To get in touch, please write to contact@greensonscreen.co.uk

Greens on Screen’s first page was published in January 1999. Its early purpose was to bring Plymouth Argyle a little closer to those unable to see their team, and whilst it has changed a great deal over the years, its core themes - sites and sounds for Westcountry exiles - still stand. The site was very lucky to take on the content of Trevor Scallan’s Semper Viridis in the summer of 2007, and in 2009 launched GoS-DB, a wealth of facts and figures from PAFC’s history. A year later we embarked on a complete history of Argyle, with much-valued contributions from chapter authors.

Greens on Screen is an amateur website and proud of it. It is run by one person as a hobby, although Trev's help and support has been considerable and, since 2010, Andy Chapman's hard work and enthusiasm, especially his help with GoS-DB's pen-pictures, has given us a real boost. Then there's the match-day content, which would be much the poorer without the terrific contribution of a small band of photo-taking volunteers.

Greens on Screen is self-taught and as a result, a little bit quirky. Amongst a few stubborn principles, advertisements will never appear (and don’t get me started on the plague of betting promotions on other sites). It began its life before many others, including the club’s official site, when there was a large gap to be filled, and although there is now a wide variety to choose from, GoS’s sole aim, to be a service to fellow supporters, still seems to have a place.

Steve Dean

If you have any comments, criticism, bright ideas, spot any mistakes; even compliments, it's all very much appreciated.

Please write to us at feedback@greensonscreen.co.uk

Thanks!

Thursday 29 September

GoS-DB: Programme Extracts on the Match Page: 1981-1986

There are now five more seasons of programme extracts, taking us up to 41 seasons since 1945. The page for almost every league match in that range, both home and away, has the programme cover, the team page and often photos of the game (as printed in a subsequent programme). This latest era includes Tommy Tynan's arrival of course, and the historic FA Cup run, although the cup programmes will be added later.

As always, fascinating facts crop up when you browse these programmes. For instance, there were three ex-Pilgrims, all top players, in the visiting side when Portsmouth invaded Home Park for the last match of their championship winning season of 1982-83 (14 May 1983). And I'd completely forgotten that the unforgettable promotion night against Bristol City (29 Apr 1986) was not meant to be - it was a rearranged game after a waterlogged pitch caused the fixture to be postponed that March. So promotion might not have been at Home Park, or even at all. Thank goodness for the rain!

Friday 9 September

GoS-DB: Programme Extracts on the Match Page: 1975-1980

I've just extended the range of programme extracts by six more seasons (1975-76 to 1980-81), to take us to 36 seasons since 1945. The page for almost every league match in that range, both home and away, has the programme cover, the team page and sometimes photos of the game, as printed in a subsequent programme.

Thanks once again to Russell Moore for his help, there are action images for most of the home games in this latest batch, and particularly interesting are the programmes for the three seasons from 1974-75 to 1976-77, which were in newspaper form. Some fascinating articles in those, including the club's battle against hooliganism at that time (7 Sep 1974, 28 Feb 1975 & 2 Oct 1976), the visits of Geoff Hurst (22 Nov 1975), Bobby Moore (27 Dec 1975) and George Best (13 Nov 1976), and the construction of the Far Post Club (22 Feb 1975). And there's much more besides.

And the most poignant is the visit of Manchester Utd for Peter Middleton's testimonial (6 Dec 1975), bearing in mind the tragic end to his story (reflected on his player page).

Thursday 21 April

GoS-DB: Programme Extracts on the Match Page: 1962-1974

Another batch of programme extracts has been added to the match pages (explained two items below) - ten seasons this time to bring us up to 1972. For some there are action photos too, as well as the programme's cover and line-up page, and this will be increasingly so in future seasons. The eagle-eyed will realise that the photos are from subsequent programmes, but we've placed them in the collection for the match they relate to, which I hope makes a bit more sense. Here's an example from 1971.

Thanks again to Russell Moore for his hard work.

Friday 15 April

GoS-DB: Reports on the Match Page

Two things to mention. First, I've made a few minor changes to the layout of the match page, including new lines to show the changes in Argyle's lineup compared with the previous match. I've also brought the goalscorers together (before, Argyle and the opposition scorers appeared separately under each lineup, so it wasn't so easy to see the sequence of goals).

