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Johnny & Al's 'The Big Match' On TV

Johnny and Al highly recommend 'The Big Match Revisited', for the history lesson as much as the football. The pitches may have been crap, but the hair was glorious...

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Comments 1 - 10 of (10)

lfc1981 (Liverpool) says...

@teutonicfaith, generalisations and stereotypes? what are you talking about!? Read what I have written properly, IN GENERAL the quality was poor. Are you really trying to tell me the games, IN GENERAL, in the 70's/80's were as good as today? Also you talk about six best technical ENGLISH players. What does that have to do with anything? I was talking about the quality of the games so the players birth place in irrelevant.

Posted 10:50am 4th March 2013

teutonicfaith says...

lfc1981, a lot of generalisations and stereotypes. For example, the best six English players I've seen in terms of technical ability (two good feet, dribbling, vision, creativity, passing, finishing) are Waddle, Hoddle, Gascoigne, Barnes, Beardsley and Scholes, and five of them played in the 1980s rather than just the super-duper post 1992 Premier League era. Two of them played for the team you support, lfc1981. The idea that there was no quality back then is absurd. Secondly, do people think that every football fan back in the 70s and 80s was a hooligan? Of course they weren't. Those that enjoyed a spot of the old ultra-violence probably had a smile on their faces while they went about their unpleasant business as well until football sorted that festering sore out. I think this article refers more to the repressed rage of the modern fan, bitterly distanced from his heroes by their wage packets while calling for the manager to be sacked.

Posted 10:16pm 2nd March 2013

lfc1981 (Liverpool) says...

Say what you want about looking back, but the quality was , in general, appalling. Why wouldn't it be, the diet and lifestyle was akin to a Sunday League player today.

Posted 8:02pm 1st March 2013

Griff (Manchester United) says...

zedsmith: I agree; in fact, the reason you can't see the crowd's faces on The Big Match is that the videotape of the day wasn't up to the job! No HD in 1979 on your Grundig 12" black-and-white telly (which is why Brian Moore was still saying things like "West Ham are in the dark shirts").

Posted 3:36pm 1st March 2013

jericho (Leeds United) says...

Great article. Clearly more about the contrast between then and now. This is the era I started to watch football and while it wasn't necessarily better than today it was different. The Big Match captured the era in a way and is of that era. It was a football show showing football with no fancy camera angles, no music, no extreme close up of goals. There was little if any blah blahing in the studio from pundits. That was saved for FA Cup final day of World Cups. The players were blokes and the grounds were grounds built mostly in the early part of the century, and not out of town stadia with Shopping Malls and Garden Centre bolted on. The crowds seemed happier because there seemed to be more banter. Dunno if this was due to terracing and the inter action of fans. Of course it wasn't necessarily family friendly or comfortable to stand on a terrace with a constant cloud of fart and bo or with the possibility of a fight or hooliganism. Now there is a lot more comfort involved in attending but the players are distant headphone wearing sporting icons now, TV packages it and presents a multi coloured, 3d, Sunday Showdown. The football was raw, full blooded and often violent but 100% about the football. It wasn't about owners, shareholdings, loan deals. Some of it was good and some of it wasn't. By the way I had the replica Leeds kit which my mother both for me. Plain White T Shirt, Plain White Shorts (back pocket) & plain white knee socks. (I'm still waiting on those numbered sock tie-ups)

Posted 2:37pm 1st March 2013

zedsmith (Liverpool) says...

It's a sign of getting older when you are convinced that everything was much better in the olden days, even things that are so clearly better now....just something to bear in mind when anyone starts telling you that the good thing about football crowds in the 70s and 80s was that "their faces are not twisted by hate, resentment, jealousy or anger". Seriously chaps, you can have a pop about many things in modern football, but the idea that crowds were friendlier places to be back in the 70s and 80s is one of the most laughable things ever written on a football website.

Posted 1:20pm 1st March 2013

teutonicfaith says...

It's interesting how society seems to have undergone this process of infantilisation and entitlement, not to mention the obesity boom, no doubt mainly caused by junk food and fizzy drinks. Is this all due to the globalisation, commercialisation and corporatisation of this modern world that now affects everything?- and not just football. Everyone has to have a pointless little gadget with games and apps and twitter and facebook that they don't really need, but which makes a company rich, while they guzzle a sugar-sweetened drink of pop with a takeaway they ordered online.

Posted 12:23pm 1st March 2013

littler_dutch (Arsenal) says...

I don¿t have a telly box nowadays and this show is one of the few I miss. I recall watching an episode of the Big Match Revisited a few years ago which featured Stoke v West Ham and an immaculately coiffured ¿Steven Bould¿ as Brian Moore insisted on calling him, making his Stoke debut at right back at the age of 19. Before my time of course, but no less wonderful for it.

Posted 11:55am 1st March 2013

Griff (Manchester United) says...

A couple of things in addition. First, there are no incessant replays of controversial incidents. In fact, there are no replays of marginal offsides, possible handballs or anything. I know that's partly technology-related but I think it's partly the absence of a desire to point fingers or unearth conspiracy theories. Second, during the viewers' letters secion, Brian Moore reads out the full addresses of people who write in to him! It's such a little thing but it encapsulates perfectly how (relatively) innocent an era that really was.

Posted 10:22am 1st March 2013

varicoseregent (Manchester United) says...

One of the surveys for All Star Family Fortunes should be what injuries Michael Owen has had. I don't think there would be enough room on the board.

Posted 9:36am 1st March 2013

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