The swift trip to A&E left Dave regretting abusing Rochdale's new turnstile system...

ToePoke's Jack Rivers helps us in our quest to find the 99 things that have long gone from our beloved game...

To nasal strips, bog rolls, proper drop balls and northern names you can now add well-designed footas and matches in the slippy white stuff...

84. Well-Designed Footballs
The Adidas Telstar, 1994 Mitre Premier League (you know the one), Slazenger Special Edition...where and when the fuck did it all go wrong on the football design front, eh? I reckon it was around the time of the new Millennium, when football’s bigwigs probably sat round a table and had a big discussion about why modernising and over-complicating ball design and technology was a necessity to move the game forward. Cue pretentious, wanky art students from Chelsea being paid thousands to spend twenty minutes on a new design, followed by equally twattish French literature types coming up with names like Jabulani, Ascente and Duravel. What a loads of bollocks…

83. Matches Being Played In The Snow
Not so long ago, when men were men and shorts were short, football matches used to go ahead whatever the weather. Snow, ice, torrential rain, gale force winds…back in the day, only a hurricane or tsunami could have prevented kick-offs across the country on a Saturday afternoon. That was then, however, and this is now. When was the last time you saw an orange ball being used, eh? Exactly. Even with all this underlayer crap, today’s players still haven’t got the balls to brave the cold for the sake of our beautiful game. Actually, maybe it’s the referees’ fault: apparently, the slightest bit of frost gives them the excuse to collectively postpone the nation’s football fixture list and take the afternoon off. Fuck it, let’s blame ‘em all. As annoying as the ol’ bugger is, my Grandad’s certainly right about all that "things were different in my day" malarkey.

82. Manned Turnstiles
Imagine the shock on my face when I had to put my ticket through a scanner to get into Cardiff City’s spanking new stadium this year? Now, I’m all for technological advances - Christ, I didn’t have to leave my house to do this year’s Christmas shopping thanks to Amazon - but a barcode on my football ticket? What is this, Tesco for Pete’s sake? For me, hearing the clatter of rusty old turnstiles used to be THE seminal part of the whole match experience. Unfortunately, things seem to be getting a tad impersonal at stadia across the country. Nostalgia aside, you’ve got to ask yourself why our football clubs are shelling out thousand of pounds on this sort of shit. It’s a shocking indictment of the world we live in. Whatever next? Robot stewards? Toilets that flush themselves? Oh, wait…

2010 will be a big year. For a start, we'll finish this bleeding feature. If one of your New Year's resolutions is to moan a lot about how the beautiful game isn't as good as it once was, let us know your suggestions at toepoke.net@gmail.com