Football fan reveals Premier League clubs' responses to requests for loyalty 30 years on
Supporting a football club is always a test of loyalty but one man has revealed how he turned the tables on teams as a youngster by asking what they would offer for his backing.
Back in 1993 the Premier League was only just building up momentum on its course to becoming the all-consuming cash juggernaut we know today.
One enterprising eight-year-old decided to put the 22 clubs in the English top-flight to the test, writing to each and asking for merchandise in exchange for his support.
Andrew Morris, now 37, was actually a Wrexham fan, but didn't let that get in the way of his insatiable desire for football memorabilia.
The former Shropshire Star reporter and Oswestry resident, now residing in Wolverhampton, has now offered up the best – and worst responses – from signed pictures and programmes – to one club, Arsenal, which only sent back a merchandise catalogue.
The prize offerings came from Blackburn, a signed photo of the Premier League's top goalscorer Alan Shearer, while Tottenham sent a signed picture of Shearer's England partner Teddy Sheringham. Chelsea enclosed signed photo of Glenn Hoddle, a favourite of young Andrew's Tottenham Hotspur-supporting father Ian, and another signed picture of England World Cup winning legend Alan Ball, who grew up in Oswestry, where his father was player manager of Oswestry Town.
Most clubs provided a full squad list of signatures – some printed and some authentic, while other included team photos and club information – solid efforts to sway the mind of a young supporter.
The offerings provide a glimpse into the different world of football supporting, when signed pictures were prized – well before the selfie took over.
Andrew, of Ettingshall Park, decided to write about his escapade on social media and a thread featuring the full run-down of the responses on Twitter has now been viewed more than 60,000 times.
Perhaps Andrew's most spectacular success was fittingly from his own club.
Long before the appearance of Ryan Reynolds and Rob Mcelhenny at Wrexham, manager Brian Flynn responded to a request from the young supporter's father for an announcement on his birthday by actually calling the family home to say they could do better than that, offering Andrew the chance to meet the players in the dressing room before kick-off, and to watch the match from the players' lounge.
The picture from the day also shows young Andrew wearing what appears an over-size kit – because it was provided by the club and was actually the number 16 for the emergency substitute.
Andrew said he had come across the items while clearing out the garage, instantly triggering nostalgia for the naive era of 90s football, a time when England first welcomed a mass influx of true foreign stars to brighten up the drudgery of the beautiful game.
He said: "I actually found it while clearing through the garage and it brought back a flood of happy memories.
"Football in the 1990s was great. It's is a bit of a cliche to look back on it so fondly now, but for me it remains the best era of the sport – when it married the old-school English football with the arrival of glamorous stars from across the world – and obviously it is always nice to see my favourite player ever, John Wark and his moustache."
Andrew said his daughter was now going to write to all the premier league clubs to see what a repeat of her father's 1990s request comes up with in 2023.
