Pro Set and Match

One of the best things about having a teacher as a parent is the swag. Anything half decent that my dad confiscated from his comprehensive school classes would, having failed to have been claimed at the end of the week, eventually find its way to me. My contraband included bouncy balls, rubic cubes and most memorably a vast stash of Shooting Star football cards circa 1992.

This element of my youth was returned last week when, for reasons too long and dull to explain, I received a job lot of Pro Set football cards from the same era. As precious as my ‘acquired’ Shooting Star collection was to me, there was no denying that Pro Set were the collection that really mattered. They covered the other divisions, and they even had the England badge on.

So, at the age of twenty-five I had finally made it as the nine-year-old I never was, and was plunged into a nostalgia induced coma at the same time. Robert Fleck, Tony Daley, Glenn Hysen, Sheffield United sponsored by Laver, references to Plough Lane and Ayresome Park. The last fifteen years has been a very long time in football. In fact, of the 250 or so cards the nearest to a current player are the recently retired duo of Dion Dublin and Teddy Sheringham, of Cambridge and Millwall respectively in the world of Pro Set.

These cards are from the 1991-92 season, the last season before the Premier League but it’s a world away from the TV savvy hyperbole of the Sky generation. In fact two graduates of Match of the Day’s ‘state the obvious’ school of punditry are in this collection; what looks like a thirteen year old Lee Dixon and an even younger Alan Shearer. And even Alfe Inge Haaland could find a touch of affection for the gawky looking twenty-year-old Roy Keane.

What makes the cards is the player biogs printed on the reverse; whole careers in no more than fifty words. In amongst the seemingly archaic five figure transfer fees (and less; I could have bought Derby’s Phil Gee with my student loan) are some great descriptions. Tottenham’s Gudni Bergsson is described as being ‘upright’, whilst the profile of QPR’s Jan Stejskal is strangely anecdotal; “Manager Don Howe wanted an experienced goalkeeper and remembered Jan’s fine displays for Czechoslovakia in the World Cup. He negotiated the deal and the big man from Prague made his debut in October 1990 against Leeds United”. That’s all of it.

The contrast between the pre-Premier League football world suspended on these cards, and the subsequent Sky spawned product is staggering. 1992, just four years before David Beckham lobbed Neil Sullivan, and football shorts are still so obscenely short that in the present day only the Pussycat Dolls would wear garments of a similar length. Thanks in part to Derek Mountfield, Tony Coton, Eddie McGoldrick and the Snodin brothers moustaches are still rampant across the top flight. And most tellingly of all, parts of Steve Ogrizovic’s nose are still pointing the same way as the rest of his face. Ah, the memories