Tony Incenzo (@TonyIncenzo) goes back in time and pens his thoughts on football inflatables and the A-Z scoreboards in use at stadiums around the country...
Football Inflatables
FOOTBALL INFLATABLES were very fashionable at League grounds in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s.
Legend has it that the trend started at Manchester City’s old Maine Road stadium.
A supporter called Frank Newton visited his friend Allen Busby during the summer of 1987 and spotted a five foot inflatable banana amongst Allen’s extensive toy collection. So Frank borrowed the banana to take to a match in August that year.
The Maine Road crowd’s reaction was favourable as the huge yellow object was greeted with laughter. Being a hot afternoon, Frank decided to remove his Manchester City replica shirt and drape it over the banana.
Queueing to get in Maine Road back in the inflatables era. pic.twitter.com/FaUnZEX7sV
— Brian Carter (@biffo60) July 23, 2018
Within a few minutes, a face had been drawn and a bobble hat was added. In effect, the banana had taken on a character of its own.
Frank subsequently followed his team to matches all over England and took the banana with him. Other Man City fans started to have their own versions made.
Soon, shops in the Manchester area spotted this booming demand and began to stock the inflatable novelties.
The 1988/89 season saw a nationwide explosion in this craze. Supporters of every club in the country had latched on. They carried inflatable toucans, sharks, referees, penguins, gorillas and literally thousands of bananas.
Some teams had their own unique themes. Stoke fans adopted inflatable pink panthers, Oldham had inflatable dogs, Bury displayed blow-up black puddings, Grimsby had giant fish and West Ham had inflatable hammers.
But the fad fizzled out almost as quickly as it began. Some clubs banned inflatables as they could block the view of the pitch. Also, many of the inflatables were of poor quality and so they didn’t last more than a few months before becoming punctured.
On a personal note, I still have an inflatable referee that I bought at a London ground more than 30 years ago. It is about five feet tall with a big beaming face like a caricature.
In fact, I blew it up the other day and marched it into the living room where my wife got a real shock and started screaming due to the huge size of the referee’s head!
A to Z SCOREBOARDS
MODERN supporters who go to a match can follow all the football scores on a Saturday by using the internet on their mobile phones. Details from other games will flash up on the stadium big screens too.
But when I was a kid in the 1970’s, none of these methods were available. So football clubs would utilise a basic A to Z half-time scoreboard.
What happened was that the key fixtures from that day would listed in the matchday programme with letters next to them.
For instance…
A - might be Arsenal versus Manchester United.
B - Burnley versus Spurs.
C - Chelsea versus Liverpool.
D – Derby County versus Leeds United.
And so on through the alphabet.
Then there were letters from A to Z spaced out on the perimeter hoardings around the side of the pitch. Each letter represented a match.
At half-time, a little dishevelled man would suddenly appear with a set of wooden numbers and he would carefully place these numbers next to the letters.
As an example, next to A he might put ZERO then ONE. So everyone would check their programme and realise that Arsenal were trailing 1-0 at home to Manchester United
B - TWO and THREE, Spurs were winning 3-2 at Burnley.
C - ZERO and ZERO, Chelsea and Liverpool were drawing 0-0.
D - ONE and ZERO, Derby were 1-0 up against Leeds.
This was a very simple system but much appreciated by the fans who went out to watch football on a Saturday. And it raised money for the clubs too as everyone in attendance had to buy a matchday programme to check the half-time scores.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to @TonyIncenzo*
FIRST PUBLISHED: 21st July 2022
