If you go to the National Football Museum in Manchester you wont find Matt Le Tiss but you will find The Ugly Inside.

Anyone who finds themselves in Manchester city centre should pay a visit to the National Football Museum which has been resident there since July of last year after moving from its previous home at Preston North End's Deepdale ground.

A multi level experience that looks at many different aspects of the game as well as hosting changing exhibitions, the latest being about changig fashions in football both on and off the pitch which sadly for the six man Ugly Inside vanguard didnt start till the day after they visited.

But even without this gem a visit to the museum was still a decent mornings activity taking around 2 hours to do, amazing value with admission being free, although we did all make a donation and some of us even made the suggested donation of £4.

It would be hard to list all of what was in the museum here and it varyed from actual artefacts including the shirt that Bobby Moore wore in thet 1970 game against Brazil to football used in some of the classic matches of the games history, to films and even interactive activities.

The emphasis I found was not on the Club side of things but a more global aspect and therefore there wasnt much to view from a Saints perspective, indeed I think womens football would have seen the biggest focus on Southampton with not only a Southampton Women's FC shirt worn by Sue Lopez from the time in the late 70's early 80's when our team was one of the best in the country, but also a shirt and the programme from the England's womans international played at the Dell in 1979 which im sure some older readers will remember.

If you wanted to see something on your own club though, most supporters would have to use a touch screen exhibit that allowed you to select your club and see some statistics as well as pictures of iconic images connected with the club, viewing the Saints pages was interesting, our iconic player picture was Terry Paine and alongside him where not only an old programme from around 1970 but the cover of an Ugly Inside from circa 1990.

An honour for this fanzine/website in the year which is actually our 25th anniversary in April, perhaps we should lobby the National Football Museum itself to perhaps include something about Le Tiss, the shirt worn in one of those games where he scored a classic goal perhaps, whilst its great to see that The Ugly's contribution to this football club's history is recognised, its sad that there isnt mention of perhaps our greatest player.               

Photo: Action Images

saintpedro added 12:09 - Feb 4 Yes, we went on the morning of the Saints game at OT. It was well worth the visit. I also saw no mention of our two greatest Managers Ted Bates and Lawrie Mac. Ted who spent 66 years at Saints (probably a world record) and Lawrie who won the Cup for us against all the odds. There was a copy of the 1976 Cup Final programme on display though. Another glaring omission? Mick Channon, who played 45 times for England (yes, England, this is an English Football Museum!) and like Matt had a special flamboyance about him. Even his time at Manchester City hasnt persuaded the Museum's "curators" to include mention of him. Criminal.

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SaintNick added 12:10 - Feb 4 We discussed some of this and the problem is just how many there are out there who could be classed as legends, you would need a museum four times the size to get them all in
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