"Shirt Sponsorship - where will it end?" by Graham James

Graham has sent the following into PATGOD.  

This may come as news to most of you, but we DO accept contributions.  Willingly.  Gladly.  Gratefully.  It means we have to do less!

As the celebrations to commemorate football being run by greedy, capitalist accountants, (sorry, to mark the 40th anniversary of Kettering T becoming the first team to misspell their club's name on a shirt), became more like a continuously postponed wet t-shirt competition (do they still have them?), I thought it was about time to reproduce a newspaper cutting that I surprisingly found recently. I can't find the gas bill reminder which came only week but amongst programmes that have remained unread for 37 years there was this amusing cutting which appeared in the Daily Express in 1976.

This was when it was a sort of news paper, long before it became obsessed with Princess Diana, then Madelaine McCann, then foreigners, pensions, extreme weather warnings and health warnings/breakthroughs. I keep waiting for the headline about an influx of migrants causing pensions to fall, snow to fall for three months and hospitals to close! It was about this most peculiar notion of having advertising on football shirts. Now of course even Little Sodbury in the Marsh under-7s reserve team are probably sponsored by something like Frank's rat control company. (well at least they are until Frank's son no longer plays for them).

It shows how much attitudes have changed since then regarding the funding of football clubs and the acceptance of seeing adverts absolutely everywhere. I mean, have you opened up the Evening Telegraph website lately? Oh, you haven't have you. Well all I can say is I now know which clothes websites my wife has been looking at lately. It is rather off-putting seeing a photo of Rene Howe with an advert of a bra popping up next to it. 

You probably have to take into account that chairmen of clubs in the 70's were mainly local, elderly businessmen who probably considered the records of the Beatles to be the Devil's music and that it was corrupting the nation's youth. The words odorous and even prostitute were used to express their distaste of this revolutionary new move.

Now how much did Manchester United just receive for a new deal?