Newcastle United are a rare club in many ways; perhaps one
of the more obscure reasons for this is the fact we Magpies are bucking the
trend in terms of paper based fanzines. Not only is The Mag, dull and
ponderous though it may be, still in existence after almost 24 years and a
bookshelf bending 267 issues, but there are two other publications on the go.
Mick Edmundson from The Back Page bookshop (who issued the irreverent Toon
Army News back in the early to mid-1990s) has got the market in
superbly splenetic anti Mackem abuse and painstakingly accurate historical
research sewn up with his enjoyable Black & White Daft. Meanwhile,
Steve Wraith, who has been putting together magazines since he was knee high to
a sawn off shooter, pilots the excellent and constantly improving Toon
Talk. Very few clubs, other than perhaps Manchester United who have one
extra current journal of supporter record, can claim such a high number of
printed fanzines.
I don’t do away games any longer, but when I did, one of the
highlights was reading the words, sometimes scurrilous, sometimes pretentious,
of other supporters in a wide array of fanzines. That doesn’t seem to be
possible any longer, with news of fanzines folding on a regular basis. Indeed,
I can’t remember the last time I saw one outside an away ground. Only recently
Wolverhampton’s A Load Of Bull threw in the towel after 23 years, claiming the
cause to be the usual combination of apathy, declining sales and disenchantment
with the way the game is going. As regards the first and last points, surely
that’s the whole point of a fanzine? It exists as a vehicle for tirades against
the faceless moneymen who’ve stolen the game from us.
However, the second point is very true; opinions may be like
arseholes, but so, it seems, are football blogs. What is more, blogs cost
nothing and are far more interactive (than fanzines, not arseholes) and, if
they’re properly maintained, will by definition be more reactive than
independent printed media. On that basis, that’s where Mickey Edmundson and
Steve Wraith have made such creative successes of their latest magazines, by
focussing their writers on precise, niche areas and avoiding creative
bankruptcy associated with page after page of match reports of games that took
place months ago.
One magazine that is in danger of closure, which seems
insane with the club sitting in 7th place in the Championship with a
real chance of the play-offs, is Middlesbrough’s Fly Me To The Moon, a
publication that has been issued for almost every single Boro home game since
it made its debut appearance before a 1-0 home defeat to Sheffield Wednesday in
November 1988. I’m not even sure how many issues that is, but I’m sure it’s
well over 500. In putting the
announcement on his website of the potential imminent demise of his fanzine,
the editor, childhood Newcastle United fan Rob Nichols asked not for sympathy,
but contributions to the last few issues. Unfortunately, he got neither of
those things, attracting the kind of intemperate wrath that would suggest that
since Gordon Strachan packed up and left town, there’s only 1 candidate left
for the position of Most Unpopular Man on Teesside. I mean, look at these two
sample responses -:
rivals_oldschool
03/04/2012 16:36
Pointless when most of
your content relies on the clubs co-operation. The precedent was set when the
fanzine had to toe the line at the expense of being frozen out if it didn't.
You haven't been asking any real questions of the club for a while now. It's a
boring read. People can buy the matchday programme for that.
BerwickHillsBopper
03/04/2012 18:48
The reason the fanzine
is dead is because it has had nothing to say for many a year. Just a MFC
propaganda prop up. Just shining a smaller light on the positive spin MFC
already puts out about itself… At a local level, the fanzine could have mounted
an assault on many of the negative things that have affected Boro fans at home
and away. Instead you chose to ignore major issues such as fan treatment,
ticket prices, safe standing, the morgue like atmosphere at home, the loss of
matchday culture etc etc. Instead we got "exclusive interviews" where
the same old rubbish that has been said 100 times before is said for 101st
time. The time for mourning FMMTM as a fanzine is not at the end of the season
should it fold; it would have been many, many years ago when it ceased to be a
real vehicle for the fans and real fans issues. RIP FMTTM? About 12 years too
late methinks.
