The Football Rattle

When I first started watching football, on Match of the Day, back when it started on BBC2 in 1964, supporters were still using rattles. No, I don't mean baby rattles, in blue or pink plastic. I'm talking about big, wooden rattles, that made one heck of a noise as the supporters spun them around by their handles.

I also remember one or two people at Grassmeade using football rattles a few years later. But then the fad died out. In between times my brother, who was a trained cabinet maker and a whizz at carpentry, made me the biggest football rattle I had ever seen. When I spun it round by the handle it made the loudest clackety-clack imaginable. Alas, I never got to use it at Grassmeade, for I would most certainly have stood out in the crowd.

Football rattles originated around the time of the Second World War. They were apparently used by air raid wardens to sound the alarm if they detected poisonous gas was in the air. In addition to this usage, farmers also used the rattles to scare crows and other bird life off their land. I guess that was before scarecrows were invented.

During my research, some reports mentioned the use of football rattles at matches as far back as the 1880s. That is possible, I suppose, but I do wonder where the proof for that claim comes from. Unless there is a Methuselah character still living from Victorian times who we could ask, we would have to treat that one with a pinch of salt.

Either way, football rattles were a sign of the times among supporters following the War years, probably never to be repeated again.