NEWS this week of Tim Gudgin’s death reminded me of the simple pleasures of football past.

Gudgin was the voice of BBC football results, the man whose unique rising and falling intonation meant you knew the result of a game before he read out the away team’s score.

Who hasn’t impersonated his style or listened to someone else doing so and not found it amusing?

Listening to Gudgin read results was relaxing, soothing even – a nice way to spend 10 minutes sitting on the sofa soaking up the day’s football outcomes.

It was the way people used to get their results on a Saturday afternoon. Old school maybe to those for whom tapping on a mobile phone to get instant football updates is a way of life, but why does everything have to be so rushed these days?

Gudgin’s passing can be seen as another milestone sign of how times have changed, both culturally and football-wise, and set me off all nostalgic about those simple little things we used to like which have gone forever.

The sight of swaying terraces, running on the pitch legally and seeing toilet rolls flying through the air with the ends of paper ever-lengthening until they landed on the pitch.

And who can forget those old letter-co-ordinated scoreboards on which the scores appeared at half time and you had to check your programme to find out which letter related to which game.

You had to wait almost until the second half started for the club to manually place the scores next to the letters but it was worth the wait.

That was unless you’d already found out from the fan with the transistor radio permanently pressed to his ear.

There was always one and he invariably took great delight in updating those around him with any snippets of interest from other games.

Picking up the Buff football paper in Bolton, or Pink Final in my case coming from Bury, for the match report, results and tables was a Saturday evening tradition I’d venture gave those who partook in it more pleasure than any amount of logging on to a website on a mobile phone these days.

Whatever happened to the practice of flying your scarf out of the car window on the way to away games? Or wearing scarves on your wrist? Or deciding with your mates in the pub to go to a game at half past two and paying at the turnstiles?

Looking for floodlights to find grounds was always a fun game but has died a death since clubs integrated lights into their stadiums.

Watching teletext and the BBC Grandstand vidiprinter for scores, teams playing in snow, orange balls, rattles, rosettes and pendants. Where are they now?

They are gone the same way as season tickets with individual tickets you ripped out each game.

If you lost it there was no comeback so you guarded it with your life but it gave you a sense of pride and identity.

Queuing for tickets might seem the ultimate in inconvenience nowadays, but anyone who spent hours with thousands of others gradually inching forward will know the feeling of togetherness is hard to beat – unless the club ran out of tickets of course in which case the feeling of guttedness is hard to beat.

It’s an eye-rolling cliché now but it really felt like there was magic to the FA Cup with simple draws, second cup replays at neutral grounds, semi-finals at neutral clubs, and cup finals with all-day TV including an inter-club It’s A Knockout, reporters travelling with fans and team coaches going up Wembley Way chased by supporters.

All cups had proper homecomings – on the day after the game – with fans up trees and lamp posts and on buildings with no regard for health and safety.

These things are long gone along with short shorts, muffled World Cup commentary, the Admiral England shirt, Saint and Greavesie and now Tim Gudgin’s distinctive intonation.

All have gone for a reason. They either stopped being in fashion or became collateral damage of the game’s development.

But if fans watching a game through the lens of a mobile phone camera is progress give me a time machine and take me back a few decades.