In a time before the Vauxhall Conference and the Vanarama National League, making your way from the non-league game into the Football League proper was a matter of mastering the game’s darkest arts.

With no nationally agreed pyramid and no clear path from the lower reaches into the Fourth Division, all was decided at a right boozy do at the Café Royal in London - a greasy spoon at Hilton Park should have been more appropriate surely? But that London was the place where the bottom four sides in Division Four vied for votes with non-league outfits that fancied a crack at becoming one of the 92. The four most popular clubs were given the golden ticket to another season of visiting The Shay.

It was a less than scientific process that thwarted many a fine non-league side over the years, none more so than Altrincham, perennial FA Cup warriors but forever destined to lose their electoral deposit.

Free ballpoint pens, raised trouser legs, goodie bags, we can’t say for certain that these were the tools of winning election to Division Four, but a nod’s as good as a wink to a blind bat. Say no more.

In fact, Steven Scragg and Dave Bowler do say a bit more, otherwise it would be a very quiet podcast.

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England captain Kevin Keegan signed for Second Division Newcastle United on the eve of the 1982/83 campaign and spent two seasons as a player on Tyneside, throwing himself into the crowd after scoring on his debut, waving goodbye to them from a helicopter two years later, having piloted them back to the top flight.

Steven Scragg and Aidan Williams talk us through his time as a player with the Magpies, from the onset of Keeganmania on Tyneside, through to his decision to retire from the game, never to return. Or so he said…

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We take you back to 1985/86 when for half the season, horror of horrors, there was no football on television. Don’t worry, the TV companies are making up for it now.

Steven Scragg and Chris Lepkowski take you through a brief history of televised football before examining the whys and wherefores of a very different world when league football was whipped off our screens and, if you wanted to watch games, you had to actually go to the ground. Different times…

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yourboystookahellofabeating.substack.com

From a first top flight title in a quarter of a century in 1979/80, through to the glories of Gothenburg in the teeming rain, and the collection of the UEFA Super Cup at the end of 1983, Alex Ferguson’s Aberdeen enjoyed an unprecedented era of success for any Scottish side not based in Glasgow.

Knocking the Old Firm off their perch, winning the Scottish Cup in style, putting Real Madrid to the sword, and doing it with a side that was, in the main, homegrown, all the elements of Ferguson’s managerial blueprints were present and correct at Pittodrie. Steven Scrag and Dave Bowler take you through those seismic times in the Granite City.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yourboystookahellofabeating.substack.com

1988/89, a seismic season for football on television as the cartel has gone and ITV have snatched sole rights to the Football League, meaning the end of ‘Match of the Day’ as we knew it.

Spending £44million, in those days when that really was £44million, ITV were the masters now. Steven Scragg and Stuart Horsfield look back on the opening day of a season when football clubs were suddenly rich beyond the dreams of avarice and started flashing the cash as if it would never run out.

Spoiler. For some, it did.

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Where else to start a new podcast about football in the 1980s than with the traditional curtain raiser, the Football Association’s Charity Shield? (None of this Johnny-come-lately Community Shield nonsense here).

Steven Scragg and Aidan Williams take us back to the 1986 meeting of Liverpool and Everton at the proper Wembley Stadium, the first time that television had seen fit to screen the entire game live.

Discussing the game, the build up, the legacy and why it was that Subbuteo trophies were never at the same scale as the players, once you have studied Module 1, you will be armed and ready to dazzle all-comers with your Charity Shield knowledge. As long as they only want to know about 1986.

You can even watch the game here.

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This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yourboystookahellofabeating.substack.com

Welcome to Your Boys Took A Hell Of A Beating, the Open University for 1980s football - we will be asking questions later.

Professor Steven Scragg has assembled a crack, or possibly crap, team of specialists to delight you with a series of in-depth modules, covering every possible facet of 1980s football in the weeks and months to come. In addition, our sister podcast, Football Revisited, will take you through the 1979/80 campaign, week by week, courtesy of some epic YouTube beachcombing.

As you will hear from the job interviews he conducted in order to compile his team, no stone was left unturned, nor turn unstoned, in the pursuit of footballing academic excellence…

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit yourboystookahellofabeating.substack.com