Non-league / Romilly Evans / 29 March 2012 /

To celebrate Betfair's one-off sponsorship of Kettering Town for their weekend match against Stockport, Romilly Evans takes a stroll down memory lane, comparing football's current climate with that of the Seventies.

The past is always informing the present. Just look at the stars - some of them have been extinct for thousands of years and yet their energy still illuminates our night's sky. Kettering Town Football Club may have had little to say in great galactic matters, but they are certainly a small star of the past whose light is steadfastly refusing to fade, despite a fall from footballing grace which sees them embroiled in financial struggles off the pitch and a battle for their very league survival in on it.

Kettering have a long and proud history in the game - Paul Gascoigne's 39-day reign of terror as their 2005 manager aside. So it will be all the more heart-warming if they can turn the proverbial corner flag and get back on track - and there's no more immediate place to start than at this weekend's upcoming fixture against Stockport County, for which Betfair will be their shirt sponsors.

Of course, as Gazza discovered to his cost, sport is no champion of sentimentalism, nor a defender of reputation. History may play a big role in the compelling stories of the beautiful game, but it is no guarantee of a club's future prosperity. Times change alongside shirt stripes and sponsors. And while most rules and many grounds remain the same, the periphery which surrounds them is largely unrecognisable.

Few teams know that better than the Poppies themselves who (pay attention, pub-quiz fans) became the first British club to sport a sponsor's name on their shirts in the mid-Seventies. It was the first days of disco, Happy Days and hot pants. As well as some lesser fads which are now happily gathering dust in the halls of obsolescence - pet rocks, anyone?

Football's trends from that period can also seem spectacularly outmoded when compared to our current zeitgeist. Seventies spectators flocked to standing-room-only terraces, we rest our rumps on padded seats. They washed down their meat pies with boiling Bovril, we have an a-la-carte range of serving suggestions to choose from (even cordon bleu offerings for the suits in the modern-day corporate installations). They cheered on selfless stars who played for the love of the game, we support selfish stars for whose motivation is invariably fostered by the lure of the contract.

Armchair viewers from these two eras also faced very alternate realities. Grainy occasional broadcasts from the BBC have been replaced by the shiny multi-match hype machine that dawned with Sky Sports. The collective voice of the commentator was forever altered, with the restrained, polite observations of the Seventies match "comm" ceding their ground to the crazed, boombastic ravings of madmen so enthused about every aspect of a nil-all draw that you'd think filled their boots with that 8-1 Correct Score before kick-off.

The poster boy for this transition was the BBC's John Motson, who sprung to prominence in 1979 when Kettering were losing on their first trip to Wembley for the FA Trophy final. Motson, however, didn't lose. A baying wolf in a sheepskin coat, his animated narrations tapped into the national mainstream and eventually wrested Auntie's microphone from Barry Davies, arguably the more consummate commentator. In so doing, Motson became an institution, the template, a man beyond reproach. So even when his powers started to wane in later years and he became a forlorn caricature of himself, no-one cared. As with Peter Alliss in golf, his longevity transcended his talent. And when dear Motty was finally gathered to god in televisual terms, a whole generation of new commentators were there to take up his mantle and run with it. Jonathan Pearce and Co, please take bow.

In short, Toto, children of the Seventies are not in Kansas anymore. In fact, modern-day football is well down the yellow brick road into a Technicolor dreamscape which threatens to banish Seventies soccer to a sleepy, black-and-white town where a mean old lady wants to steel your dog. But is this supposed improvement merely an illusion - a clever rebranding in which a phony wizard is trying to sell you a heart you already have?

Not entirely. Progress is afoot. Pitch invasions and the hooliganism which sometimes fuelled them are in decline. Stadiums' toilet sinks are cleaner and more numerous. Today's lighter ball makes for more goals and faster high-octane action. The referees who preside over the game have graduated from amateur to professional and accordingly brought a greater uniformity and accuracy to its regulation. Don't scoff, it's true! Then again, this should come as no surprise since refs nowadays are ably assisted in their decision-making by goal-line technology. Well, let's not get ahead of ourselves, that would just be change for change's sake.
　
For their part, Kettering could just do with a change of luck. Or a throwback to the Seventies. Things were better then. Okay, that depends on who you ask.

For more information about Betfair's sponsorship of Kettering Town watch our video.

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