By Far the Greatest Football "Musical Top 10" (Part 1: 10–6)

From Go For It! to Hells Bells, football and music have long shared a wonderfully chaotic friendship. Part 1 of the Top 10, By Far The Greatest Football countdown of musical football moments (10–6) celebrates everything from Coventry City’s FA Cup single to Terry Venables’ jazz crooning, via punk anthems, cult kits, and West Country ballads. It’s the soundtrack to football’s quirkiest cultural side.

10: Go for it! – Coventry City

FA Cup final singles were all the rage in the 1980s, a tradition that given the quality of football squad songs and 1980s music proved mercifully short.

My favourite of the genre just for its general lack of glitz is Coventry City’s Go For It! from 1987. It was a kind of 80s-infused Status Quo affair, with a bit of twirly guitar last heard on Joe Fagin’s Auf Wiedersehen Pet theme tune That’s Livin’ Alright.

This song was so low-key I could only find footage of them performing it on Blue Peter – a performance lifted by Trevor Peake’s literal blowing of a whistle to hit the “hear the whistle blow” line.

Lyrically it follows the classic name-checking of players formula; Trevor’s at his Peake and a pretty tenuous [Micky} Gynn rhyme with [Keith] Houchen, before ending with Sky Blues – shooting to win pay-off.

It got to a suitably lower league number 61 in the charts, while their more glamourous opponents Spurs got to number 18 with their latest Chas & Dave number Hot Shot Tottenham. Coventry had the last laugh though by beating Spurs 3-2 in the final, while Craig Johnstone topped them all by reviving the format the following year with the Anfield Rap.

9. All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit - Half Man, Half Biscuit

A year earlier Birkenhead indie-rock outfit and John Peel favourites, Half Man, Half Biscuit released a song whose influence would far outlast that of the Sky Blues, and indeed Dukla Prague itself.

Originally released as part of the brilliantly-named Trumpton Riots EP, All I Want For Christmas Is A Dukla Prague Away Kit gave cult status to the Czechoslovakian state army team, which won 11 league titles - mostly in the 1950s and 1960s – and more importantly its kit.

Dukla Prague ultimately hit a downward spiral after the break-up of Czechoslovakia, first losing their league status with a Derby County-esque relegation, and then ultimately losing the name altogether after a merger in 1996 with FC Portal Pribam.

Neither was it Half Man, Half Biscuit’s only football-related reference, name-checking World of Sport host and half man, half badger Dickie Davies with their follow-up Dickie Davies Eyes.

The away shirt lived on thanks to the song, perhaps most surreally when then-Tory minister Damien Green appeared wearing the shirt in 2017 during an interview at the Latitude Festival.

Subbuteo gets an even better name-check – including the fabulous line ‘You’d always get palmed off with a headless striker, or a goalkeeper with no arms and face like his”. Though this still has some way to go to beat The Undertones’ top 10 hit from 1979, My Perfect Cousin with ‘He always beat me at Subbuteo, because he flicked to kick, and I didn’t know’.

Neither was it Half Man, Half Biscuit’s only football-related reference, name-checking World of Sport host and half man, half badger Dickie Davies with their follow-up Dickie Davies Eyes.

8 .Hells Bells – AC/DC

If one club can outdo Dukla Prague in the cult status stakes it is every self-respecting metropolitan elite’s team of choice, St Pauli.

The Hamburg side wears its liberal values on its sleeve - a sleeve on a brown, yes brown, kit which it for several years manufactured itself through its own Di!Y brand as it was not satisfied about the ethical sustainability of kit manufacturers.

It has also developed a huge following and popular appeal well beyond the confines of Hamburg. That in part is driven by the atmosphere at the ground, building on the punk movement in the area and its unofficial skull and crossbones emblem.

Setting the mood for the atmosphere is AC/DC’s Hells Bells – the song the players walk out to.

The Hamburg side wears its liberal values on its sleeve on a kit which it manufactured itself as it was not satisfied about the ethical sustainability of kit manufacturers.

It is a pretty unique track to come onto and it’s certainly no Let Me Entertain You. From the bring out year dead-style bell that tolls at the start to the slow guitar build-up that follows, it is all pretty foreboding. Indeed it has more resemblance to a funeral march than an up-tempo, whip the crowd into a pre-match frenzy about it, perhaps because the walk out to the centre circle from the tunnel at one corner of the ground is pretty long. Or maybe it is just the song that makes it seem that way.

7. Yeovil True -Yeovil Town

An altogether different type of hell comes with the unlikely hit Yeovil True. An FA Cup song out of time, it was released in 2004 to commemorate the West Country side’s third round tie against Liverpool.

Quite why this achievement deserved the dubious honour of a single is unclear – Yeovil were by this stage a football league team and this still had some way to go to surpass the best of their renowned giant killing exploits as a non-league side. But mark it they did, with a Worzels-inspired take on Two Little Boys.

The less said about the song the better, for obvious reasons. But true to their roots, ‘Little Old Yeovil’ upstaged many a bigger act by making to number 36 in the UK charts – despite the record only being sold in Yeovil.

6. What do you want to make those at me for – Terry Venables

There is almost nothing Terry Venables didn’t try his hand at over the years, and while coaching was to become his most obvious vocation, back in 1974 he gave crooning his best shot with a version of the song originally from the 1916 Broadway production Follow Me.

There is not exactly a shortage of versions of this song, but El Tel’s rendition, backed by the Billy Amstell Jazz Band, stands up pretty well – especially after relistening to the Welsh Elvis’ Shakin Stevens 1987 effort.

Not that it seemed to land that well with Venables’ QPR team-mates at the time. It was more bemusement judging by their slightly awkward appearance in the studio of the Russell Harty show, while Terry belts out the number.

Maybe that hastened Venables’ exit from Loftus Road to finish his playing career at Crystal Palace, just before Rangers took the division by storm to nearly win the title in 1976.

That was not to be El Tel’s only releases. He recorded England Crazy and If I Can Dream after his time in charge at England, while he also sang on Spanish TV after his trailblazing spell at Barcelona in the mid-1980s.

Listen to the podcast

Join Graham Dunn and Jamie Rooney — with South Coast Jamie — as they revisit the wildest crossover between football and music, from punk terraces to crooning managers.

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From the Archives

We have done podcasts featuring all these songs and teams, but perhaps none have gone into more depth on the songs - and less depth on the team than our look at Dukla Prague. Come for Dukla Prague, stay for the Final Score music content