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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 5, 2022 11:02:10 GMT
Right, so I've wanted to do this for ages and finally got the ball rolling ahead of the new season. I'm going to be posting on Instagram and eventually set up a blog as a new 'Fanzine' called Now That We're Home. The idea is to bring together the clubs history and modern day incarnation and give it all the same theme. I'm a big fan of the old cut and paste Xerox fanzines of the 70's / 80's, and want to apply that to what I'm doing now. Along with old photos, merchandise pictures, stickers, stories and so on, I also plan to start scanning the meagre collection of fanzines that I have. These are such an interesting part of the clubs / our fan history and it would be great to slowly start building a small archive for people to read. The account is set up and I've started posting. Would be amazing if you could give the account a quick follow so I'm not just posting to myself... https://www.instagram.com/p/Cg39ZL_KqEA |
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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 5, 2022 11:06:36 GMT
I'd also love hear from anyone on here with anything to share! Would love to see your old photos, obscure bits of merch, tattoos, flags, banners, stickers, fanzines, collections, etc. Would love to build an archive of everything people are willing to contribute because, as far as I know, there isn't really anything online for the club (other than the Maidstone United History FB page, but I'm hoping to do something slightly different).
Please please get in touch, I'd love to hear from you. Likewise, some of the things I'll be sharing will be taken from zines / photos, so if it's yours and you want it removed, just let me know.
Cheers!
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Post by jdl on Aug 5, 2022 12:22:52 GMT
I'd also love hear from anyone on here with anything to share! Would love to see your old photos, obscure bits of merch, tattoos, flags, banners, stickers, fanzines, collections, etc. Would love to build an archive of everything people are willing to contribute because, as far as I know, there isn't really anything online for the club (other than the Maidstone United History FB page, but I'm hoping to do something slightly different). Please please get in touch, I'd love to hear from you. Likewise, some of the things I'll be sharing will be taken from zines / photos, so if it's yours and you want it removed, just let me know. Cheers! Sounds good - but be prepared for a LOT of work! I have a stack of stuff from the 80/90s - although probably nothing rare. If you want any of it, let me know and I'll scan it. |
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Post by steveh21 on Aug 5, 2022 12:38:16 GMT
If you want anything about the Stones Aged podcast or the County League days let me know.. (lots of info from KCL which I lent to Fred for his book). Happy to write a County League page each issue, for example.
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Post by headstone on Aug 6, 2022 7:30:59 GMT
Hang on, that's on Instagram, the incurable Siamese twin of Facebook. I hope you'll do something for those of us who avoid social media like the plague! How about, oh I don't know, a paper version?
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Post by nws on Aug 6, 2022 8:11:54 GMT
Please get Sword to write articles. His reports were legendary. The descriptions had me in tears. I'm a woke, Leftie snowflake (apparently) but his anti-woke, anti-leftie, anti-snowflake work has to be resurrected.
Sword, if you're gan today, please take your notebook
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Post by sword65 on Aug 6, 2022 8:43:39 GMT
Please get Sword to write articles. His reports were legendary. The descriptions had me in tears. I'm a woke, Leftie snowflake (apparently) but his anti-woke, anti-leftie, anti-snowflake work has to be resurrected. Sword, if you're gan today, please take your notebook Sorry,I'm retarded,I mean retired or do I,anyway not at Alty today and have had to blow out my replacement game for family reasons,bloody families. |
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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 6, 2022 9:55:05 GMT
I'd also love hear from anyone on here with anything to share! Would love to see your old photos, obscure bits of merch, tattoos, flags, banners, stickers, fanzines, collections, etc. Would love to build an archive of everything people are willing to contribute because, as far as I know, there isn't really anything online for the club (other than the Maidstone United History FB page, but I'm hoping to do something slightly different). Please please get in touch, I'd love to hear from you. Likewise, some of the things I'll be sharing will be taken from zines / photos, so if it's yours and you want it removed, just let me know. Cheers! Sounds good - but be prepared for a LOT of work! I have a stack of stuff from the 80/90s - although probably nothing rare. If you want any of it, let me know and I'll scan it. Amazing! Need to get round to setting up the site and listing the meagre copies of fanzines I already have and hopefully people on here can fill in the blanks. Absolutely any 80s / 90s pictures you have as well would be amazing! |
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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 6, 2022 9:59:07 GMT
Hang on, that's on Instagram, the incurable Siamese twin of Facebook. I hope you'll do something for those of us who avoid social media like the plague! How about, oh I don't know, a paper version? Instagram is just an easy way for me to find my feet for the moment and share the things I already have. There will definitely be a site soon that will be more of a deep dive of photos, old zines and the such. I'll post on here once it's all sorted. A paper version would be the dream but not sure on the interest. I'll see how it all goes but a printed zine before the end of the season would be amazing! |
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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 6, 2022 9:59:36 GMT
If you want anything about the Stones Aged podcast or the County League days let me know.. (lots of info from KCL which I lent to Fred for his book). Happy to write a County League page each issue, for example. I'll definitely be in touch further down the line, thank you! |
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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 6, 2022 10:20:27 GMT
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Post by holysmokes66 on Aug 17, 2022 10:26:21 GMT
Just realised, according to the clubs instagram, today was the day the club went into liquidation - 30 years ago to the day.
