Shoot (football magazine)
Shoot, or Shoot Monthly, is a football magazine published in the UK since 1969.
Introduction
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 such as 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.[1]
League ladders
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, with a slit in the card alongside each position on the tables. Also given away were T-shaped "tabs" for each club in the league (printed 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.[2]
Demise and rebirth
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.
Pedigree Group have licensed the brand since that date and have produced special editions of the magazine plus an on-line version and in June 2011 launched an app version. They also produce the Shoot Annual and a number of other Shoot publications and branded products.