Speaking personally, I like the editor Rob Nichols, who I
also know as a devotee of The Fall and other arcane musical treats, including
his own wonderfully off-kilter combo Shrug, immensely. While I’ve problems with
his rewriting of history of the Mido game in August 2007, having undergone a
post traumatic volte face when Fleet
Street came knocking, or the farcical non-story of the pensioner supposedly
attacked by Newcastle fans in November 2008 outside the Riverside that didn’t
even make up a molehill of half-baked beans, everything else about the fella is
worthy of undiluted praise.
I’ve stayed at his house, attended his 40th
birthday party and even contributed to 85 issues of the magazine, writing a
regular column in almost every issue from 1996 to 2002, as well as contributing
to 2 annuals they produced, taking the back cover photograph for the first of
them. Subjects covered by my jottings included non-league football, general
comments on the game, as well as a detailed diary of my Slovak sojourn from
1999 to 2001, which is currently available at www.britskibelasi.footballunited.com
You probably wonder why, as a Newcastle fan, I wrote so much
for a Boro fanzine. Good question, as I can’t stand Middlesbrough as a club,
even if in August 1986, I was one of 30,000 Newcastle United fans who dug deep
to fill the collection buckets outside SJP for the debt riddled side that were
locked out of Ayresome Park. That dislike has nothing to do with the supposed
regional proximity of the two clubs; I hate the Mackems for their proximity. I
hate Boro because they embody everything that is wrong with the modern game; never
mind their weird, intense manager, there’s also their sterile, flat-pack ground
in the middle of nowhere, half full of replica shirted, face painted, foam
handed, curly red nylon wigged Sky era fans who think singing Pigbag
is the very epitome of assured fan terrace culture and who mostly
supported Liverpool until Captain Lager arrived to crash face first on to tables
laden with drinks in Tall Trees and attempt to spend Steve Gibson’s fortune in
double quick time around 1994. These days the 15,000 or so who huddle against
the cold in the Riverside and phone the 3 Has-Beens on Real Radio with
incessant moaning (Allough Bearny, ut’s
Kaerl frum Stoktun; ah’uv gorruh seay Bearny tha eez gorruh goh, Bearny)
may be the supporting equivalent of crash test dummies, but it never used to be
that case.
My first trip to Middlesbrough was back in 1983; a 1-1 draw
on a February afternoon. We took the train from Heworth, a 2 coach rattler
peopled by 1,000 moustachioed headcases in NCB donkey jackets and a similar
number of Tacchini and Samba youngsters with wedge cuts. At Thornaby, the
Teesside police hauled us off the train and the local Superintendent informed
the massed ranks of half drunk and decidedly radgey NUFC supporters that we
could either get back on the train and go home now, or be herded on to another
cattle truck direct to Boro, but if we did, and I quote, I am unable to guarantee your safety from this point onwards. Valour
being the better part of discretion to an 18 year old, we of course went to the
game, and by the simple expedient of looking like a couple of punters hanging
around the mixing desk at a Birthday Party or Tuxedomoon gig, avoided a shoeing
from hell courtesy of the famed Clive Road Axemen, antecedents of notorious
thugs The Frontline, who thankfully appear to have receded from view.
The last football game I saw in Middlesbrough was Newcastle
0 Arsenal 0 in a three-quarters empty chain pub, back on August 13th
before attending a Wedding Present gig at the Town Hall Crypt. That day, Boro
had beaten Leeds away; the reverse fixture when Warnock’s team dismantled the
home side on BBC1 is the only time I’ve seen their side this season. It wasn’t
much cop; if they go up, they’ll be lucky to get double figures in points.
However, whatever I feel about the club, their traditional fans, their modern
fans and their disturbing manager, I do feel Boro’s support, such as it is,
should be offered the opportunity to write down their moaning and see it in
print. Consequently, I desperately hope Fly Me To the Moon survives, which
is why I’ve penned this article.
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