A Man For All Season (fanzine): It was an eighties thing

December 1979

The 'mythopetical' reference on the cover of issue one, was a deliberate misspelling that harked back to a one-off 'punk' fanzine called Mythopoetical Times'' that, in the main, covered bands that had played (or were booked to appear imminently) at Retford Porterhouse in the late seventies and early eighties.
The title to that prototype issue had been fashioned out of individual cut-out and glued on letters, taken from various newspapers and magazines, such basic layout techniques were all the range back then... unbeknown to me, the second letter O had fallen off before thirty double-sided photocopies of the covers had been run-off, and at 6p a chuck in the Handyman's Shop (it stood where Aldi's car-park is now), I wasn't going to get them done again... so a black felt-tip was used to scribble in the missing letter onto all thirty copies.
"Pritt-stick... the none sticky, sticky stuff" the advertising jargon song claimed... and they weren't bloody wrong there then!
Our local weekly paper was (and still is) called the Retford Times, hence it was considered fitting and proper to usurp the second part of their long established moniker for my own means.
Lots of people spoke enthusiastically about getting involved with the fledgling and prototype 'zine dedicated to our fledgling crop of regional bands and those that visited our local venue (that was a regular stop-off point on the national gig circuit back in the day), but I'm still waiting for them to get back to me, vis. their initial offers to provide input... and four decades later on, the: "I've done it mate, it's in the post!" type alibis are starting to wear a bit thin by now and I'm reluctantly going to have to concede that you were all of telling fibs.
AMFAS was a DIY project or to be blunt, actually more of a Do It Your-effing-Self job throughout it's sporadic existence.
West Allotment Celtic featured in AMFAS #4, which might seem a bit random, but there was a perfectly logical explanation for their inclusion. Thorn-Emi Lighting had instigated a competition among non-league clubs across the country, whereby they were going to install light fittings and the electrics for floodlights at the home of the club that performed the best over the entire season out of a list of teams who had expressed an interest in becoming involved in this incentive. To cut a long story short, Retford Town had been in the top four of the NCEL Division One South all season and meanwhile, by process of elimination, the list of potential benefactors had been whittled down to the final two: Retford Town and West Allotment Celtic.
Alas, despite already having had the floodlight towers erected, sans any lighting... the Shamrocks manager at the time, Paddy Buckley, once referred to them as: "the tallest bird tables in Nottinghamshire", the club sadly folded a month before the final decision was made, amid circumstances, that along with the proud history of the club itself are worthy of a book in themselves.
The lighting rigs would no longer be required at the River Lane ground... and subsequently the towers were dismantled and the ground fell into a sorry state of disrepair.
Retford Town's ground stood on land that had been donated to the town by the Denman family, to be exclusively used for the purposes of sporting and recreation for a period of at least 99 years.
But, to cut a long story short (though rest assured I have it on fairly good authority that the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the whole unedited and sleazy truth in it's whole gruesome entirety will be made public knowledge in due course), Bassetlaw District Council, who cover a swathe of north Nottinghamshire encompassing Harworth, Retford and Worksop (and a multitude of surrounding villages) sold the land off from under the noses of the townsfolk, to be used for the building of a supermarket, conveniently sited on a site besides the main ring-road through Retford, that had recently been constructed, including the new bridge over the River Idle that overlooked the football ground, as many a free-loader could testify.
Money talks... in hushed tones at times it would seem, but generally speaking, it usually have the final say. And regardless of what might come to light, the 'new road' (Arlington Way) and 'big shop' (Morrisons) are both here to stay, but Retford Town FC aren't ever coming back.
Retford based issues accounted for only a small portion of the core contents that appeared in AMFAS and as the tentacles of my football-travels grew, along with my horizons broadening and spiralling beyond the bounds of accepted convention, as regards watching groups play at a multifarious range of uncharted towns and cities across the British Isles, a whole plethora of potential material unfolded before my teenage eyes.
Football, Rugby League and an ever increasing network of bands, venues and promoters, many of whom have since vanished into the realms of oblivion; provided a plethora of opportunity, but the tome was still a solo mission, sans any need for any editorial deadlines, nor having to write about subject matter I had little or no interest in whatsoever.
I adhered to one rule and one rule alone... if it ever stopped being fun, or the inclination ever ran dry, then it would be time to pack it all in. Hence, it came to pass, that AMFAS vanished off of the face of the earth... and though there were a few tentative enquiries from people who'd picked up ex-gratis copies from pubs and venues across the circumference of my random trajectory of travel... the event barely registered on the Richter scale.