Sends shivers down my spine Greavsie .
Do you remember the Match Officials back then . Ha ha . The ref was normally the home team manager , running about in jeans and bomber jacket . Not always with a whistle ! Shouted a lot ! Gave offside in his teams favour at the drop of the hat . Nobody could argue against him , but we always did .
The linesmen were anybody he could rope in to do the job , whether they knew anything about football or not , or whether they could keep up with play or not . As long as they could wave their snotty handkerchief ,on cue , that was qualification enough . One was normally the star centre forwards , sisters boyfriend . The centre forward would always look immaculate , have hair like Mark Bolan and drive a yellow Capri with a black vinyl roof . . The boyfriend didn’t know bugger all about football and was only there because he had a car to take six blokes home .
The other Lino was the managers brother -in -law and he was only there because it was his turn to drive to pub after . He had absolutely no interest in football and would often miss whole sections of the game trying to get mud off of his new trainers
there wasn’t any subs , and the duration of the game was decided by how long it took for the refs team to score the winning goal , or was cut short if his team was winning by one goal with five minutes left !
Anybody ever got injured , no matter what the injury was , he got drenched with a muddy , mouldy car sponge retrieved from the garage that morning , and filthy cold water with grass cuttings floating in it , quick rub down and told to “go run it off“
The highlight of the game was the half time oranges . One orange cut into four sections and the orange peel just chucked on the floor for the groundsman to pick up , alongside all the bits of string used to keep the socks up . I never really had my orange , it got in the way of the fag I was smoking !
Happy days