football material on the internet.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to @TonyIncenzo*
FIRST PUBLISHED: 18th July 2022
