SHOOT

Arguably the most famous football comic of them all. Watch out that early issues from 6th Sept to 4th Oct 1969 could have interior damage. In order to get the free stand-up football figures, I remember you had to cut out coupons and small triangle tokens from corners of adverts.

Interestingly a Pilot Issue was produced just prior to launch marked Not For Resale. This would have been used internally at the publishers and sent to varous peole and outlets for their comments. An example fetched £68 on eBay UK in Mar 2010, anther gem from Cardiff Comics. It is obviously Very Rare.

History

Shoot began publication as a weekly and was arguably the most popular football magazine in the UK, remaining the strongest magazine in this market until the mid-1990s. It later became a monthly, before reverting to a weekly and is now available as an interactive application.

Shoot was noted throughout the 1970s and 1980s for the quality of its news stories and articles on all aspects of football in England and Scotland. The magazine was also known for its "Star Writer" features. Each season a selection of big-name First Division players were signed up to write columns, including Kevin Keegan, Bryan Robson and Charlie Nicholas. This feature continued in the monthly incarnation of the magazine, with stars including Joe Cole and Danny Mills penning regular columns.

The magazine also featured Paul Trevillion's You Are The Ref comic strip for many years. This strip was collected in book form in 2006.

The weekly magazine was also known for its annual free gift of "Shoot League Ladders". This consisted of a thin card sheet on which were printed blank league tables for each division of the Football League and Scottish League in the appropriate team colours) which could be fitted into the slits to indicate where each team currently stood in the league table. As the season progressed and teams moved up and down the table, their tabs could be moved to new slits accordingly. Old league ladders are still regularly sold on eBay.

Shoot's circulation hit a high of 120,000 copies per week in 1996. It changed to a monthly magazine in 2001, selling in excess of 33,000 copies a month. It was relaunched as a weekly magazine in late February 2008 before publishers IPC sold off the brand in August 2008.

Issue History

The entire Shoot run has 1,717 issues. There were 1696 printed from August 1969-till December 2007. Due to strike action the following eleven issues were not produced:

Number 561 (May 17 1980) - Number 566 (June 21st 1980)

Number 774 (June 3 1984) - Number 778 (July 28 1984)

Shoot! was a Weekly Magazine up to and including March 31st 2001 (issue 1616)

Shoot! then became a Monthly Magazine from May 2001 (issue 1617). It was common for football magazines to be on sale in the month prior to the date on the cover, so hence no editions of Shoot dated in April 2001.

Shoot remained a 'monthly' until and including March 2008 (issue 1699) so virtually 7 years as a Monthly. Shoot then reverted back to a 'Weekly' Magazine from Feb 26th 2008 (issue 1700).