The second new feature on the match page is the extension of the summary reports. We've been writing a mini-report for each match for ten years now, so about 10% of all 5032 games since 1903 are covered, but by the end of this year I'm hoping that the proportion will rise to around 44%. That's thanks to Andy Riddle, who has kindly allowed me to extract the summaries from his book Plymouth Argyle, The Modern Era, A Complete Record, which will take us back to 1974. And not just the summaries but other details that are missing from pre-2006 matches too, such as the opposition lineups and goalscorers. Three seasons have been loaded so far (1974-77), which of course includes the 'Dream Season' of 1974-75 - Paul Mariner, Billy Rafferty et al. As well as fascinating match notes, some very familiar names pop up too, such as Bobby Charlton, George Best, Geoff Hurst and Bobby Moore.

Thursday 3 March

GoS-DB: Programme Extracts on the Match Page

Thanks to hard work from Russell Moore (author of the recent Home Park book) and based on Colin Parsons’ extraordinary Argyle collection, we'll be enhancing the Greens on Screen match page over the coming months by displaying selected programme pages for every game – home and away - since 1945 (and hopefully some before as well). Today sees the first batch: league games from 1945-46 to 1953-54 (cup games will come later). The aim is to add batches every few weeks and complete the task by the end of the year.

You can see them on any match page in this period - but a warning, the programme designs and old adverts can become addictive! One of the more unusual so far: the line-up page for Bristol Rovers on 26 Jan 1952. If you were watching from a side, all you needed to do was to turn your programme upside down at half-time. Genius!

Wednesday 9 December

GoS-DB: Managers, an update

Following the introduction of the GoS-DB Managers page a few days ago, there are now two additional functions. The stats on the Managers page can be displayed for home (or away) games only, and on the Players pages, the associated managers' names on the right-hand side are now links to bring up their detailed profiles.

Saturday 5 December

New on GoS-DB: Managers

There is now a new component of GoS-DB - Argyle's managers - as you see on the slightly revised GoS-DB Hub page. (Also added there is the ability to search by match date.)

As far as I'm aware, this is the most comprehensive and detailed list of managers ever published, and also includes the team's playing record for each man in charge. Accurate figures require precise start and end dates for each spell (they are not always exact dates in other lists) and in researching these events, some rarely acknowledged caretakers have come to the surface.

Caretakers are shaded in grey on the list, and are included on the initial display, but there is a button at the top to exclude them (or include them again) if it helps.

Also at the top is a button to combine or separate the figure for managers who have been with us more than once. For instance, the initial display shows Luggy's spells in two separate lines, but you can combine his figures if you want.

The table comes into its own when you use the 'sort' option at the top of many of the columns (excluding caretakers can be useful when you do this). This allows you to see the highest and lowest of many of the playing stats. The obvious temptation is to interpret the highest percentage wins or average points as an indication of the best manager, but this assumes that every manager was in charge in identical conditions. That certainly wouldn't be fair for Peter Reid for instance, or Jack Tresadern in the seasons after the Second World War, so just to say that GoS provides the figures but does not endorse interpretations!

And that's not all. Select a manager's name to reveal a summary of his career and a list of players who made their debut or bowed out during his time in charge. By the way, we know that a handful of the manager pen-pics need adding or updating - this should be done by the end of the month.

As always, please get in touch if you see any errors or find anything confusing, or have ideas to improve.

Tuesday 20 October

Charlie's Matchday Moments

Thanks to PAFC and Charlie Rose, the club's popular Matchday Moments YouTube video will now appear on GoS's match page for home matches, usually on the Friday following the game (allowing the club to benefit from the early demand). The most recent one, for Accrington Stanley, will therefore show up in a few days time, but all previous ones for this season are now available.

Hopefully, Charlie's videos will remain on YouTube and GoS will become a convenient way to look back at them.

Thursday 17 September

More Changes to the Match Page

As you probably realise, the match page is more than an account of the latest game. Back in the summer it became the standard display for all 4,995 Argyle matches (and counting!), albeit the content is inevitably limited for older fixtures.

