It was said that wives in the West Midlands used to call their husbands “old Argus face” – a nod to the hours many spent every Saturday night with their heads buried in the newspaper.
For devoted football followers and pools players, the Sports Argus was essential reading and widely regarded as the “sporting bible of the West Midlands”.
Results and match reports could be read within an hour of the final whistle after a frenzy to get the publication “off stone” and ready to print.
The final edition rolled off the presses 20 years ago this month, and a new book charts the 109-year history of the paper, which ran from 1897 to 2006.
“It’s difficult for youngsters to think back even 20 years to the days before the internet was popular, about just how you would have got your results coming in,” said author and historian Norman Bartlam.
Most major cities produced their own Saturday sports papers, some printed on green, blue or pink paper, but the Argus was “second to none”, he said.
“In those good old days, all matches finished more or less at ten to five without fail,” he explained, “and by half past five the first editions were hitting the streets of Birmingham and the wider West Midlands.”
Published by the Birmingham Mail, for many years the distinctive “pink” was the largest-selling sports paper in Britain.
It covered results from the “big six” clubs, said Bartlem – Birmingham City, Aston Villa, West Bromwich Albion, Wolverhampton Wanderers Walsall and Coventry City.
But it was also particularly good at covering non-league and amateur sport across the region, he said, including “works matches and schoolboy football – as well as lots of other sports”.
“It was first, it was fast and it was accurate – very rarely was there a mistake.”
“Kids would be sent to line up outside newsagents to buy it, that was their Saturday night,” the author said.
“There’d be dozens, hundreds sometimes if it was a big match, of people queuing up outside for it to come in.”
One of those, who “daren’t” return home without a copy was West Bromwich Albion fan Bob Downing.
He went on to be a sports reporter and sub-editor at the paper, but as a boy in Langley, near Oldbury, he would be at his local newsagents just before six o’clock every Saturday.
“A couple of times I got there and was right at the back of the queue, and I thought ‘I’m not going to get one’,” he said.
“So I waited outside the shop and when the Argus van came I said to the driver ‘It’s alright pal, I’ll take them in for you’.
“So I took the Arguses from him, and everyone waiting in the shop all parted for me like the Red Sea.
“I put them down on the counter, and had the first two.”
“The other thing we’d do,” he added, “is cut out the pictures in the Argus, and put them in a book, and then take them up to the Albion ground for the players to autograph.
“I mean there were no selfies or anything like that in those days.”
After joining the Sandwell Mail in 1979, Downing said he started out covering Albion and Wolverhampton matches for the Argus, which was “amazing”.
Football reporters would file their reports throughout the games via a landline in the press room back to copytakers in the Birmingham newsroom.
He remembers covering one “remarkable” match at North Shields who were playing Walsall in the FA Cup.
“There was only two telephones, and one of those was locked away in the secretary’s room,” Downing said.
“So I had to do a running match report from somebody’s house.
“I knocked on this lady’s door, showed her my press card, and asked if I could use her telephone.”
He said he then had to cross back and forth between there and the football ground.
“I did that five times during the match. So when people said to me, ‘you never saw the same match I did’, I’ve got to say, ‘well you’re dead right there’.”
Another memorable day was spent covering the 1997 Grand National at Aintree, which was disrupted by IRA bomb threats.
Reporters had been issued with mobile phones by then, Downing said, although it was “like carrying a brick,” but the police had closed down all telephone signal due to the terrorist threat.
“Again I had to knock on someone’s door, and asked to use the phone,” he said.
“And there was people coming in from next door to watch me report on the phone, it was surreal,” he said.
“I think that was the first time that the Argus didn’t lead on a football match on the front page.”
Rob Bishop was chief reporter from 1987 to 1990, but worked on the paper for many more years than that.
“If you were covering a game you always hoped it would be the most dramatic, so you’d be the headline on the front page,” he said.
“But obviously that wasn’t in your hands.”
He recalls covering one memorable Aston Villa match at Manchester United in January 1988.
“It was awful conditions with snow still on the ground,” he explained.
“And when I got there, I got to the phone and I had a word with the sports editor, and he said, ‘you’re going to have to write far more than usual because everything else is off’.
“So I think I was even mentioning when someone got a throw-in, it was just a case of trying to fill the space.”
Working at the paper had been “terrific” he said.
“They used to say in local sport, if it wasn’t in the Argus, it didn’t happen.”
Most major towns had a sports paper, he added, “but the Argus was always regarded as the most prestigious.”
“The important thing as well,” added Downing, “I worked with just some amazing people, it was a great team.”
The book, The Sports Argus: Eye on the Midlands, includes interviews with former footballers, as well as those involved in its production, said its author.
Some of them, like Albion and Wolves player Alistair Robertson, had “followed their careers through the pages of the Argus.”
In the book, Robertson said as a young player he would “carefully cut out” any report he was mentioned in, posting them once a fortnight to his parents in Scotland.
In those pre-internet days “there was no other way of showing them what I was doing,” he said.
Other sports are also represented in the book, with interviews with Anne Jones, famous for winning Wimbledon in 1969 and Warwickshire cricketer Dennis Amos.
“It’s gone down so well,” added Bartlam, “I think we’ll end up doing a second edition”.
The paper eventually fell victim to changing match kick-off times and technology, with the last edition published in May 2006.
Results had become available online before the paper could be published.
Bartlam said “so many” people had come forward with memories and cuttings, also included in the book.
“Whether they worked on it, were readers, or getting a mention for playing works football on a Sunday morning – I’ve tried to include them,” he added.
The Sports Argus: The Eye on the Midlands is published by Curtis Sport.
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