Blast from the past: When football fans were kept in the dark about results

​But finding out football results wasn’t always as easy as clicking a button on your mobile phone or laptop.

I’m reading Martin O’Neill’s autobiography at the minute and in the book he recounts the 1976/77 season when his team Nottingham Forest needed Bolton to lose to Wolves in order for Forest to be promoted into the old first division.

As the match played out O’Neill and the rest of the team were on a plane to Spain as their season had ended. It wasn’t until they touched down that the chairman used a payphone to call home and find out the result – 1-0 to Wolves – which he relayed to the players, cueing the celebrations to begin.

It reminded me of a time I phoned home from a foreign holiday to find out the score of a Glenavon friendly. It also made me recall those times I’d followed results on Ceefax/teletext, praying for scores to change each time a page refreshed, or when my granddad would queue for The Ulster on a Saturday night to get a comprehensive run down of every ball kicked that day in the province.

Did being kept in the dark make the results sweeter? Yes, but only if my teams won.