SIGN HERE, PLEASE

DAVID OHL LOOKS BACK TO THE DAYS WHEN FOOTBALL PLAYER AUTOGRAPHS BECAME HIGHLY SOUGHT-AFTER...

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THE creation of the iPhone by Steve Jobs gave all football fans the capability to take immediate photographs and 'selfies' with their favourite footballers. Before then, the traditional method of collecting a happy memento of meeting your playing heroes was asking for their signature or autograph.

As youngsters, we would look at all of the autographs of the players that we had collected and choose which ones we thought were the best. Some were completely illegible; some were merely scribbles and many were pretty basic.

Others, like those of real superstars of the 1960s and 1970s, such as Jeff Astle, George Best, Bobby Charlton, Geoff Hurst, Kevin Keegan, Bobby Moore and Peter Osgood, were simply fantastic.

Theirs were powerfully written with real flourish, style and artistry. Unfortunately, I don't have any of those treasures in my collection.

It became the practice for some footballers to put their team number underneath their signatures in order to make them a bit more special. As youngsters we would plan ahead and practise our autographs for when we became famous footballers, not that I knew anyone who ever did!

After all, it might have become embarrassing for us, if we had succeeded in making it to the first team of a top club, to then have to decide how we were going to impress our fans by signing our names spectacularly. This never became a problem, unfortunately, as we were never going to be asked for an autograph, anyway.

Actually, that's not quite true. I was once asked when climbing the stairs at a London Underground tube station whether I was Ian Botham, the famous England cricketer!