The Hull City fan who reinvented the football blooper tape for Twitter Maine Road. April 25, 1998. A through-ball is met by Manchester City’s Jamie Pollock. Fully aware of his surroundings, he […]

Maine Road. April 25, 1998.

A through-ball is met by Manchester City’s Jamie Pollock. Fully aware of his surroundings, he lifts the ball over an opponent and then, sensing a moment to display steely composure, casually lobs the goalkeeper with a fine header from 12 yards.

Only, Pollock is a defender. The opponent he lifted the ball over a striker. The goalkeeper is on his team.

The goal rightly earned immortality.

Watching the footage – again and again – speaks of a different era.

This was a long way from present-day Manchester City.

The goal scored in the penultimate round of the season, a 2-2 draw against relegation rivals Queens Park Rangers.

Despite a 5-2 win at Stoke City the following week, City were relegated to the third tier.

Nostalgia (noun) – a wistful desire to return in thought or in fact to a former time in one’s life… a sentimental yearning for the happiness of a former place or time.

One Twitter account has garnered nearly 22,000 followers because of the above.

But it’s nostalgia with a twist. Rather than focus on great feats of football, such as Dennis Bergkamp’s goal against Argentina or Davor Suker’s Euro 96 chip, Crap 90s Football brings joy through other means.

It’s all in the name

Feeble defending, lamentable decision making, goalmouth scrambles, wayward finishing, slapstick goalkeeping. It has it all.

Curating this triumph in wretchedness is James Richardson – not to be confused with the former Gazzetta dello Sport-clutching, macchiato-drinking Football Italia presenter.

“It could be interpreted as trying to be a handy device to remind people that what they’ve witnessed at their own club at the weekend wasn’t that bad after all,” he tells i.

“It could be trying to dispel the view that the Premier League and Euro 96 made football polished and slick as it started to become trendy, but my initial motivation was just to amuse my mates and that’s still the case, the difference being there’s a few thousand others that have that sense of humour!”

The “light-bulb moment” came when scouring through old footage of his team, Hull City.

James runs TigerTube, “a nostalgia driven Hull City YouTube channel”, which allowed him to compile a hefty collection of old football tapes.

“That started from a pub discussion with my friend Jim,” he explains, “who had concerns the contents of his own collection of City tapes would just be lost if they weren’t digitised.

“I digitised the tapes and a number of years later, the tapes and the same concern was the main reason why Crap 90s Football came into being.”

And, of course, the comedy factor was just too much for it not to be documented, taking inspiration from Danny Baker and Nick Hancock, with James having grown up “during the golden age of the football blooper tape”.

“I was about to throw away a batch of cassettes, decided to give them one last watch and upon seeing Paul Stancliffe stumble in the mud at Molineux and shin in an own goal, and then a bewildered Brian Laws booked for being head-butted, as well as all the poor-but-funny-on-reflection Hull City moments I could remember, I had the ‘light bulb moment’.”

He adds: “Upon going through the other tapes I found there were plentiful examples of comical ineptitude and thought it’d be a pity to see them lost.”

A time-sapping process

While James can recall farcical moments from his beloved Tigers and certain howlers which stand the test of time, such as the aforementioned Pollock goal, the collation is a time-sapping endeavour. But one which is entirely rewarding.

Who doesn’t enjoy watching professional footballers embody petulant children or a hungover, overweight, clumsy Sunday league player?

“It’s a case of trawling through hours of cassettes,” he says, “usually setting aside an evening or two and clipping as I go or marking where gaffes are and coming back to the tapes another time.

“The tapes aren’t in particularly great nick and probably wouldn’t survive being stopped and rewound a few times so I film them on my phone and then tweak them as best as I can.

“How can you not enjoy revisiting a decade that follows up Matt Le Tissier pinging the ball into the top corner from an adjacent postal code with some oaf slicing the ball into their own net?”

More than just gaffes

The clips pack so much punch despite rarely lasting longer than 20 seconds.

You think you’ve seen it all. Keystone cop defending, the goalkeeper trying to help only to make the situation worse, before a striker comically hits the post when presented with an open goal.

Done? Nope. A defender steams in, putting the ball into his own net.

But it’s more than the action. It’s the grainy footage, the strips, the goal-nets, the old grounds, the pitch which is more mud and bobbles than grass.

It all keeps fans coming back for another dose of schadenfreude. Even if it is their own team.

“I do find it bizarre when supporters react with such joy when I post their club bungling in an own goal,” says James.

“Gallows humour, I suppose. As time has moved on and the account has gained popularity, it’s nice that people are passing on things they’ve found or remember as well.”

Stars of the show

Although James avoids tagging the stars of the clips into the footage, it has not shielded some from being reminded of their more infamous moments.

“In the case of a few better known players, it’s inevitable someone will bring it to their attention,” he acknowledges.

“Lee Dixon seems to have a good sense of humour about his long range chipped own goal for Arsenal, judging from his responses, while Ian Marshall and Darren Eadie have taken clips in the right spirit so, thankfully, I’ve not had any negative responses. Yet.”

James notes it would be unfair “to single out players who had long careers as professionals and were unfortunate enough to have the handful of mistakes they did make caught on camera for me to find 20 years on.”

He prefers to focus on teams who have collectively stunk up ’90s English football.

“By virtue of the fact that I’ve got more footage of Hull City than anyone else and we were terrible for the majority of the decade, they’re unashamedly the foundation stone of the account.

“It probably counts as therapy having to watch Terry Dolan and Mark Hateley teams and being able to laugh at it 20 years on from witnessing it.

“Swansea have cropped up quite a lot of late, they had a seeming desire for knocking in spectacular own goals.

“Also, because a lot of the early footage was plucked from recorded YTV highlights, Scarborough and (Bloody Rubbish) Mansfield have been in there, often for the ropiest of 3rd Division defending.

“However, if Tim Clarke and David James are reading this, cheers!”

It’s only a matter of time before spin-offs come into existence, with Crap 00s Football primed for emergence.

But for James he isn’t done with the ’90s comedy genre yet.

“I’ve recently been sent some fantastic footage from the French first division by a very kind chap from Saint-Etienne which has made me think there must be more to look into in the continent and further afield,” he says.

“I’ve also hardly got any clips from Scotland yet which feels very, very wrong.”