The great South Riding project

See http://bbs.barnsleyfc.org.uk/forumdisplay.php?153-South-Riding

At the 2012 Barnsley FC Open Day, our club historian, Turvey Tyke, kindly lent me a full collection of Barnsley FC fanzines. As a fan of South Riding in particular, I was keen to bring a seemingly forgotten era back to life and volunteered to scan them all in and get them onto the internet for others to read. This, I thought, would require a few minutes' scanning per issue and would be a labour of love that I could fit round other commitments.

Sadly for me, due to slight variations in paper size (seroiusly!), colour etc, it wasn't possible to use "one size fits all" settings in the scanner software and also, due to the dated reprographic techniqes, the quality of the original material was often very poor. As a result, extra image processing was often needed to yield legible results. All the same, one year on and much labour of scanning, rescanning, photoshopping and compiling into magazines, here is the finished (ish) product.

I say "ish" because I simply haven't had time to read them all and have probably missed some illegible text or articles. I should therefore be grateful for reports from readers of any problems as I can look to remedy them before handing the magazines back to Turvey Tyke on this year's open day. I cannot promise to act upon all reports as in some cases the originals were not legible - this is particularly true of included press cuttings. However, report them anyway by PM and I'll at least look. As I have already invested a lot of time in this project, anyone who may wish to help out can have the original scan of any specific page emailed to them with a transcript of any illegible text and can send me the reconstructed page back to reupload. I would really welcome any such offers.

Finally, I should stress that I was nothing to do with the orginal production team of South Riding. A BBS member who claimed that he was (although the user name escapes me) said he was happy for me to do this, which I took at face value. However, anyone with verifiable claim to copyright on this material who objects to its reproduction here should let me know.

Otherwise, I hope people appreciate this trip down Memory Lane. If nothing else it shows us that, whilst football has changed immeasurably in the last two decades, football fans are just the same old moaning gets.

Enjoy!

PS as for the other fanzines (Dizzy Heights, Red or Alive etc), time constraints mean that I probably won't get these done. I shall not even attempt The Reverend's Sermon as some of the humour is of a nature no longer acceptable and I would not wish to associate myself or this site with such material. Some of the later efforts though, look like desktop publishing software may have been used so if anyone involved has electronic copy, I'd be very interested.

PPS Thanks to Gally for the free hosting and for creating the subforum.

 

Great stuff ! !

 

Awesome.

 

What a fantastic project. I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for you doing this. I bought the majority (if not all) of the issues at the time, but what with time passing and moving house so often they've gradually disappeared. The period that South Riding was published coincided wit my support for Barnsley being at Fever Pitch (as Nick Hornby would say). I'm still a season ticket holder and still love the club, but I no longer traverse the country every other weekend following Barnsley to god knows where like I did back then. I look forward to recapturing all that as I make my way through each issue.

Thanks very much Revvie, and thank you to the lads who took the time to put out the fanzines back in the 90s. I remember them as being absolute quality, it'll be interesting to see if they've stood the test of time.

 

Fantastic mate. Well done.

 

They still are. After reading a load the material could've been written yesterday. It's still valid.

 

Heartily second that. At that time life was basically BFC and getting **** faced. Happiest time of my life....

 

Hats off to such dedication to a very worthy project. Really looking for to seeing the fanzines, many of which I've never seen as they came out at the time of a lull in my support of the Reds due to other distractions. I'm happy to help with the scan check.

 

Just making my way through issue one. Richard Kell has got a poem in there. Same quality as ever.

 

p.6, issue 3.

Time's stood still.

 

Ta v muchly didn`t see em all first time round.

 

Cracking stuff revvie,tha a star,loved south riding as for the other fanzines,red or dead was decent but dizzy shites was ******* terrible.issue 3 ,"we have sold our star striker(currie) but have we sold our 2nd division place?" ,same **** different arse .coyr.

 

Brilliant
That's my productive day in the office "ruined", as I hunt down my favourite article ever the one about the 1912 Cup Winners Campaign - going to Kiev by horse and cart with Cuthbert Lodge from the Chronicle in tow, Genius.

 

Re: Message from Andy Fyfe

If only! If they'd had the Adobe suite back then, he could have just emailed them as pdf's!!

Certainly it's a relief that it appears no-one will be asking me to take them down again after all that effort.

Maybe Andy could shed conclusive light on the issue 24 mystery!

Sad news about Gav Talbot - RIP lad and thanks for a fine fanzine.

 

Great work Revvie P.

Now how about copying all our home programmes

 

Re: Message from Andy Fyfe

As a close relative of Gavin, I know he and the rest of the family would be made up if they were reproduced in some way, Andy, Mickey and I think Keith? are great fans of the reds and brought many a chuckle at half time as we read the fanzine........I had all of the issues but lost them during a divorce lol

 

I was at Millwall for the 1-4 pitiful, bus broke down, stayed while afeter midnight waiting for the new bus. One of the best sessions of my life.

Villa away, got lost coming out of Villa park.

Charlton away got there for half time, belter.

Although i've been going years home and away, for some reason this period is the best i can remember following the reds.

 

Cracking job there Nick