GOT, NOT GOT Press Page

Click here for ★★★★★ reader feedback direct from Amazon.co.uk.

December 2012

• “A real treat – the ideal Christmas gift for anybody who loves their retro football. With a page dedicated to Hull City, ‘Fer Ark’ and all, this is the perfect football book for this time of year.” – Hull City FC official website

November 2012

• “League ladders, World Cup Willie, Subbuteo, World Cup stamps, Sport Billy, inflatables, fanzines, Corinthian figures – whatever was the football fad that accompanied the era that you got into football, you’ll find it all revisited in the wonderful book Got, Not Got.
It’s a great book, every page has a throwback memory for any football fan over 30 and you’ll dip in and out of it for months on end as I have done.  Nick Sports Junkie blog

June 2012

• “The retro-fetishists over at Got Not Got might come from a completely different approach to such crafted designs, but in their own way they’re just as artful. They certainly have a way with predictions anyway – check out their novel approach to last night’s semi-final for instance, in which they compared German and Italian sticker book portraits from the 1970s and declared an Italian victory. Could this be the new Paul The Octopus?” – Official Umbro blog ‘Back of the Net: Best of the Internet’
• “Outstanding” – Miniboro.com, the Middlesbrough FC, art and interviews website.

May 2012
• RUNNER-UP, BSBA FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR, 2012
“The shortlist included two poignant autobiographies, a pair of well-researched studies into, respectively, Scottish managers and the Premier League, plus a quirky, evocative trip down memory lane. All come recommended. Runner-up was Got, Not Got (Derek Hammond & Gary Silke, Pitch). Subbuteo, pools coupons, Ernie Hunt’s drop-kick, Shoot!, league ladders, “The Manageress”, bubblegum cards… it’s all here in this affectionate memory-jerking compendium of football’s good old, bad old days. But the clear winner, with top marks from five of the six judges, was Ronald Reng’s moving biography of the tragic Robert Enke…” – Glenn Moore, Chairman of the Judges, British Sporting Book Awards, 2012

April 2012
• SHORT-LISTED FOR BSBA FOOTBALL BOOK OF THE YEAR 2012 – Nominated by a Football Writers’ Association panel.
• “An absolute gem of a book from which football fans of every age may extract something to amuse, recall, regret or simply enjoy. It is part brilliantly written lament for an earlier age, part opportunity to reminisce about a time when you hankered after a Garden Goal (“Every Boy’s Dream!”)… Football’s relentless commercialisation comes, naturally enough, at a cost. It’s brought us everything from the Stalinist-style obliteration of the game’s pre-1992 history to the modern player, kissing the badge, logo and sponsor’s name after scoring. A purer, less cynical era is depicted throughout Got, Not Got. Buy it – you will not be disappointed.” – SportsBookoftheMonth.com
• “A body of work that transcends being ‘just a book’ by a considerable distance.” – In Bed With Maradona blog.
• “Got, Not Got; a book which caused a certain amount of friction in the Quack Nostrums household over the Christmas and New Year period. My regular nighttime squeals of ‘I used to have one of them!’, ‘I’d forgotten about those!’ and ‘If I’d have been able to afford that, I certainly wouldn’t have stuck it there!’, where not particularly appreciated by a distinctly disinterested Vendoress, grappling with her recently received Kindle. It never really occurred to me that she wouldn’t want reminding about the virtues of the Peter Barnes Football Trainer (which is essentially a plastic football attached to a piece of string which you clip onto the waistband of your shorts – great for developing your close ball control)…” – The Vendor of Quack Nostrums, The Half Man Half Biscuit Lyrics Project
• “A great read with fantastic visuals, the book reflects on how football used to be before the sanitisation of the Premier League. Amusing and quirky, this book captures the spirit of football from the terraces. This book is an absolute must for any footballing household.” King of the Kippax

