Thetownend.com

Not sure if this is the right section to post this but anyway...

I've been going through some old audio tapes of late 80s commentaries and have uploaded them to soundcloud.

You probably have to be in your 40s or older for them to be of much interest but the matches are :-


Notts County (A) Div 3 April 1887
Full second half commentary and after-match reaction.
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hounsell-622926801/notts-co-v-swindon-1987

Wigan (A) Div 3 play-off semi-final first leg
Full second half commentary and after-match reaction.
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hounsell-622926801/wigan-v-swindon-1987

Gillingham (A) Div 3 play-off final first leg
Commentary on final 15 minutes plus after-match reaction
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hounsell-622926801/gillingham-v-swindon-1987

Gillingham (H) Div 3 play-off final second leg
Final 80 minutes commentary plus after match reaction
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hounsell-622926801/swindon-v-gillingham-h-1987

Gillingham (N) Div 3 play-off final decider at Crystal Palace
Whole match commentary plus after-match reaction
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hounsell-622926801/swindon-v-gillingham-final

Norwich (A) FA Cup 3rd round replay
Second half commentary and after-match reaction
https://soundcloud.com/andrew-hounsell-622926801/norwich-v-swindon-1988

Thanks for this, how times have changed!

I remember the documentary on the title winning season from Div 4 was released on cassette tape at the time, I lost mine many years ago, that would be a good listen if anyone has it still.

The only part I do remember was Shaun Hodgetts listing all the players names who played a part at the very start of the doc.

This is quite the find, it being 8 years before radio was invented!  ;)

On a more serious note worth a listen so thanks!

Brilliant I will check them out when I get chance.
I remember recording Ipswich away in the league cup back in 86 and and listening to it at 3am when I got home even though we got hammered it was great listening to the Swindon fans singing throughout

The game at palace will be interesting to see if the atmosphere was as good as I remember.

I am sure there must be a few of us who taped games on the radio back in the day. I used to even tape the match updates every 15 minutes on GWR. Vic Morgan was definitely the voice of that era.

Danny Baker used to talk about watching football scores on Ceefax waiting for the page to update and looking through your hands and the despair especially sending offs or missed pens which were a different colour.

The Ceefax flash was brutal for Swindon in the late 90s.

I remember covering my hand over the TV when Grandstand were showing latest scores. Unveiling the opposition score and then checking Swindon's.

Did something similar this season for the Northampton (a) game using the Sky Sports app.

I had it as well. I'll have a look to see if I've still got it somewhere (not sure as my wife got rid of a load of cassettes a couple of years ago, possibly including it). If I find it I'll upload it for you.

I've just finished listening to Wigan away and remember it well from pis*ing down all the way up there to Swindon fans getting chucked out of their end, to standing on the grass bank and getting lost down some industrial estate after. Only 20 seconds of extra time planted and Vic Morgan referred to 37 & 42 minutes played in the second half.....how times have changed!

When I first started going any mid-week game involved leaving the CG are 9ish (usual final whistle 9.10) so I could catch the last train back to Chippenham.

Get home and check out the final score on News at Ten.

Remember digging up chunks of grassy mud and flinging it all over the place. Proper shithole

Yeah a right dump and not helped by all the rain before kick off

A copper confiscated my celery at priest field , I tried to argue it was my lunch but no joy

I remember it well, awful stand.

(https://www.footballgroundguide.com/old-grounds-and-stands/springfield-park-wigan-athletic/grassy-bank-springfield-park-wigan.jpg)

Not even any steps upto the covered bit

I've got somewhere the cassette tapes for 85-86. 86-87 and 89-90. If i can find them and work out how to get them uploaded i will.

Thanks so much for uploading these, will give them a listen this weekend.

Sounds great mate.

Believe me it was electric, still buzzing days later,  only other game that got close to it atmosphere wise was the LC Semi away at Luton.
Other good days were the famous 6-4 at Birmingham,  and away at Blackburn in the play off Semis, but don't think anything will ever match the Palace (-v- Gillingham) and Luton games.

What no transistor radio stuck to your ear ??.   :callyou: :callyou:

I doubt there were many radio updates back then TBH, I don't remember any radio updates for Town games until we got GWR in the very early 80's....82 or 83?

The software I used was Audacity :

https://www.audacityteam.org/download/

Free and very easy to use. You just need a way to hook up a cassette player to an audio input on a PC.

Probably limited to latest scores on five lives equipment in the day

I think in the late 70's that (limited) coverage of Town games was only available on Radio Oxford, in north Swindon anyway.
Remember waiting impatiently for the live second half commentary on the LC semi-final second leg.
Mind you, it was still better than Brunel FM.

I remember Hodgetts saying "They don't belong in Div 4 and they won't BE in Div 4 next season", well we have been back there (in its different guises) since!

Yeah I had forgot about Radio Oxford reports, you could just about pick it up in Swindon, they used to do an update every 15 mins or so?

Then after that came ceefax waiting for page updates, and back then too even on the 9 o'clock news game often finished late or they had no idea of the score, they would often say the current score is 0-0 and by that time we were 3 goals up!

Information technology and accessibility has changed so much, not always for the better but on this occassion it definately was!

Yeah that rings a bell!

Thanks for that. It's getting the cassette player hooked up to my pc correctly, but i'm sure i'll find a way...and when i do i'll use that software

Audacity is a brilliant bit of software and dead easy to use, if you get a 3.5mm to 3.5mm like this....

https://www.amazon.co.uk/3-5mm-Stereo-Audio-silver-plated/dp/B000Q6LT26/

Plug 1 end into the headphone socket on the cassette player, plug the other end into the microphone input on the pc and then press play and click record on Audacity...nice n easy!

