Get It On

English football in the ’70s was a kaleidoscope of drama, innovation, opportunity, controversy, tragedy, melodrama and slapstick. It remains the most cutting edge of all football decades, blazing a trail for what followed, and this is reflected in the burgeoning TV coverage of the time. Match of the Day and The Big Match drew huge audiences each week during the ’70s. Leading managers and players were in demand to appear as guests on TV chat shows and were the subject of documentaries that gave viewers unprecedented insight into the lives of the superstars of the day, such as Clough, Best, Revie, Shankly, Allison, Docherty and Paisley. It was the first ‘modern’ football decade, despite often being lampooned and scoffed at, and it set in place much of what is now part and parcel of the game, including sponsorship, TV punditry and football ‘personalities’.

Get It On is a book about 1970s football and some of its prime movers and shakers, cult figures and accidental heroes. Some were inadvertently sucked into a maelstrom of publicity. Others were charismatic, media-savvy, sideburn-clad, cigar-smoking, Champagne-swilling, upwardly mobile chat show guests who became household names as the era of colour television began.

As well as being about the game itself, this book is also about the politics, the popular culture and the events of the era. These different strands are interconnected, because, as much as football was shaped by that which swirled around it, the national game in the ’70s also defined the timbre of the era.

There is a danger, as the pre-1992 era recedes into history, that the game in the ’70s is reduced to a varnished selection of YouTube clips, a clutch of tales and bon mots handed down via the after dinner speaking circuit or, worse, written out entirely. Get It On goes some way to redressing the balance.

About the Author

A history and politics teacher by day, Jon Spurling has written articles and interviewed footballers for numerous publications at home and abroad, including FourFourTwo, When Saturday Comes, The Blizzard, Nutmeg, 11 Freunde and the official Arsenal programme. He has authored six previous books, including the bestselling Highbury: The Story of Arsenal in N.5 and Death or Glory - The Dark History of the World Cup. A child of the '70s, he is currently writing an '80s follow-up to Get It On and lives in Canterbury with his wife and two daughters.