March 2012
• “It’s a beautiful book – a smorgasbord!” – John Keith, City Talk FM, Liverpool
• “Probably the most different book I’ve read recently is Got, Not Got by Derek Hammond and Gary Silke. It is an exhaustively researched collection of football programmes, stickers, badges and memorabilia, a coffee table book you can dip in and out of at any time. Some of the advertisements from old programmes are classics – “Bovril – hot favourite for the cup!” Or culinary advice to players: “Full English – eat up your fried bread now, it’s full of energy.” Eat your heart out Arsene Wenger. – Christopher Davies, Football Writers Association Book Reviews, footballwriters.co.uk
• Football used to be better in the past… and here’s the proof… all encased in a beautifully bound Bible of football memorabilia. GOT, NOT GOT, a lavish 224 pages on every imaginable kind of memorabilia. Guaranteed to bring many a happy hour to fans everywhere. Truly a book to treasure! – The Football Trader feature
• The wonderful book Got, Not Got – The A-Z of Lost Football Culture, Treasures and Pleasures by Derek Hammond & Gary Silke. More of the same can be found on their equally superb blog… – ThreeMatchBan.com

February 2012
• “This exquisite book is a homage to the game of 40 years ago – not just the mudheaps and the mavericks but a celebration of its wider culture [which] rises above lazy, modern-life-is-rubbish nostalgia… The design is so sumptuous and the stories so well chosen and written that it’s hard to rsist the authors’ conclusion that much – call it charm, character or even romance – has been lost in the rush for cash. Regardless of whether it really was a golden age, this is a golden volume, as much a social history as a sports book. If you’ve not got GOT, NOT GOT, you’ve got to get it.” – Backpass
• I can guarantee that virtually anybody who flicks open this magnificent book will immediately want to have it.” – The Football Trader review
• “If, like myself, you are an unashamed nostalgia junkie, this book is for you. It’s more than just a book on football collectables, including memories and experiences from the golden age – a time before the FA Premiership and TV money took us through a pound-sign portal and into a parallel, but much less likeable, universe. Some of my favourite experiences/memories are included – I found myself saying either ‘did it’ or ‘remember it’ – and there’s a heck of a lot to choose from.” –  Programme Monthly
•  “A huge success and an epic tome for lovers of football nostalgia everywhere.” – The Football Attic blog
•  “In an imaginary Victorian boozer in a sepia-tinted corner of the globe, old blokes gather to talk about football back when it was good. It is a tempting retreat, with some fantastic flagship vehicles such as Got Not Got and 500 Reasons To Love Football using modern media to hark back to a glorious past. – theseventytwo.com
•  “It would have been easy to just produce a book of nostalgic memorabilia. It’s something else to have a book that captures the heart and soul of the time. I didn’t just look back fondly, I had flashbacks full of excitement! A wonderful journey back into our childhoods…” – God, Charlton and Punk Rock blog

January 2012
• “Got, Not Got is wonderful. I’m feeling quite emotional leafing through it!” – Nick Alatti, The Bridge 102.5FM in the Black Country
• “A book exploring the lost culture of the game when pitches were mudbaths, managers wore sheepskin coats and players were too embarrassed to dive – a bygone age that seems a far cry from the profit-driven game today played in the main by overpaid primadonnas.”  – Paul Suart, Birmingham Evening Mail
• “Kampprogrammer, fotballfrimarker, fotboltegneseriert… smakfullt illustrert. Just get yourself one!” – PIN magazine, Norway
• “This was in WSAG’s Christmas stocking and it’s fantastic. Co-written by one of our fanzine chums Gary Silke, editor of The Fox, it is an amazing collection of half-forgotten things and much loved memories. It covers mainly the 1970s when football itself seemed more innocent (probably only because we were all still at school back then). But if you’re the same age as us then this book has your name all over it. Admiral kits, football Action Men, League Ladders, Esso badges. On and on we could go… Buy it. Well worth it.”
– When Skies Are Grey