Does anyone remember it? How did people find out and was it immediately obvious the club wouldn't survive? Looking for some quotes to share as part of the fanzine on Instagram.
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Post by jdl on Aug 17, 2022 13:15:50 GMT
I don't remember the day itself; it was just another part of an awful period of depression and loss. I was hoping, right up to the end, that JT would find some way out of it, or the council would relent, or something. I couldn't accept that my club was dead, it just didn't seem possible.
Starting to watch Maidstone in 1980, as I did (ironically, as a guest of a Gills fan, when we knocked them out of the Cup), almost my whole time with the club had been one of success and progress. By complete accident, having just moved to Maidstone, I found myself a fan of a club in the middle of a football revolution. In not much more than a decade, we had been founder members of the first national non-league division, won that division twice, applied for membership of the FL twice and then become only the second non-league club to be automatically promoted - not to mention a few brilliant FA Cup days. And it culminated with humiliating our local rivals and very nearly getting promoted in our first season in Div 4.
I didn't like losing London Road, or having to travel to Dartford (or what we, inadvertently, did to Dartford FC), but I had faith in JT that it would all work out. To then go through the long, drawn-out, nightmare of watching the club collapse, and finally losing my club altogether, was a body blow that, even after 10 years at the Gallagher and all the club has achieved, still hurts.
That was all so long ago, that perhaps there are only a few of us left who feel that way. For those fans who have only started watching the Stones since we came home, this will mean nothing. Even for those who followed the club through the Wilderness Years, the ups and downs of that time and the gradual restoration of the club - and the feeling of being part of all that - will probably have eclipsed most of that feeling of loss. For them, their key memories will be the long struggle, and often the seeming impossibility, of returning the club to Maidstone - and, of course, the amazing success of actually achieving just that.
But, for me, the club, MY club, died. And no fan should ever have to go through that.
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Post by headstone on Aug 17, 2022 20:16:47 GMT
I still needed my football fix. I was put in touch with the husband of my wife's colleague, who wanted to see some proper football, so long as it wasn't Gillingham. Hence, I became a member of the Charlton Supporters' Club and followed Alan Curbishley into the Premier League, via a classic Wembley play-off final (4 -4 against Sunderland, winning on penalties). That doesn't make me a bad man. Luckily, in 2002 I discovered Maidstone had phoenixed (from a fixture list outside Sainsbury's), so I didn't have to follow Charlton in the reverse direction, but started on our incredible journey upwards.
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Post by jdl on Aug 17, 2022 21:38:12 GMT
I still needed my football fix. I was put in touch with the husband of my wife's colleague, who wanted to see some proper football, so long as it wasn't Gillingham. Hence, I became a member of the Charlton Supporters' Club and followed Alan Curbishley into the Premier League, via a classic Wembley play-off final (4 -4 against Sunderland, winning on penalties). That doesn't make me a bad man. Luckily, in 2002 I discovered Maidstone had phoenixed (from a fixture list outside Sainsbury's), so I didn't have to follow Charlton in the reverse direction, but started on our incredible journey upwards. Wow! That makes you the Devil incarnate according to hbs! Although he didn't know the club was still going either... I couldn't face football at all for years, not even on TV (the only good thing about this is you don't have to watch England losing quarter-finals on penalties...). Then a friend at work tempted me back to Upton Park. Had I not suffered enough? By 2012, I could no longer afford to go up to UP every fortnight, and we'd been through the whole Roeder/relegation/Icelandic biscuit makers/Tevez thing anyway, so I had effectively given up on football again. Then I made the mistake of going down to JWW to see what it was like... |
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