Scouring the Internet late at night looking for a cheap thrill is one of the secret joys of modern life.
Hands trembling, throat drying and a quick glance over your shoulder as you finally click onto a site which will provide instant gratification, relief, guilt and which you will probably remove from your search history the following morning.
It is the kind of implausible thrill that would be so hard to explain to people from a different age, or as some call it, the 1990s.
Recently, Paris Shilton stumbled upon some videos posted on YouTube by someone or something calling themselves FootballGaffesGalore (FGG).
This may not be their real name but whoever it is, they deserve a knighthood far more so than any lollipop lady from Somerset.
Many have posted matches from yesteryear on YouTube, and for that they have the eternal gratitude of this footballing nerd.
But none have managed to upload on the scale of FGG.
The site is pure nostalgic footballing porn.
FGG has somehow managed to post several entire seasons’ worth of games shown on ITV stretching, so far, from 1968 until 1980.
All goals – or at least pretty much every goal – from the games broadcast (for young people, that was three a week) by the various regional ITV stations have somehow been retrieved and uploaded to watch over again.
FGG’s eventual aim, it says, is to get the goals from all ITV matches up to and including the 1996-97 season.
If successful, that would constitute an archive, or golden trove of footballing action, which would document for posterity direct to anyone’s laptop, tablet, phone or most importantly, work desk, 30 seasons’ worth of action and goals across arguably the most interesting ever period of English football.
It would also unwittingly detail the great changes in football from 1968 – a year in which a team from Manchester were crowned English champions, Chelsea finished sixth in the top tier and Bury were promoted from the third division – to 1997, a year when a team from Manchester were crowned English champions, Chelsea finished sixth in the top tier and Bury were promoted from the third division.
FGG also lists the score of every game shown, so the natural instinct is to check the matches of your own team.
But once you have done that the joy is in discovering, or re-discovering, some great lost, forgotten or unknown action.
It’s a veritable nerd-vana of football.
Randomly, there is a fantastic team goal from Southampton in a 4-1 thrashing of the European champions Nottingham Forest (starting 49mins:06sec) in the 1979-80 season, which is joyously celebrated.
There’s Glenn Hoddle (49:04) scoring a late equalizer in 1977-78 for Spurs in a 3-3 draw in a Division 2 clash at Mansfield – Mansfield! – a match apparently played on an ice rink covered in mud.
And Derby beating Everton and Liverpool in successive rounds of the FA Cup in 1976 in a double of sorts (starting 59mins:12secs).
In the same season, and for comic value, there is hobbling Chelsea player, Brian Bason, who can barely stand (1hr 14mins 42secs).
Obviously this attracts the attention of a witless teammate who for some reason passes to Bason, who does the only thing he can, which is point himself at the opposition Carlisle goal and lash the ball into the net from “28 yards”. Then he gets back on the floor.
These are just the tiniest examples, there is so much more else to enjoy such as a Norman Hunter thunderbolt for Bristol City, Mick Channon scoring a Van Basten as Southampton thrash Portsmouth 4-0 and Francis Lee scoring two in the final two minutes of his career against a patently not-arsed Ipswich Town.
The matches, like ITV, are divided into regional sections, starting with Granada and generally working its way south, ending up at London Weekend Television.
This not only shows the breadth of their coverage in an era when there was only one live domestic match on TV a season but also emphasizes the talent they had at their disposal when it came to commentators – Gerard Sinstadt, Hugh Johns, the underrated Keith Macklin and ever excitable Brian Moore.
Between they come up with some marvellous lines.
There’s Moore’s description of Arsenal midfielder Jon Sammels as he readies to shoot against Manchester United in 1969-70 (52mins 08 secs) – “Still Sammels… and he’s got a bang on him… Oh! Magnificent goal!”
Or Sinstadt’s sheer rapture at a typical Bob Latchford headed goal for Everton against Stoke in 1976 (58 seconds) with the wonderful: “Oh! What a Goal! (Pause) Now that’s football!”
Not to be outdone, Johns, who was more like a fan with a microphone than a mere commentator, brings all the drama to a pretty forgettable headed goal by Manchester City’s Denis Law from a Francis Lee cross in 1973/74 (36mins 8secs) as: “That’s a naughty one… that’s Law!”
There is also the inadvertently memorable, including David Bobin’s (1hr 8mins 43secs) “There’s a smoke bomb in there” as a Brighton player crosses in the lead-up to a goal against Blackburn in 1978/79.
It’s not a metaphor. Someone chucked a smoke bomb onto the pitch just as Brighton get into the area. The goal was allowed to stand.
1970s football is a story that has been so well told that it has almost become a pastiche of itself – all scarves, flares, Dirty Leeds, proper football, fouls, Toshack, Keegan and pitch invasions.
These videos though allow you to view the era in “real time”.
They not only document the known dominance of Liverpool or the unrivalled emergence of Nottingham Forest but also chart the rise and fall of Manchester City, Everton and Derby.
Old Trafford would then more probably be called the “Theatre of Inconsistency”, West Ham only seemed to play exciting games and Wolves seem far more fun than memory recalls. Tottenham, though, reassuringly retain their flaky gene.
Beyond the biggest names the videos also seem to show that Ian Bowyer may have been the era’s most unsung player, John Richards and Phil Boyer never missed a chance and Brian Kidd must have the greatest CV of any English footballer.
There is also the joy of the little detail – the WBA kit that doesn’t fit let alone having the fixture sewn into the shirt and that team kits changed pretty frequently in that era as well. Or the comedy value of a Wolves coaching staff of two filling out the team bench at White Hart Lane, or noticing the jarring introduction of fences in the later videos as hooliganism increased.
The shape of the players is also interesting. They genuinely look like people pulled off the street and asked to play rather than muscle-bound players of today. Keegan and Cyrille Regis may be the only two players of the era who could pull on the figure-hugging shirts of today and not look out of place.
Inevitably watching so much old football, leads to the question of which era was better – then or now?
But is it a question not worth scratching your head over? It’s a fatuous query, like asking if Raheem Sterling is really worth £45 million or £49 million?
We know that 1970s football was less hyped, less cynical, self-knowing and self-important. It was also far more genuinely passionate, less tactically aware and for that, far more spontaneous. The defending though…