December 2011
• “A veritable Dundee cake of a book” – Danny Kelly, talkSport
• “Got, Not Got: It’s Like Finding Your Old Football Stickers. What do you get when you combine football, nostalgia and OCD? A hardback collection of football vintage memorabilia that you need in your life… I’ve had this for about a month but haven’t got round to reviewing it because it keeps disappearing. It’s the sign of a good book that people repeatedly pick it up and walk away with it… Hours of year-round bog-time reading or a guaranteed way to spend at least a day this Christmas… Anyone who is so disgruntled with their team’s current status that they’d rather delve back in time will love this book.” – James Brown, SabotageTimes.com
•  “This memorabilia fest is a delightful reminder of what’s gone from the game: ‘magic sponges’, Subbuteo and, er, magazines for shinpads. Such innocent times, eh?” – FourFourTwo
• “If you still miss getting the Topical Times Football Book for Christmas, this might be its ideal replacement… I quickly warmed to their eclectic, personal and often left-field selections… The real magic is the collection and display of the illustrative material of stickers, badges, programme covers, Subbuteo figures and other ephemera. It is astonishingly thorough, well-presented, inspired and indeed had me going, ‘yes, got, got, not got, forgot, never seen’. There is no doubt this book is the work of true enthusiasts and lovers of the fripperies of the game… It just shows yet again that we do not value what we have until it is gone. Got, Not Got does a great job in bringing back some fond memories.” – When Saturday Comes
• “No. 339: The book ‘Got, Not Got’.” – ‘500 Reasons To Love Football’ blog 
• “Browsable for hours, even days, preferably with your favourite records from the 1970s in the background, this is the Christmas present that every football fan of a certain age yearns to peruse while their neglected partner’s busy basting the turkey and getting quietly pickled on cooking sherry… Sit back and be blissfully reminded of adverts, food products, players, toys, kits, magazines, stickers and trends you’d long since confined to your mental attic.” – Stay-at-Home Indie Pop blog by WSC’s Ian Plenderleith
• “Whatever you have loved about our game, it will almost certainly be buried within this trove of treasure. These 224 large-size pages are lavishly illustrated and beautifully illustrated in full colour.” – Winger: The Review of British Football
• “Wallow in the days of your youth until your heart is content, as the days when you were a football mad youngster come flooding back. From magazines to cards, board games to programmes, badges, autographs, league ladders and jam jar lids – every single football collectable from the sixties, seventies and eighties springs out at you from every page. If someone wants to buy you a Christmas present, then ask for this. You will not be disappointed.” – United Review Collectors Club Newsletter
• “Those were indeed the days” – Those Were The Days: The Independent Ipswich Town website.

November 2011
• “It is a work of genius, I cannot state this too highly. The most brilliant book I’ve opened in a long, long time.” – Monica Winfield, BBC Radio Leicester
• “It’s a real table thumper with some weight to it, great pictures and some terrific writing. Bathe in a sea of nostalgia and rail against the fact that these things aren’t there anymore.” – Nick Godwin, BBC Radio London
• “It’s a beauty. An absolute must-have for all you nostalgia junkies out there. It’s a memory-filled journey back into the 60s, 70s & 80s when football was .. well .. better. Wonderful articles and evocative images and above all lots of fun, Got Not Got has it all. Christmas is coming up so treat yourself or your football mad relatives to one of the best football books around.” – Footysphere.com
• “For men of a certain age this is the perfect stocking filler for Christmas.” – Mike Lawrence, BBC Radio London
• “I’ve just been sent a cracking book written by Mirror bloggers  Derek Hammond and Gary Silke called ‘Got, Not Got’ (I assume it’s a southern version of ‘Got it, Haven’t’) which whisks you back to a different footballing era, which was the soundtrack to millions of gloriously happy childhoods. All you need to know about it (make that all you need to know about how the game was stolen from us) is written in this introductory poem by Dermot Carney…” – Brian Reade, Mirror Football columnist
• “An excellent and unusual new football book.” – Fly Me To The Moon, Middlesboro fanzine
• “The must-have Christmas book” – Derby County Football Card Collection
• “Labour of love: A lifetime’s obsession pays off as book is a hit. CELEBRATION OF FOOTBALL THAT IS PITCHED PERFECTLY FOR FANS.” – Leicester Mercury headline
• “Got, Not Got is an affectionate and humorous celebration of football’s pre-sanitised era: when players clutched their cuffs, Derby County won the league and dads did the pools. A timely, and welcome, exercise in nostalgia.” – ShortList
• “It is far more enjoyable to think about football in times past, and it is a seam that is tapped so richly by authors Derek Hammond and Gary Silke, who have written a wonderful A to Z of lost football culture, treasure and pleasures.” –The Blackpool Gazette

October 2011
•”Recalling a more innocent time before Sky Sports and millionaire players, Got, Not Got is a long soak in a warm, nostalgic bath of football nostalgia: an A-Z of memorabilia, ephemera and ill-advised haircuts.” Mail on Sunday ‘Live’ magazine – In Demand: This week’s must-have, must-see, must-do…
• “This is a call to all those men who were boys in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s (and some women who were girls too!). You threw away all your old Panini sticker albums when you hit 19, didn’t you? You had to make space in your leaving-home bag for your new, important adult things – Joy Division albums and Dostoyevsky novels and suchlike – you were nearly twenty and there was no more room for childhood frivolity in your life. They were nothing but clutter at the time. You did the same with your collection of Shoot! magazines and league ladders; bubblegum cards and garden goals went the same way.
Now you’re 43, and you’re pining for these things to come back into your messy, ever more cluttered adult life, aren’t you? You’ve just spent £65 on a complete, VG condition Football 78 sticker album on eBay, haven’t you? Or your final bid of £60 with three seconds to go wasn’t enough, because there’s someone out there more desperate to return to their childhood than you.
Well, your childhood isn’t going to return, but there are people out there who share the same memories as you, and they’ve written them all down for you. They’ve taken full-colour pictures too, and sprinkled them all over their new thing like football-shaped hundreds-and-thousands.
Leicester City fanzine writer Gary Silke and indiepop legend Derek Hammond have produced a stonking new book called Got, Not Got. It’s an encyclopaedia of shared football memories, written with a little yearning and a whole lot of affection for times past.
What do you need to do? Start dropping hints to your loved ones straight away: “I would very much like to have a copy of Got, Not Got for Christmas, please” (don’t forget the ‘please’); and then put the book at the top of your prezzie list, double-underlined.
Andrew Ormerod – Pleasure City Avenue blog
• “Awesome” – Adrian Durham, talkSport
• “The book’s great fun. It’s an essential if you grew up watching football in the 60s, 70s or 80s.” – Paul Hawksbee, talkSport.
• “Obviously, everybody over the age of 40 is going to absolutely love this. There’s something for every fan of every club.” – Andy Jacobs, talkSport.
• “It’s an absolute beauty.” – Adrian Goldberg, BBC Radio WM.
• “A fantastic book, there’s just so much in it. You really should get it.” – Steve Anglesey, Mirror Football podcast.
• “It focuses on the 1960s, 70s and 80s, and anyone who had anything to do with English football during this period will instantly relate to just about every page. I’m sure that you will both laugh and cry as the memories come flooding back.” – Nigel Mercer, Football Card Webspace.
• “The best book about football written in the last 20 years.” – Bill Borrows, Esquire
• “The best dose of retro football nostalgia ever. I can’t put it down!” – footballcardsuk.com
• “I can’t wait to sit and read it all, having flicked through looking at the images, but did read the lovely Villa/Trinity Road stand entry, and the opening poem, with a tear in my eye.” – Premier League programme editor.
• Proof, if proof were needed, that preening, metrosexual ladyboy footballers are not merely the hellish product of the Premier League era [ref. Phil Parkes’ grisly Cossack ad!]… For further reminders of the long-lost game of the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, the illuminating new book Got, Not Got does a very fine job.” – Sport magazine
• “The postman just delivered a copy of Got, Not Got. My other half is giving me strange looks as I show her things in it and insisting I ‘get in the bloody shower’! But bloody hell, from the Twin Towers at the front to, er, the Twin Towers at the back – it’s absolutely superb!!!” – Another Premier League programme editor.
• “It’s a kind of football fan’s catnip. Nobody can quite walk past it. They start looking at it and then realise they’ve got something else they should be doing 10 or 15 minutes later.” Paul Hawksbee, talkSport.

Press Release & Author Bios

The A-Z of Lost Football Culture, Treasures & Pleasures
Pitch Publishing, RRP £19.99. Hardback, 224pp, 1000 pictures, 80,000wds.

