Shoot! Closed down! What next? The Guardian?
After 39 years of service, Shoot's demise means no more of their legendary questionnaires
Will Buckley
June 17, 2008 5:19 PM
For those of a certain age Shoot! magazine was fundamental to one's footballing education. For fantasy and kick-back enjoyment you might turn to Scorcher and Score or Roy of the Rovers, but for close textual analysis, breaking news stories, hard-hitting questionnaires, beautifully reasoned player columns and, of course, 'You are the Ref' it was to Shoot! you would turn every time. Shoot! was what one read before graduating to Hugh Mcllvanney. And now it is gone. Killed off at 39 years of age.
The first issue sold over 300,000 copies and they sustained these figures throughout the magazine's first two decades with a ground-breaking Panini stickers edition hitting half-a-million. Its pinnacle came in the 1970s when footballers played hard, drank hard and had a miscellaneous dislike of ignorant people. It was a time before agents, when the game was taken less seriously and the players would fill in questionnaires themselves rather than ask Hunter Davies to ghost their answers for them.
The columns written by Bobby Moore and Alan Ball, Kevin Keegan and Billy Bremner were wonderfully innocent and free from product placement. An early gem from Moore, entitled 'A Hobby Takes Your Mind off the Game', revealed that not only did Frank Lampard [Snr] "bring back matches whenever we go abroad... and it's interesting to browse through them sometimes and recall memories of places and events abroad" but also "lots of other players - far too many to mention - collect beer mats". Then there was Ball who truly called it as he alone saw it: "Gerd Müller is not my idea of a striker. A glance at his goalscoring record makes me an isolated case ... but that's my opinion all the same."
Best of all were the questionnaires. A while ago I spent a week trawling through the first 500 issues of Shoot! searching for the perfect answer. Here is a baker's dozen of the contenders:
John Ritchie (Stoke City)
Which person in the world would you most like to meet?
Frank Sinatra (Head of the Mafia).
Mark Lawrenson (Brighton & Hove Albion)
Favourite food and drink?
Lasagne and Lambrusco.
Gerald CJ Francis (Queens Park Rangers)
Favourite players?
Myself followed by team-mate Stan Bowles and West Germany's Uli Hoeness.
Favourite Singer?
Captain Beefheart.
Which person in the world would you most like to meet?
Patrick McGoohan.
Diego Maradona (Argentina)
Favourite food?
Oven-roasted meat.
Miscellaneous dislikes?
Injustice.
Alan Birchenall (Leicester City)
Which person in the world would you most like to meet?
Hitler (if still alive) - or Neil Diamond.
Alan Ball (Arsenal)
Likes?
All foods, lager.
Dislikes?
Women cigarette smokers.
Michael Robinson (Manchester City)
Best friend?
I like to think I have many.
Kazimierz Denya (Poland)
Car?
I don't have one.
Favourite food?
Vegetable soup.
Miscellaneous dislikes?
Noise.
Gary Lineker (Leicester City)
Favourite newspaper?
Daily Star.
Nickname?
Link.
Career after playing?
Hopefully a bookmaker.
Peter Borota (Chelsea)
Favourite newspaper?
IPC's Homes and Gardens.
Craig Johnston (Liverpool)
Favourite food and drink?
Big steaks and, of course, a tube of Foster's.
Dave Hodgson (Middlesbrough)
After-match routine?
Out to the pub and then on to a nightclub.
Miscellaneous dislikes?
People who misjudge you before meeting you.
Tony Currie (Sheffield United)
Miscellaneous likes?
Good food, good refs.
Miscellaneous dislikes?
Ignorant people.
WSC is a good read still sometimes.
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