Come Here To Me!

I love the beautiful game, and I hate the ‘Red Tops’.

For years, I’ve been an avid reader of When Saturday Comes, and long-term readers of the blog will know that the once-thriving fanzine culture in the League of Ireland is something I sorely miss. In the past we’ve featured fanzines from Bohs, Pats and Rovers supporters, publications which really captured the spirit of the game and offered something much more than stats and sensationalism to the football faithful here.

Good football writing, and passionate football writing, is hard to find. In 2011, over in the UK, The Blizzard landed. I sat up immediately. It had all the passion of the fanzines, and was written in a style that meant it stood tall as a journalistic effort too. It gave space to things so often omitted from mainstream football publications, like the history of our beautiful game.

Describing the publication, editor Jonathan Wilson has noted

The Blizzard (is not) the organ of any one individual. Rather it aims to provide a platform for writers, British and foreign, to write about football-related subjects important to them, be that at the highest level or the lowest, at home or abroad. Eclecticism is the key. There will be no attempt to impose an editorial line; all opinions expressed are those of the individual author. Equally, within certain basic parameters, writers are encouraged to write in whatever style they see fit.

It’s format is perfectly between magazine and book, beautiful to handle and wonderfully designed. Prior to now Irish readers have had to purchase hard copies via the publications website, but now it is due to arrive in Dublin via Casa Rebelde in Temple Bar. All going well, I’m told it will arrive by the end of next week.

The Blizzard isn’t what one would expect from an ‘alternative’ football read. There’s more to this than a profile of Sankt Pauli or FCUM or something else you’d expect from The Guardian. A particularly strong past article that comes to mind looked at a first World War internment camp that shaped the development of the game in Europe. That’s the sort of thing you can expect.

Welcome to Dublin.