Gulls Cry 1968

Chanting? Believe me that was the Golden Age. So many of the compositions of that era stood the test of time.

I think there were only three editions of the Gulls Cry - a second a month or so after the one pictured and another at some stage the following season.

It's got me thinking about when we became the Gulls. I'm pretty sure it wasn't too long before 1968 and it was a form of re-branding (not that we might have used that expression so freely back then) which was a consequence of the more commercial/pop culture scene football was moving into at the time. This was in the wake of England's World Cup win and against the backcloth of the George Best phenomenon and what was happening in the music and fashion businesses (well, it was the bleedin' sixties, wasn't it?).

Suddenly there were glossy football magazines (such as Jimmy Hill's Football Weekly), club shops rather than souvenir kiosks (the odd one may have been known as a "soccertique" - Derby certainly had the Ramstique). We, of course, had the Gulls Shop under the main stand. Overnight these places stocked a range of items which extended beyond the tradiitional rattle-and-bobble hat combination into pennants (anybody collect those? I did but can't understand why), underwear (Derby again being innovative in this department) and, in time, silk scarves (they were strange weren't they?).

Hang on, what's this I've found:

And here's the distinctive middle bit.....

Thanks BudleighGull and Barton, the treasures you boys find and share with us all are fantastic and it never ceases to amaze me what TUFC fans must have in their collections, who said we were just a little club

The silk scarf era peaked in 3 or 4 seasons around about 1976/7 I think you'll find.
It was categorically not a 60's thing.

I still have my gulls one and the england one worn when we beat Italy at Wembley in the last qualifier for the Argentine world cup (Nov 1977).
We won the game 2-0 (Keegan & Brooking against the mighty Zoff) but still 'didny qualify' (as the Scots all reminded us!)

I would suggest that these scarves were the first ever 'branded' scarves. Up until that point (for our younger brethren) everyone had scarves knitted in their teams colours and put lapel badges (or even rosettes) on them to show ones allegiance.

How many scarves have we all been though since those days?

I think that's spot on. I used the words "in time" deliberately to provide any old excuse for bringing silk scarves to the thread.

I did some work at Plainmoor over the summer of 1975 and remembering snaffling a St Helens RLFC silkie that had clearly been sent to the club as a manufacturer's sample. That would have been the start of the craze.

There were some pretty garish non-silk scarves around in those days with all sorts of stars and other symbols - probably part of the move away from the bog standard traditional. And this - more than any other time? - was the period of wearing the scarf from your waist or your wrist (well 'ard). What was the history of this?

And what about ski hats - which I've always ended up calling bobble hats - in spite of the absence of a bobble? There was an outbreak of these on Merseyside, for certain, in the mid 1980s with two-tones (half Everton; half Hearts sort of thing) and loads of German ones.

And, yes, I was at England v Italy too.

....What a nice thread, as i was born in '68 it was very intresting to read snippets of that mag.

The silk scarves of the late 70's and early 80's were fantastic, why dont they bring them back?

I've still got mine somewhere.....can remember that Pompey match so clearly, and can still picture the bearded Peter Coffill getting our second goal in front of our best gate that season, Plainmoor seemed so packed that night and i still cant get my head round the fact that you could possibly get another 16,000 people in our ground just a couple of decades of previous to then.

The pompey fans if i remember actually "took" the mini stand.......at the tender age of 10 or 11 it was the first time that i'd seen football hooliganism at first hand, it certainly meant that it was a few years before i was allowed to watch a match from there.

Two purchases from the original Gulls Shop of long ago: