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© Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes, Paul Kobrak
Description
When Football Ruined My Life started back at the beginning of 2023 it was the new podcast about old football.
In it, distinguished football journalist Patrick Barclay joined with Colin Shindler, author of the best selling Manchester United Ruined My Life, and the Super Agent Jon Holmes (think Gary Lineker, Peter Shilton, Tony Woodcock etc.) to talk about football as it used to be in the days before the invention of the Premier League.
For over 80 weekly episodes, the podcast viewed those days fondly - though not uncritically - in comparison to today's game, which it views critically though not unfondly. And it welcomed everyone who wants to remember Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Charlton, Brian Clough and Bill Shankly and the days when you went to a Football League ground to watch your football and didn't wait for it to arrive on television.
After the tragic and untimely death of Paddy Barclay in February 2025, Football Ruined My Life took a break to consider how (and if) to carry on.
In May 2025 it has returned, with a panel of stars to make irregular appearances to join the regulars, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler. These now include writer and producer Andy Hamilton, television executive Jimmy Mulville, the sports journalist and columnist for the Daily Telegraph Jim White and stand-up comedian Omid Djalili.
But the feel and raison d'être of Football Ruined My Life remains the same. Still nostalgic? Yes. Still well informed? Certainly. But above all, it continues to glory in the football of our youth when the game seemed charmingly innocent, full of skillful, good hearted, kindly men like Norman Hunter, Ron Harris and Peter Storey.
Join us every week for a romp through the 1960s, 70s, 80s and beyond that will warm you like a cup of scalding hot Bovril.
Produced by Paul Kobrak.
Contact the team at footballruinedmylife@gmail.com
122 Episodes
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Every year at this time we ensure that we have a postbag of your emails to spread joy and happiness among the growing Football Ruined My Life community. We encourage you to write to us every week and you do so in comforting numbers. Once again the tone is almost entirely positive with people wanting to contribute their own memories to the topic they’ve just listened to or correcting our very fallible memories. We look forward to these occasional episodes because it enables us to connect with our audience. And we’re very grateful that you take the time and trouble to write even if only because it reassures us that we’re talking about the topics which you think and talk about. But also it’s a comfort to know that at least we’re not just talking to ourselves. So a merry festive season and a happy new year to one and all and do keep those emails pouring in. There’ll be another postbag in a couple of months.
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Following on from the last episode (the special on FIFA and their Peace Prize that was awarded to Donald Trump), this week Jon Holmes, Andy Hamilton and Colin Shindler ask themselves the question: “Is the game more or less exciting than it was when we first started watching football in the late 1950s/early 1960s?” It certainly seems to be more exciting to judge by the hysterical radio and television commentators and the ludicrous goal celebrations we have to suffer. Back in the day a goalscorer might have his hand shaken, his hair ruffled and on occasion his bottom fondled, albeit very briefly. Of course, what appears hysterical to fans of mature years might not appear so to someone fifty years younger. The game has grown, Premier League grounds are full, players are faster and more skilful. Surely that means that the game is more exciting. Listen and find out…
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This is a shorter but very special edition of Football Ruined My Life. It was recorded three days after the sickening and humiliating farrago of nonsense which was the draw for the 2026 World Cup. It contained, of course, the sickening sight of a convicted felon being awarded a Peace Prize. The sheer inanity of the exercise made it entirely nonsensical. Within minutes of the draw starting, our producer Paul Kobrak, messaged Jon and Colin saying he was sickened by the spectacle that was unfolding on television. Jon was feeling exactly the same and we jointly wondered how the game we have all loved for almost the entire duration of our lives could possibly have sunk so low. The reason we all fell in love with with game of football was because it appealed to our better instincts of joy and romance. Football can give you those feelings. But that football has gone and if we needed confirmation then FIFA’s lunacy was the proof. As football fans we have the right to howl in protest. Let us know if you were also howling.
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In this episode Colin Shindler and Jim White are delighted to welcome one of the few Economics graduates to play for England and manage successfully in the Premier League. Steve Coppell’s potential career as an
economist was somewhat overshadowed by 360 games as a right winger for Tranmere Rovers and Manchester United, despite being forced to retire at the age of 28 because of a bad knee injury. Incidentally he also had a subsequent career of over a thousand games as a highly successful manager of a number of clubs but principally Crystal Palace and Reading. Now at the age of 70 he has the perspective to compare football when he played and managed with the game as it is played and managed today.
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The panel discuss the players they most feared because they were really good players and always played well against their own team... or players who were basically hatchet men who set out cold-bloodedly to injure their best player. When we talked about goalkeepers Pat Jennings came into the former category and you have to say nobody could dislike Pat who always seemed such a pleasant self-effacing bloke – unless you were trying to score past him. Don Revie’s Leeds United on the other hand were both feared and disliked. Various teams of course have made us wonder whether there is any point in turning up to watch the inevitable defeat – Liverpool in the 80s, Manchester United from 1994 for the next two decades, perhaps Guardiola’s Manchester City from a few years ago. Do memories of Ron Harris, Peter Storey, Norman Hunter etc. evoke the warm glow of nostalgia? Andy Hamilton, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler fight it out.
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Ronnie Radford was a workaday midfielder playing for such legendary clubs as Worcester City, Bath City and Forest Green Rovers but in January 1972 he was playing for Hereford United in an FA Cup third round replay at Edgar Street on a quagmire of a pitch in front of a capacity crowd. With less than ten minutes to go and Newcastle comfortably 1-0 ahead Radford won a tackle in the Newcastle half and played a one-two. The return pass bobbled on the muddy surface but sat up nicely for Radford, and he unleashed a 30-yard strike into the top corner that left Willie McFaul the
Newcastle goalkeeper helpless. It sparked a pitch invasion, and the images of that muddy pitch, Radford celebrating with arms aloft and the crowd invading the pitch, have since become immortalised in FA Cup history. If ever there was a single goal which defined the glory of the giantkiller this was it. Jim White, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler wallow nostalgically, as ever, in their memories of similar giant killing acts.
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Now that England have already qualified for next year’s World Cup finals, this makes all the remaining matches in the group completely pointless from an England perspective. The November international break seems to have arrived 25 minutes after the October one. These tedious autumn and spring international breaks also extend the football season which now starts in the middle of the Test match series and ends as the following season’s Test match series begins. Colin Shindler, Jon Holmes and Jim White discuss, sometimes with a sense of rage and frustration, their feelings that the traditional rhythm of a football season is being disrupted by these irritating international breaks.
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In this episode, Andy Hamilton, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes resume their role as selectors as they choose the best team of the 1960s from the English Football League as it then was. That’s not one individual club or national side but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players. Players like Tom Finney and Stanley Matthews are ineligible as their greatest days were in the 1940s and 1950s even if their careers continued into the 1960s. Some of the selections will undoubtedly coincide with yours but some of them might
surprise you so press play and start luxuriating in a nostalgic wallow through the days of our youths.
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Colin Shindler tries to convince Jon Holmes and Jimmy Mulville that the 1960s was English football’s most glorious decade. Not just the world cup triumph of 1966, though that obviously features significantly at the heart of the decade. Secondary school was dark, depressing and alienating. Football by contrast was light, colourful and inclusive. All it asked of you was to enjoy playing and supporting your team. As a teenager in that decade, Colin had no wife or children to demand attention as they would in later years and in the 1960s football seemed to offer a cheap and readily available entertainment. Of course, the decade also provided terrible
pitches, small wages to most players even after the abolition of the £20
minimum wage, dilapidated grounds with no toilets and the danger of swaying on the terraces with those rolling crowds. It can’t just be nostalgia that elevates football in the 1960s, can it?
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We all remember Brian Clough’s infamous 44 days as manager of Leeds United, a fractious period of time which compared favourably with Liz Truss’s time as Prime Minister of the UK - and of course the lettuce that lasted longer than either of them. Colin Shindler recalls with ghastly clarity Steve Coppell’s 33 days in charge of the disaster that was Manchester City in 1996. Both these short-lived phenomena have been beaten very recently: not just by what last week with Ange Postecoglou’s departure from Nottingham Forest but also by what happened at the start of this season – the sacking of Erik Ten Hag after just three competitive matches in charge of Bayer Leverkeusen. Jim White, Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes speculate as to what on earth Bayer Leverkusen could possibly have found out about Ten Hag after three matches that they didn’t already know when they made the decision to hire him in the first place?
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On the first day of every season nearly all football supporters experience the same surge of pride and expectation. When they get to the ground it looks gleaming. The grass is green and the white lines stand out in marked contrast inviting the arrival of our heroes and stimulating thoughts of promotion and championships and European football. This emotion for most supporters doesn’t even last ninety minutes as the wretched disappointment of a 2-0 home defeat brings them back to the grim reality. They are not going to win the League or the FA Cup (or get promotion or even avoid relegation) this season after all. Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes wonder what drives the supporters of clubs with no hope.
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It’s an increasingly pertinent question in football. In the days of Shankly, Clough and Ferguson it was blindingly obvious who ran their clubs. But as the manager’s role has been split between the Head Coach and the Director of Football, that vision of total authority has become increasingly blurred. The Head Coach might pick the team on Saturday afternoon (or possibly Friday night or Sunday lunchtime) but bizarrely, and to his utter frustration, he might not have bought any of the players he is selecting. That could well have been the responsibility of the Director of Football and a committee. Is this a better way to run these clubs which are now billion-pound businesses? More to the point, does it increase the distance still further between the club and its fans? Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler ponder these questions.
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Following on from the previous edition, Colin Shindler, Jim White and Jon Holmes set themselves the task of choosing from the English Football League as it then was, a team of the 1970s. That’s not one individual club or national side, but a team composed of the outstanding players of that decade in some sort of logical formation that would bring out the best of them both as individuals and as team players. It is with evident relief that all our regular listeners will realise that we can start proceedings knowing that Jamie Vardy wasn’t born until 1987 and therefore he is ruled ineligible for selection – which is going to cause Jon to scrabble around at the bottom of his Leicester City suitcase where he will no doubt find Frank Worthington and Keith Weller. However, the decade provided so many great players that selection of a final eleven is going to be difficult. The panel has great fun seeing who makes the final cut and they are sure you will be equally enthused to decide on your own team of the 1970s.
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Not unusually for this podcast, we look back – with quite some affection – to the 1970s. Many of our listeners will also no doubt remember the decade through a haze of nostalgic introspection… but of course it was also a tumultuous ten years that not only laid many of the foundation stones for the modern game, but also witnessed the English national team twice failing to qualify for the World Cup Finals after their heroics in the competition in 1970. Bringing a younger, but no less well-informed perspective, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by Jon Spurling – whose book Get It On: How The 70s Rocked Football focuses on
the decade that has been described as the one when football went from black & white to colour.
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Jim White was astonished to find that Andy Carroll is now turning out on Saturday afternoons to play in the sixth tier of English for Dagenham & Redbridge. So it’s Jim who leads the discussion (with Colin Shindler and Jon Holmes) of players who once strode purposefully at the summit of the game but ended their careers in far less salubrious circumstances. Bobby
Moore finished his playing career in the Danish Third Division and George Best turned out for Dunstable Town when he was good enough to have still been playing First Division football. Further back in history Wilf Mannion and Tommy Lawton fell from grace with similarly sad results. For some it was the need to earn money at the only trade they knew; for others it was the simple love of the game which continued to attract them when their great days had finished. It proves for the panel and listeners alike a sobering discussion of how the highs of football can be swiftly replaced by the grim reality of the lows.
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This week Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler are joined by the author Daniel Gray to discuss his 2013 book “Hatters, Railwaymen and Knitters” – a fascinating travel book about England as seen through the less glamorous clubs of English football and the communities that support them. It’s time that clubs like Crewe and Chester and Bradford City were given their due air time and Football Ruined My Life is glad to accord it to them. Daniel proves a witty and poetic chronicler of the distant outreaches of English football.
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Jon Holmes, Jim White and Colin Shindler speculate (if present trends continue) about what football will look like in the year 2050 when it is very likely that none of them will be around to feel embarrassed by how badly they got things wrong. Colin mischievously teases Jon to consider what will have happened to Leicester City in 25 years time. Will there still be a Premier League such as we currently know it or indeed will there still be a Leicester City or might it be swallowed up in the East Midlands side competing against Alsace Lorraine and Outer Mongolia on a weekly basis? Jim, rather mournfully, assumes that in 2050 Manchester United will still be looking for their first Premiership title since 2013 which causes much gaiety in the other half of Manchester and a slight sigh of schadenfreude emanating from Leicester.
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In this episode Colin Shindler, Andy Hamilton and Jon Holmes examine Alan Hansen’s notorious observation that you don’t win anything with kids. It’s rather a shame that his reputation as one of the leading pundits has been slightly tarnished by the fact that he said those words on Match of the Day on the day Manchester United had been well beaten by Aston Villa at the start of the 1995-96 season. United went on to win the double that year and we all know what that group of young Manchester United players went on to achieve. Karen Brady when in charge of Birmingham City aroused the ire of all football supporters but claiming there was no point in growing vegetables if you could buy them so readily in the supermarket. We older supporters yearn nostalgically for the days when we could follow the progress of local players through the youth and Reserve teams and into the first eleven. Those were the days when the emergence of 17 and 18 year-olds who cost the traditional £10 signing on fee gave more pleasure to supporters than does the current purchase of endless overseas players for huge sums of money. Or does it?
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This week the panel discuss that most prized of assets on a football field – what we all used to call the creative or scheming inside forward, now called I suppose the creative midfielder which isn’t as euphonious in my opinion but it’s only my opinion. However it would include players like Danny Blanchflower and Paddy Crerand who both wore the number 4 shirt and played at right half. The point is we all know the kind of player we’re talking about – the one who can break open defences with an inch perfect through ball between two defenders, the player who is more aware than most of the position of everyone on the field, the unselfish creator who brings others into the game, the man with two brains. I think we’re all too young to have seen Wilf Mannion, Raich Carter and Alex James as they played before we started watching the game so we who are still in our 70s have fond memories of Johnny Haynes who is exactly the inside forward who best fits the tag “creative midfielder”. Many names are mentioned. Who would you choose?
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We all know that that’s what the foreign owners want. Omid Djalili, Jon Holmes and Colin Shindler discuss the reasons why we shouldn’t just wave bye bye to the top six elite clubs in the Premier League and let them all just bugger off and join what nearly every football supporter fears will be the inevitable European Super League. For them there would then be no fear of relegation but instead there would be trips to Milan, Madrid, Rome, Munich, Paris and Barcelona every other week instead of down the M3 and
the M27 to Southampton or up the M1 to Sheffield and Leeds… or even worse up the M65 to Burnley. We don’t suppose in the boardrooms of New York and Paris they look forward to being asked “Hello Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, how did you find the meat pies at Turf Moor last week?” But if they did leave, as they clearly want to, where would that leave the rest of English football?
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I was only lucky enough to meet Paddy once. A memory I'll treasure. His contribution to your podcast was always so erudite. He'll be much missed - I'm sure there is quite a hole in your lives since his death - I hope over time it heals.