Football used to be better in the past… and here’s the proof.

GOT, NOT GOT focuses on British football’s apparent lost Utopia of the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s – the fondly remembered ‘Golden Age’ of mudbaths and cloggers, of miniature, carpet-level games and imaginary, comic-fuelled worlds.

It evokes the feel and smell of football past, its rituals and relics. But there’s more to the agreeably grumpy authors’ vision than a hilarious, heartstring-tugging celebration of everything we miss in modern football.

Here are hundreds of beautiful images of a lost football culture, pin-sharp observations and memories shared by generations of fans – in all, an ideal blueprint to help restore the game to its former glories!

GOT, NOT GOT centres around the very ‘stuff’ of all our football-mad childhoods, digging out old programmes and stickers (which weren’t always sticky), dusting off everything from vintage progress charts and league ladders to antique handheld games, petrol freebies and priceless clumps of turf. Hundreds of items of fan ephemera and memorabilia are featured among the book’s 1000+ images, which help summon back the sky-high promise of the Admiral seconds box, and all the thrills of the Peter Barnes Football Trainer depositing your shorts in next-door’s shrubbery.

Also much missed are those elements of our football culture which have been deemed surplus to requirement over the past 20 or 30 years – World Cup squad singalongs, dogs on the pitch; mud, the magic sponge and Melchester Rovers – all recaptured here in anecdotal form and in superb pictures from the Mirror Football archive. Stories of long-lost football species, boiled burgers and floodlight pylons and are sure to trigger bittersweet memories in anyone who ever went to a proper football match.

And so to the flipside of the authors’ rose-tinted vision of the past, and their bemused attitude to a game which has been taken over by its own self-appointed ‘authorities’ and a clutch of monomaniacal Bond villains, our untouchable heroes of old somehow replaced by freelance millionaire celebrities.

GOT, NOT GOT isn’t just packed with shared, feelgood memories. It also adds up to a heartfelt fans’ blueprint for the future of football – next stop, the FA and Premier League…

Author Biographies 

GOT, NOT GOT is based on Derek and Gary’s blog on mirrorfootball.co.uk. They have also written on the ‘stuff’ of football fandom for fanzines, club programmes and magazines including FourFourTwo, When Saturday Comes and The Onion Bag – and even supplied the football cards for BBC1’s Match of the Seventies and Match of the Eighties. They were recently major contributors to TalkSPORT’s 100 Greatest British Sporting Legends (Simon & Schuster, 2011).

Gary is editor of The Fox fanzine – at 24 years and counting, one of the oldest original football fanzines still in existence. He has written a weekly Leicester Mercury column since 2003, and has contributed to When Saturday Comes, retro football mag Backpass and the Leicester Chronicle retro newspaper. It’s probably fair to say Gary likes old stuff. He is also the author of the Fanatical Frank and Thirtysomething series of comic-strip books, and the Big Blue Leicester City Scrapbook (all Juma, 1999-2006).

Derek started out writing for the NME, borrowing the pen-name of DJ Fontana from Elvis’s drummer. He has since written extensively on music, football and following out-of-date guidebooks around Britain for the likes of Record Collector, FourFourTwo, Maxim, Time Out Guides and BBC Radios 4 and 5 Live. His exploration of London mythology, London, England (Mainstream, 1998) is available for 1p on Amazon, leaving Derek’s proudest achievement as a number 32 placing in John Peel’s Festive 50 of 1984, when he was the singer in Yeah Yeah Noh. In 2008, he embarked on compiling the multi-volume CD series Perfect Unpop: Peel Show Hits & Long-Lost Lo-Fi Favourites (Cherry Red Records). So far, he’s up to Volume I (1976-80).

Gary and Derek both live with their delightful young families in sunny Leicestershire. Not all in one house, like.

“Derek swims endlessly in an ocean of cultural trivia from his youth. His work is a kind of English version of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past … For Derek and Gary and the dozens of fans who contributed, the book’s evocation of the past is a rich, multilayered source of shared memories, totems of their personal and tribal identity.”

David Winner – Those Feet: A Sensual History of English Football (Bloomsbury, 2005)