Welcome…

Thank you for following whatever link brought you here. This blog is where I intend to post scans of all the fanzines I posses(ed), along with pithy reviews. All of the ‘zines were mostly bought between 1985 to 1990. There are a number from the 90’s and even one from 2000 (the last one I bought in the UK). I have around 20 first issues to highlight along with a number of second issues (‘cos I missed out on their issue # 1). I also invite anyone reading this, who owns a fanzine(s) and is considering recycling it/them, if you are able to, scan it to a PDF and send it to me, before sending it on its way to be pulped. I will then upload it here at some point so we can all see it in its Letraset glory. Info on how to is provided below.

All Fanzines seen here, were de-stapled, pages separated, scanned and then ultimately recycled. Before taking the pulp plunge, I did look at donating them to a library (I knew I didn’t have nearly enough for a serious collection albeit I had a lot of first issues). I looked at the prices (at the zoo) on Ebay that issues of similar ‘zines were fetching and as you likely already can guess / know, there is not much demand, nor not much in the way of bonus retirement funding to be made from selling these. But I did want to keep a record of them, before sending them on their way. So here we have this small repository in the cloud. I intend to reach out to social media accounts of those that bless us with scans of programmes and other football memorabilia to push this site out there I know of a few academic institutions who have collections of ‘zines and there are likely a few British local libraries with small caches of fanzines. However, I hazard a guess that the British Library does not house that large a collection of fanzines. So it’s up to those who collect(ed) to help make sure they are kept alive somewhere. This is my small contribution.

Some of you may well not have been around when fanzines started appearing outside grounds around the country or sold at Sportspages in London or Manchester or local outlets willing to stock them. Inspired by their cousins from the Punk movement around 1976-80 when fanzines started (re)appearing in their hundreds across the country, football fanzines were the weekly football fan’s public voice of discontent (on the whole) with what was happening to football in the UK in the mid-80’s. Of course, for most the focus was on their club but there were a number of generalist fanzines, of which one, survives today. You can google all you need to know on the the rise and popularity of fanzines as there are plenty of articles written on the subject. But here’s an academic paper that for those of you who aren’t familiar with football fanzines, which serves as a very good primer on the subject.

So if you have scanned PDF copies of fanzines you would like to see archived here, send them to me at afootballfanzinearchive@gmail.com

For clubs with more than one fanzine available to look at, click a link here

If are looking for particular ‘zine, that I might have up, scroll below.

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