Welcome to Gary James’ Football Archive

Women’s Football in Manchester

With the latest edition of Manchester Corinthians: The Authorised History now at the designer, it feels like the perfect moment to reflect on an 11-year project into the history of women’s football in Greater Manchester. When I began this project in 2015, there was no comprehensive, documented history of Manchester City’s early women’s team, nor…

Darren Beckford Tribute

Yesterday came the news of Darren Beckford’s death at the age of 59. I wanted to pay a full and proper tribute to him but have only really had the chance today. Darren (seen in 1985 in the main photo taken by John Peters with his parents Val and Dudley and his brother Jason) was…

Alan Oakes’ 500 Appearances

Today (9 November) in 1974 Manchester City presented longserving player Alan Oakes with a silver plate to commemorate his 500th League appearance. He’d actually made his 500th League appearance the previous week when City faced Everton at Goodison. At Maine Road on 9 November City chairman Peter Swales presented him with the award before the…

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About this Website

On this site you will find articles, posts and other material about football. Some of this material is free to access (select ‘Free Content’ from the menu above) while other material is available to those who subscribe to the site. 

The site was launched on 1 January 2021. Since then hundreds of articles, interviews (audio & written), history talks and both my PDFs of my first book (From Maine Men To Banana Citizens, published 1989 and out of print since 1990) and the 2010 edition of Manchester A Football History book (this originally cost £24.95 and has been out of print since 2012) have been posted.

To get a feel for the volume and type of article available visit the ‘Search The Archive’ page (or use either the search function at the bottom of this page or by selecting a category in the Posted Content Categories field below).

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If you would like to read everything on this site then please subscribe. I’m not employed by anyone and do not take advertising on this site, so every subscription directly helps my research and writing. It works out about £1.67 a month if you take out an annual subscription (£20 per year, here) or £3 a month (below) if you’d like to sign up for a month at a time. Why not sign up for a month (see below), see what’s here and then cancel if you don’t think it’s appropriate for you?

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