After commenting on a post by @darth-azrael about a retro gaming magazine, I was pointed in the direction of this website - https://archive.org/
As many of you know, I enjoy reminiscing and often get lost in nostalgia. So to be presented with a simple URL that represents nothing but nostalgia to me is something that I struggle to find words for. I'm at an age where as much of my life is behind me as is likely to be in front so I enjoy taking some time to remember. I didn't expect to spend so much time trawling through magazines from the 80's and 90's but there were too many memories to stop and I'm certain to be spending many spare moments searching for more.
A few magazines in particular caught my attention and since I'm posting this in World of Football, the magazine in question is "Shoot". There's so much in this magazine for me to really know where to start, so I'll pick the one thing that I remember most - the posters. It was possibly the biggest selling point of the magazine - what would be the pull-out poster.
Unfortunately, they only have 1 magazine archived (November 17, 1990) but I know I have more somewhere - so I thought I'd dig out some of the old news stories and share some memories with you. Perhaps they might even evoke some memories of your own which I'd love to hear.
The article in this edition that I want to share is the cover story about Captain Marvel (Bryan Robson) (not the pull out poster of the Hearts squad) - the reason for the focus on him in this edition was that Manchester United were about to play his testimonial match against Celtic. The younger readers of this may be wondering what a testimonial match is - I think they still exist, you just don't seem to get many of them any more but back in the 80's and 90's, they were fairly commonplace. They were played when a player reached 10 years playing for their club - in Robson's case from 1981 to 1991 (finally leaving for Middlesbrough in 1994). Wikipedia defines it as:
A testimonial match or testimonial game, often referred to simply as a testimonial, is a practice in some sports, particularly in association football in the United Kingdom and South America, where a club has a match to honour a player for service to the club. These matches are always non-competitive (source)
The final sentence is a funny one. Robson didn't play in his own testimonial as he was nearing a return from injury and said:
After five months on the injury list, I'm back in training and running again. But a match between United and Celtic is certain to be a competitive affair, and even though it's a big night for me it could still be too much of a risk to play (source)
It's strange reading about a player who at the time was a household name and regarded as one of the best players in England. At the time that this article was published, his greatest disappointment whilst at Old Trafford was not to have won the league title (he later went on to win 2 - in 1992/93 and 1993/94). Given Man Utd's near dominance under Sir Alex Ferguson, it was easy to forget that Robson played under Ron Atkinson for half of his time there.
I was worried that YouTube wouldn't give me any decent videos that I could share but I should've known that his iconic status at Man Utd means that I had a few to choose from. And I chose this one...
And this one, got to love a bit of Cloughie 😄
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