Mud, Sweat and Beers

Because I'm a pathetic specimen of a human being, I really enjoy watching The Big Match Revisited on ITV4 (or, given the normally show it about 9am on Saturday, I record it first). Currently, they're working through the 1978/79 season and it's never less than amusing to spot the vast changes we've seen in English football over the last 30 years.

For one thing, they show plenty of games from outside the top flight, which I believe was part of the contract fromt he Football League - Match of the Day on the BBC used to do the same. This means you get to see clashes like Brentford against Watford in the Third Division, where the young Luther Blissett, in the days before he was inspiring Italian anarchists, maintaining dignity (and scoring a goal) while taking sickening abuse from the crowd. Top man.

Of which reminds us of the old cliché about black players - that they were soft and couldn't handle the rough stuff. To which you can only wonder if they ever saw Cyrille Regis play? The man was built like a tank and was capable of battering his way past the overweight carthorse centre halves that most teams employed back then.

"Overweight" is certainly a theme you get from watching players back then, as plenty of the lads showing off their stuff may have wished the shirts had a little more "give", judging by the ample bellies on display. If you think Sam Alladyce has only looked that chunky since he packed in playing, think again. After all, a victory celebration of about ten pints of beer was the norm back then. Though for the losing team, commiseration could come in the form of ten pints of beer.

Luckily, the pitches of the time pretty much prohibited any kind of quick movement, with that vital ingredient of "grass" often being left out of the mix, leaving the surface looking either like Ypres 1917 or Southport beach. Though running fast wasn't an option, neither was standing still, lest you be sucked into the quagmire like in some dodgy horror film - and nobody was going to be able to pull the likes of Larry Lloyd and Mickey Droy back out, that's for sure. It makes you watch in awe that the likes of Steve Coppell and Laurie Cunningham could glide on the mud like it was a bowling green.

Viv Anderson runs with the ball, probably to prevent the onset of trenchfoot

Watching old football games can also provide a nice little sociological insight in normal life at the time. The pitchside adverts are for the likes of Visionhire - the idea of people renting a TV may seem a bit alien to people these days, but it was the norm back then. I can remember my mother paying the subs for her parents in town back in the day. Eh ba gum.

And of course, through it all, there's the magnificent Brian Moore, whose head did indeed look uncannily like the London Planetarium. The only downside is watching it in the knowledge Liverpool end up as champions! Bah!