Shoot (football magazine)

Shoot
Categories Football
Frequency Weekly
First issue January 1969
Final issue December 2008
Country United Kingdom
Based in London, England
Language English
Website Official Shoot website

Shoot, or Shoot Monthly, is a football magazine published in the UK since 1969.[1]

Introduction

Shoot began publication as a weekly and was the strongest magazine in this market until the mid-1990s. It later became a monthly, before reverting to a weekly, and is now available as an interactive application.

Shoot was noted throughout the 1970s and 1980s for the quality of its news stories and articles on all aspects of football in England and Scotland. Every week’s edition featured a colour two-page centrefold photo of a team, and several other glossy colour photographs of players from the top teams, usually but not exclusively in the first division. The magazine also had a “Focus On” feature that, along with the colour photo of a player, asked him to reveal some basic biographical information as well as some personal information, such as his favourite entertainer or his least favourite opponent. Throughout the 1970s the interviewed players’ answer to ‘person in the world you would most like to meet’ was overwhelmingly boxer Muhammad Ali.

The magazine was also known for its "Star Writer" features. Each season a selection of big-name First Division players, including Alan Ball, Billy Bremner, Kenny Dalglish, Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson and Charlie Nicholas, wrote (or had ghost-written for them) columns on their football lives. This feature continued in the monthly incarnation of the magazine, with stars including Joe Cole and Danny Mills penning regular columns.

The magazine also featured Paul Trevillion's You Are The Ref comic strip for many years. This strip was collected in book form in 2006.[2]

League ladders

The weekly magazine was also known for its annual free gift of "Shoot League Ladders". This consisted of a thin card sheet on which were printed blank league tables for each division of the Football League and Scottish League in the appropriate team colours) which could be fitted into the slits to indicate where each team currently stood in the league table. As the season progressed and teams moved up and down the table, their tabs could be moved to new slits accordingly. Old league ladders are still regularly sold on eBay.[3]

Demise and rebirth

In the 1970s Shoot merged with a rival publication, "Goal", and for a while was sold under the title "Shoot/Goal". Shoot's circulation hit a high of 120,000 copies per week in 1996. It changed to a monthly magazine in 2001, selling in excess of 33,000 copies a month. It was relaunched as a weekly magazine in late February 2008 before publishers IPC sold off the brand in August 2008..[4]

Shoot did not number their magazines but, as far as can be established, 1717 issues were printed as follows;

Weekly 16 August 1969(issue 1) to 31 March 2001 (issue 1616)

Monthly

May 2001 (issue 1617) printed in April) to March 2008 inclusive (issue 1699)

Weekly

26 Feb 2008 (issue 1700) to 24 June 2008 (issue 1717)

  • There were no weekly issues of Shoot from May 17th to June 21st 1980 (6 weeks) and from June 30th to July 28th 1984 (5 weeks) due to industrial action.
    • Occasionally 'Double Issues' were produced particularly for the Christmas / New Year issue when the magazine ran as a weekly

Pedigree Group have licensed the brand since that date and have produced special editions of the magazine plus an on-line version and in June 2011 launched an app version. They also produce the Shoot Annual and a number of other Shoot publications and branded products.

References

  1. ↑ Henson, Mike (26 July 2018). "Shoot, Match and the glory days of football magazines for teenagers". the Guardian. Retrieved 27 July 2018.
  2. ↑ guardianbooks.co.uk Archived 6 June 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ Irish Examiner Archived 29 September 2007 at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ Pandher, Satwant (2008-06-20). "Football mag Shoot closes after 40 years on the ball". Press Gazette. Retrieved 2008-07-07.
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