Cally Callomon delights in the swap-and-stick ephemera of the beautiful game.

Sitting unloved in a charity shop: a £3 bargain book of soccer stars from the 1968 – 69 season, all stickers present and correct, spine held together with a deeply yellowing sellotape, corners all bent and curled and notes lovingly written within by Tempo pens of differing felt-tip sizes. Young Ian, the former owner may be the same age as me, for then was my first fleeting dalliance with the beautiful game. Perhaps I pretended to like football in order to fit in with my mates, though I could never find a team to support. Our posh Grammar School was largely about Rugby and Cricket, Football being a sport for oiks. Thus my escape was through swimming and our school had a pool of its own.

I look at the teams in this book, all Caucasian and all looking as if they are well in their forties, some players even (gosh!) balding, all destined for retirement and pub ownership, perhaps a steak house or a sports shop in Essex.

In the early 1970s it was easy to catch a train from Brookmans Park to Finsbury Park without paying the fares and then walk with my Arsenal supporting chums to watch a game of football of a Saturday. I had never found a team to support, but I liked being with chums. We got in to the ground via tight turnstiles, we stood on the North Bank and often nearly got crushed by crowd surges. I was so impressed by the architecture of Highbury, less so by the football. The previous season Arsenal had done the double, some feat in those days. This season they were really poor. I thought it had gone to their heads.

There was always trouble: running fights in the streets mainly. My chums had to hide their scarves, we had to dodge the mounted police. I suppose it was exciting, but frightening too.

There were always things troublesome: Bradford had a sole player of African heritage and when they were the ‘opposition’ everyone seemed to make ape noises on the North Bank when he was on the ball. Outside Chelsea’s Stamford Bridge (an away match) they sold Bulldog Magazine: the august intellectual magazine of the National Front. Fans threw sharpened pennies at the opposition goalkeeper, and more. I hated it. I started to loathe football.

Bob Wilson, the Arsenal goalkeeper, lived in Brookmans Park. He had a big house with gates and he opened the Village Day event. He was a local celebrity alongside Titch (from DDDBM&T fame) Clinton Ford, and Tottenham’s Martin Chivers, record £250,000 signing, who owned The Brookmans Park Hotel, a massive pub and offy in the village.  Bob Wilson retired from playing to step into a lucrative position as a TV pundit and thus moved to an even bigger house with gates. He established his own hedge fund and by the year 2000 was said to be ‘worth’ $800 million; I expect his house got even bigger.  It wasn’t all charmed life for The Wilsons. They tragically lost their 31 year old daughter to cancer, yet founded The Willow Foundation thereafter in her memory, providing Special Days for young adults with life-threatening illnesses. Wilson has probably avoided dementia, not having had to head the ball in his heyday.

By the third year in school we no longer had to wear the claret and blue school colours for football. I quite liked playing football. I went to the local outfitters who sold blazers and Umbro sports kit and the kindly shop keeper opened a door inside which was a chart and he showed me the colours of all 92 football teams, saying that he could get any strip I wanted. 

Bottom of the Scottish fouth division was Montrose. They played in gold and black. That was the strip for me. I ordered it and after a few weeks the server had to admit he could not get that strip. Back home I had a colour poster of The Rolling Stones on my wall, Bill Wyman wore a green and white hooped shirt. I found out that this was Celtic. I decided I liked Celtic, they were at the top of the first division,  and so I chose that. It arrived: all clean white and vivid green with white socks.

A week later I ran out onto the pitch at school wearing my Celtic strip. Short ugly ginger Ron Hodge ran up to me and nutted me in the face. I collapsed, wondering why he did that. He was wearing an all-blue strip. I hated football even more.

Come the 1990s and a job at Island Records, I was told I had to play football. I hadn’t played football for thirty years but Island had a proud tradition of players including that Bob Marley who was, I’m told, a wizzard on the ball and handy with his head. I was surprised he could focus. 

I signed up and found I loved playing. So much so that I still do, only there are no Island staff left in the team. The several who did come along in the 1990s worked elsewhere, some were even celebrities of the pop world. Today an ailing hip means I can no longer play every week, perhaps every fortnight but there is something about the game, the tactics, the camaraderie, the dance of it all, I love, and I’ve become a dependable defender. Not much of an accolade but I do like not letting anyone pass: ‘No Passeran’ I cry as I wear my Clapton CC strip, the colours of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War.

I’m now far older and less fit than those beaming white men in the football sticker book — I do like the ephemera of 1970s soccer, though: Shoot and Goal magazines and scrap books and sticker albums. 

Would anyone bother to collect stick-in cards today? This one in question is complete, some youngster had probably  stood in a playground meticulously flicking through his mate’s swaps going “got, got, need, swap, got, need”. I bet he even had a checklist.

Maybe that was me…