I was back in Northern Ireland for Easter, when one of my jobs was to go up into the attic and clear out some of my belongings. Mostly that meant an awful lot of Marvel comics which were, for a while, the most important thing I could imagine. Even more than football.
But there were a couple of football annuals that now seem far more important to me than Spiderman Comics Weekly or Planet of the Apes. The earliest - and best - of them is the Tiger Book of Soccer Stars 1971, which I must have got at Christmas 1970 when I was seven.
More than 40 years on it is a gloriously nostalgic artefact, helped by its full colour images. Just the names conjure up memories of sitting up to watch Match of the Day. Tony Book. John Hollins. Terry Paine. Another age.
Northern Ireland is represented by a number of players. Two goalies, a "wonderful winger" and the Doug.
It's quite a large format so as you can see my scanner is not quite up to the job but I'm going to post a few spreads from the annual over the next few days. It seems appropriate to start with a number one, so here's Pat Jennings. "Spurs are proud of their good looking Irish No 1". Jennings joined Spurs in 1964 for a fee of £25,000. Wonder what he would be worth now.
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