I've a foolish aim to build up this archive by adding to the audio/visual content in whatever ways that might be possible, and a great start is to link to PAFC's YouTube channel. With the club's blessing, the highlights for most of the matches over the last two seasons, and each league game for this one, can now be seen on the corresponding match page. To get started, have a look at the latest match page, where you'll see a new Match Material item, and you can navigate around from there. As each new game gets added to YouTube, I'll be adding the link on GoS.

In a sense there's nothing new here of course, but hopefully it's a convenient way to access the 'argylemedia' content, as well as older items on YouTube that I'll be linking to as time goes on.

Friday 11 September

Changes to the Match Page

League Table Plus and Progress Graphs have been accessible from the home page for many years, but now you can also call them up on the match page when you're checking out the match content. Not only does that provide them all under one roof, but because they're attached to a specific game, they are also viewable for previous matches as well as the latest one (the graphs for the last 5 years and the table for the last 10 years).

You can see the effect for the latest match - last weekend's game at Stevenage - and then navigate back to early games this season and seasons before. Tomorrow's match page will of course have the latest state of play.

Thursday 6 August

Changes for the new season

You might have a spotted a change to the home page: the link to GoS-DB has moved over to the left, below 'Here and Now'. Entitled 'Now and Then', it's in a section that also includes a few shortcuts to the commonly used aspects of GoS-DB (recognising that access to a player search, for instance, took quite a few clicks before). Bringing it closer to the Here and Now part makes some sense because GoS-DB is as much about PAFC's latest match as it is about its long history.

Taking that a step further, there are two new aspects to the database displays. First, a new match page, which has been built very much with GoS-DB in mind. So as well showing the usual match details, photos and commentary clips for the current season, it now applies to any match since 1903 - and it's easy to move between games and eras. Of course, what we hold for times-gone-by matches is relatively thin, but I've now bolstered it by adding GoS's short match reports for every game since 2006 (plus enhanced match details such as the opposition line-ups), and over the coming months I'll reinstate the audio/visual content for the main games in recent seasons too, and even links to older footage on YouTube etc. The last nine years (since 2006) only represent around 8% of all games of course, but there's no reason why we can't target specific matches in Argyles history in the longer term. So here's a look at the style of a GoS-DB match page, using the 'Don't worry about a thing' game at the end of last season, and this how it will look on Saturday/Sunday once the match material comes in: [click here].

The second change, for the GoS-DB devotees, is an enhanced season page. To provide a new way of looking at the historical data, I've adapted the Appearance Chart in the Here and Now section (the one with the green dots) and extended it to all seasons. Here's an example: [click here]. There is also a link for each player in the appearance chart to the full player page, and from each match to the new match page. (I'll be adding more links to the new match page from other aspects of GoS-DB over the coming weeks/months.)

Saturday 20 June

Update:

I've been staggered by your generosity! In the first 24 hours my immediate target has been reached, so thank you so much. However, I'm going to keep the donations button available for people who would still like to make a gesture to GoS - if you see what I mean! That will also allow me to build up a fund that means I won't need to come back to you for a couple of years, and if there is then any excess, I promise that will go to the club, in one form or another.

Original message:

Ever since it's first appearance in 1999, Greens on Screen has been free to access, and I am determined to keep it that way. You probably realise that I've avoided any form of advertising, partly because I don't want any commercial association with the material, but mainly because adverts on web pages detract from the content - and they're so annoying!

But GoS is not free to produce or maintain, and without income from adverts, I've asked for donations in years gone by. There have been so many calls on your generosity in recent times, so I haven't asked for help for quite a while, but unfortunately the time has come when I need to rattle the GoS tin again.

So if this is a bad time for you, please ignore me. If you feel you can help, however small that might be, thank you so much.

And just a couple of things I should add:

If you make a donation, please understand that it is a voluntary gesture to help cover on-going costs. It implies no benefit on your part, or obligation on mine. For instance, if I decide to scale down (or even end) Greens on Screen at any time in the future, that's simply the way it is.

You should also be aware that 3.4% + 20p of your donation is paid to PayPal for the cost of the service.

Many thanks again!

Steve