The MEN Pink

[Stoned Rose]

Be interested to hear your thoughts @tolmie's hairdoo given your background mate?

 

[JGL07]

I think it was the other way around.
The MEN was green and the Chronicle was Pink.
When the MEN bought / merged the two, they chose to have it the Pink as it was the more successful

I thought that the Green was better although back in the day I would buy both. By the time I started watching City the Green had gone (or rather turned Pink).

My first season watching City was 1962-63. I went to the home matches against Spurs (won1-0) and United (late equaliser for the Rags 1-1).

The following week City were away to West Ham and I decided to go to a motorcycle race at Oulton Park. It was great to start with until the rain came down. I trudged away to catch a train from the now closed Tarporley Station and bought a Pink.

The headlines were all about United winning and staying up with City losing heavily to West Ham (and relegated) almost invisible on the front page.

Then to make a bad weekend even worse, I read in the papers the next day that one of my all-time heroes, Bob McIntyre, had been killed in the meeting at Oulton. McIntyre was the first rider to lap the Isle of Man mountain circuit at over 100mph.

 

[bladdered]

 

[nmc]

Get one outside the ground…. Latest scores printed in blotchy ink would say the Rags were losing 2:1 - I’d be jubilant all the way home…. and then you’d get home to see the jammy twats had equalised in the 95th minute and won with a dodgy pen in the 98th.

 

[1961_vintage]

Would devour it every Saturday. As the only City fan in a rag family, being the only one that could read was a big advantage sometimes.

 

[spiny]

I had the Pink posted to me each week by my dad after I left Manchester. Rolled newspapers had a special cheap postal rate. It was an eye opener to read football papers about other clubs sent to lads from other towns and cities.

Newspaper reporting was parochial with little national reporting in the media. My dad was shocked when fanzines appeared because they had so much more City content than in the Pink which had a basic report, results and snippets including letters.

Did anyone win "Spot the ball"?

 

[Cellarite]

Yep, it’s at my Mam’s house. All I remember is going to the game expecting to get battered because Ferguson had spent a fortune on that United squad, and drove to the game in my £150 Datsun Sunny and was on the Kippax with my mate Ste and we couldn’t believe what happened. The year after I thought we were gonna do it again when we went 3:1 up, but I think it finished up 3:3

I was in Blackpool that day watching Disney on fucking Ice for my little sister. Just what a 12 year old lad wants to do a year after his first Maine Road derby. We did draw 3-3. David White (one of my favourite ever City players) missed another derby sitter.

 

[manclad]

View attachment 37809

Ric needs to improve the site so that we are able to give exceptional posts a million times like.
This is the epitome of that type of post.
Over to you Ric Turner.
You know you can do it (possibly with the help of Damo)!!!

 

[Cellarite]

The match reports in the Pink were very much a product of the pre-online world in that they had to be submitted pretty much as the match ended by the writer submitting his (and it would most definitely have only been a man in those days) copy over the phone in order for it to make the deadline.
The reports were invariably filled with typos as a result but that tended to add to the charm of it all. And if there was any late drama, it very probably wouldn’t get reported in any great detail due to the time constraints. I remember one game at Birmingham that we lost 2-1 to two very late goals. The report in the Pink waxed lyrically about how well City had played in leading 1-0 before a very brief final paragraph said something along the lines of ‘and Birmingham equalised in the 88th minute before scoring the winner in the 91st’.
It wasn’t the cream of sports journalism by any means but in the days before the internet (or for that matter teletext, which played a huge part in its downfall), the Pink was pretty much essential!

My Uncle (some might know him - Badger) was watching the scores come through in Wangies in Eccles that day. I was living at my Nanna’s. I watched with horror as Birmingham’s goals came through. Mike left the pub for a reason only he knows at 0-1. He came in chanting and as happy as a pig in shit until I told him we’d lost. He simply couldn’t comprehend it.

 

[jimharri]

Get one outside the ground…. Latest scores printed in blotchy ink would say the Rags were losing 2:1 - I’d be jubilant all the way home…. and then you’d get home to see the jammy twats had equalised in the 95th minute and won with a dodgy pen in the 98th.

Some things never change!