Young fans will never know league ladders - just 12 months of football

NOTHING yanks the nostalgia ripcord in quite the same way as a set of League Ladders does. This would have been, in more innocent times before the advent of the FIFA Club World Cup, the close season.

- Guy Henderson of the Torquay United Yellow Army Podcast writes exclusively for you.

Footballers everywhere would have been on their holidays, probably taking their families to Spain for a week on one of the Costas. They might well lark about for the cameras, and later in the year pictures would appear of your favourite players wearing sombreros and holding raffia donkeys by the pool.

Closer to home, some of the Torquay United lads would have been topping up their meagre salaries during the off-season by singing in local pubs or flogging deckchairs on the seafront.

Living it up in Dubai or preparing for a pre-season tournament in the Far East belonged far in the future.

Last week we talked about the absence of a ‘close season’ as such these days, with an almost unbroken run of high-profile matches for the top clubs all the way through the summer.

But once upon a time there would be a good six weeks of football-free time for the fans.

There was cricket, of course, and last week one reader gently took me to task for even suggesting that football had a place in the summer diary. “It is the CRICKET SEASON,” he insisted.