Thank goodness, a long awaited (and much needed) return of the Cork City fanzine!
Ever since the induction of Cork City For A Scoop a few years ago, the humble fanzine has gone through something of a transition period since the days when Grumpy, Yiddo, Paz and the like were tearing shreds into old *coughs and spits* regimes. Despite I Was Out There Once surviving the 2009/’10 off-season to re-join with the ‘new’ (careful now!) club, the edge, satire, and downright hatred had been toned down during that honeymoon season in which any voice of dissent was met with the patronising reminder ‘Sher aren’t we lucky we still have a club?!’The end of IWOTO signalled the beginning of a miserable three years without a key institution of terrace life. Why wasn’t there somewhere where we could have slated that awful Clonakilty Black Pudding logo slapped onto the front of our shirts, to rip the absolute piss out of the Queenstown Rejects for being battered 4-0 by Finn Harps, or to badly photoshop Guntars Sillybollix’s head onto Emile Heskey?
Reading over old copies of No More Plastic Pitches I’m on the verge of pissing myself laughing at interviews with the ‘Phantom Whistler’, shocked at the treatment of a former Programme editor at the end of 1991, and even now when someone mentions the name Plonk the first image I have I my head is that of Pinocchio on and his nose extending! ‘Booming, Louis, booming!’
On a serious note though, that alternative magazine created and edited by the great ‘Morty’ (before the age of decent word processing, never mind the internet!) covered a wide range of subjects, both satirical and serious, which the club programme would never dare. A simple scan through an issue has seen Cormac Cotter and Skippy compared to see who’s best (The latter enjoying a landslide victory in the ‘Ability to Carry Offspring’ category), articles berating Éamonn Dunphy and Shamrock Rovers’ away ‘support’ (some things haven’t changed in the last twenty years!), and worryingly an open letter to the fanzine about rascist chanting at Bishopstown.
It would be a further six years before City fans would have another fanzine to thumb through, but it was worth the wait. August 2001 and borne was FourFiveOne, what would turn out to be a massively successful publication (with more content and better grammar than your average Echo). A precursor to the social media age, FFO was truly the only place to find out what was going on at the club (and believe me there was enough in the six seasons it was around!).
What strikes me looking back was not only the names that contributed (key employees of the club later down the road) but the consistency of an amateur production. The first few seasons featured a distinctive colour card cover, while pieces were published with the regularity of a daily newspaper, and each section had its own place in what was a remarkably complex magazine; The Evening Ego’s reporter Neale Spillage regularly featuring with hilarious articles on the back cover at the tail end of FFO’s narrative.
Moreover was the effect it had on the terrace culture of Turners Cross; chants we now take for granted (Carefree and Kilcoyne Is Our Hero published on one of my fanzines) while more regular chants featured on the Shed End hymn sheet on the back cover. This also transferred onto the pitch as numbers attending City games steadily grew, though sometimes it came back to sting us! I will take the image of Glen Crowe cawing at the Shed and flapping his arms to the grave, in a little trinket box along with a host of other City memories.
Now the aforementioned I Was Out There Once and this very publication (Going Commando) took up the mantle in the 2007 season, in which the club was being dragged deeper and deeper into the shit by ArkagaFuckingUseless. Anthony Tynan (TNB’s equally as evil but not quite as stupid predecessor) was ‘taking full reigns’ of the club, and this would in turn take the lot of us through the winding two year path, eventually ending in tears at an overdue High Court ruling and an emergency meeting at Pres Secondary School.
While FourFiveOne’s timeline was punctuated with European Achievements, Cup wins and our last league win in 2005, IWOTO and subsequently Going Commando V1.0’s content was based upon much less optimistic inspiration. As a matter of fact, these two fanzines are useful documents to look back as to what was really going on at the time. While the club programme was tied up with its evil owners and FAIling legislation, IWOTO and GC give the real truth as to what was happening at the club.
For many the fanzine was the only place where they could at least exercise their total frustration with seeing our club and community ran into the ground by a group of malevolent and inept bastards, with fans opinions totally arbitrary in the face of an owner ran club. It makes for painful reading to see the anguish gone through, and a stark reminder that a mere five years ago people were giving up their most cherished possessions in order to save the club we all love.
I suppose that’s a sort of hypocritical way to end the article given its beginnings but fuck it. Despite the sterling work that FORAS have achieved there have still been many mistakes made along the way and much to improve on. While (thankfully) things off the field haven’t gotten anywhere near as bad as the heydays of IWOTO and GC, it’s still a football club, and there’s still plenty to complain about.
With the fans forum now resembling an all-boys Primary School where the same stock responses get recycled, bullies rule the roost and intelligent debate is virtually impossible, it’s about time the fanzine is brought back and the terraces see the return of well-considered, well-written, and amusing discussion!