St James' Park in the 1980s and an epic journey around a now-vanished football landscape 

The 1980s was a difficult decade for English football. Crumbling stadiums, falling attendances, casual hooliganism, and appalling tragedies at Hillsborough, Heysel and Bradford all contributed to what was frequently a gloomy time for the national game.

That being said, it was the very last knockings of a more innocent sporting age - a time before the arrival of the Premier League and Sky Sports and the wholesale commercialisation and commodification of football.

It was an era when, more often than not, you didn’t need a ticket to go to a match. You could turn up at ten-to-three on a Saturday, pay your money at the turnstiles, and wander onto terraces where you’d stand shoulder-to-shoulder with random folk who were just like you. Football still felt like it belonged to the fans.

Against this backdrop, during 1988 and 1989, Giles Goford and his late father Jeremy toured England and Wales, visiting each of the 92 Football League grounds. Thirty-five years on, that journey around a very different footballing landscape is captured in an enjoyable new book, written by Giles, and published by Conker Editions, called Head For The Floodlights.

It’s the story of a football-obsessed teenager and a dad who wasn’t a football fan, but who had a sense of adventure and wanted to bond with his son at a time of personal difficulties. The hundreds of photos taken on the trip recall what football was like in that pre-Premier League era of ramshackle grounds and muddy pitches – and how a father and son went searching for football stadiums, but found much more.

For Newcastle United, the 1980s were very much a mixed bag. There was the sensational arrival of Kevin Keegan, followed by the emergence of prodigious young local talents Chris Waddle, Peter Beardsley and Paul Gascoigne. On the other hand, the Magpies began and ended the decade in football’s second tier, once-proud St James’ Park was in a state of major disrepair, and Waddle, Beardsley and Gazza all left for pastures new in quick succession.

On their journey around the 92 grounds, 15-year-old Giles Goford and his dad arrived at St James’ Park in early April 1988, in between visits to Carlisle’s Brunton Park and Sunderland’s Roker Park. United’s previous match had been a 2-2 draw with Coventry City, and indeed this would be a relatively satisfactory season for the Magpies and they’d finish 8th in the League.

Head For The Floodlights proves to be an entertaining read. “St James’ Park is an easy stadium to find, perched on top of a hill next to Leazes Park overlooking the city, so my amateur navigational skills weren’t required at this stop,” writes Buckingham-born Giles who currently lives in Cheshire and is the Global Development Producer at BBC Sport.

“We parked close by and just walked through an open gate. We weren’t hanging around to ask permission. The picture of the closed and crumbling Official Club Shop and Travel is one of my favourites, and completely evocative of the era. It was early April, so maybe the shutters weren’t due a lick of paint until the season had finished.

“Denied a chance to buy a Mirandinha bobble head figure, we made our way towards the hallowed Geordie turf. This was our first real sight, smell and touch of groundhopping. With no one in sight, we respectfully walked around the perimeter of the pitch, although the budding centre-forward in me would have loved to have skipped on to the grass beneath the vast brutalist concrete East Stand and slammed a few balls into the empty goal at the Leazes End.

“I always had a soft spot for Newcastle, mainly through my school friend Mike. Around this time we would travel up to London to watch their often erratic team at Wimbledon, Arsenal and QPR. I loved going in the away end with the Geordie faithful at these grounds. They would travel in their masses, passionately belting out Blaydon Races as one.

“I knew we were at a legendary stadium in a city where football meant everything. I think Dad was impressed too.”

• Head For The Floodlights - Around the 92 in the 1980s, by Giles Goford, is published by Conker Editions and priced at £16.

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