Really

Maybe it was a police woman who didn't like the words to the chant  :no:

Not so much the updates but the final scores as they came in,  remember well loads of people with radios stuck to their ears passing on final scores to all passing sundry !!.

Of course the alternative to the radio was the famous 'pink' or the 'Green Un',  what an absolute godsend to football fans.  Used to get back home,  off the train at about 7, straight round to the paper shop, usually about the same time as they were being delivered.
Remember leaving Maine Road during our Premiership season and they had an old bus in the car park where they were printing the sport paper (can't remember the name)   on the bus and selling them straight out of the rear window only minutes after the game.   Oh, happy days.

There's some good ceefax archives out on tinterweb which are easy to lose a bit of time browsing...

https://al.zerostem.io/~al/teletext/bbc1/1994-04-02-0038.0/304.html



Pick a date here and go mad : https://al.zerostem.io/~al/teletext/bbc1/

Same here use to queue up at the newsagents aeound 6pm after home games in the mid late 70's but it was never the same whwn they tried to bring it back years later

Thanks for this, i've ordered one so once it arrives i'll give it a go.

I'm not sure if he still is, or its now ended, but my dad was last year still getting all his stfc news and scores from teletext. and by me from the phone occasionally.

If I remember rightly celery was banned , so to get in I stuck it in my trousers under my shirt . Fuck me I couldn’t do that now, my belly would snap it in half .

I don't have a TV Ariel anymore, but I think the BBC were planning to turn off the red button stuff sometime soon. Analogue teletext went out with the non-digital telly signal (2012?).

fake edit: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-51295430 was supposed to go off at the end of January but got a last minute save thanks to some blind people. Lovely stuff.

Not sure if it's still the case, but the headlines on the BBC News website still had to fit the formatting of old teletext display mode text limits, for reasons.

Bloody brilliant teletext was, got endless cut price last minute holidays from that. Not the same on the Internet.

I came across some of the season highlight video's on VHS of the 90's season's the weekend, it would be nice to build up an archive somewhere of all these now we are in the digital era, does anyone do this type of thing and want to do it ?

 

Is it April 1st ?

That doesn't wash with me.

These are great.  Would you mind if I make them available via the website?

I recently purchased some audio commentaries from the matches against Arsenal, Wolves and Spurs in 79/80, which I will be uploading at some point (once I have located my cassette player!!!)

I cannot wait to hear those. I can remember the Arsenal quarter final replay was on Radio 2, second half i guess but it could have been more. However i had a school concert that night, and my Dad wouldn't let me miss it to stay and listen, so i had to wait till i got home to find out the score. My sisters had listened for me and gave me a rundown.

Same problem for me. Bloody skool play. I think extra time was on the radio. Just to rub it in, Dad and Bruv travelled up from Devon for it, leaving me inconsolable.

Or course, feel free :)

Sorry to hear this you missed the best game ever in my Swindon supporting life!

I was 13 and went straight to the ground to queue up after school, I was a 13 year old at Drove school back then.

Me and my best mate bought a ticket for the Stratton Bank and told the steward my (imaginary)brother had bought a ticket in the Shrivenham Road stand and could we go in there, he opened the gate and walked us past the Arsenal supporters and got us into the South Side.

About an hour before KO they opened up the gate under the floodlight so we watched the game from the Town End, long gone are the days you could easily go from one end to the other with little questioning!

I remember loads of Town fans sat all the way up the floodlights and they were left alone up there!

There was way more fans in the ground that day than the announced 22k it felt more than the semi final vs Wolves when it was announced at 26k, although not as many as were crammed in for the Spurs FA cup game when again there were 26k inside, I would think there were well over 30k for Spurs and probably 28k for Arsenal.

I have only ever seen the couple of highlights on the STFC.co.uk and never heard any radio commentary at all from that game. I wish some longer highlights would emerge from some long lost HTV/BBC recording rather than just the goals.

I was a 16 year old schoolboy, skived school in the afternoon to queue up and was one of those up the floodlights near the hot dog stand. I've tried everywhere to find footage of the away leg and Billy Tucker scoring at the clock end but hit a brick wall

Yeah I was at Highbury, I skived and went with my mates dad, I have never seen the goal repeated on tv at all either.

We counted over a 100 Town coaches parked next to the railway line and near where the emirates is now and really disappointing that HTV West only filmed the home leg

(pedant mode) the tie v Arsenal was a draw followed by a replay (as opposed to the semi-final which was over 2 legs from the start). So probably not many people would have expected a return game prior to the original tie anyway.

Full video of our game at Bolton 36 years ago today. It was the season opener and we were facing Lancashire opposition having just been promoted to the third tier. Remember it feeling a big step up again at the time.
Home commentator refers to Town players Allan Kenny and Bernard Lee throughout. He’s also guilty of a very eighties mixing up of Chris Ramsey and Chris Kamara at one point..... I don’t believe it was their shared first names that confused him....

http://www.swindon-town-fc.co.uk/MatchCentre.asp?MatchID=19870101

I'm still surprised that the goals for the away game are not on the Arsenal sites

Hope you are well.
What a night that was, one of my most memorable goals Supporting Swindon.
That Tucker header BOOM and then I nearly died under a pile of bodies.
The tube trains were also rammed with Swindon fans.

I got the slipper after the home game, 4 whacks for each goal. (Mr Hawes an Arsenal fan :) ..)
My Mate and myself bunked off school missing last lesson and we jumped over the school fence to get to Didcot station, however we were spotted.

Sandwiched in the Bury 8-0 game.