The 12th Man fanzine was launched back in June 2007, with the idea of resurrecting the Scottish football fanzine that had died out in the 90s. With football increasingly more about money than about the football or the fans, the idea was to use the fanzine as a mouth piece not only to feature Scottish football but also to tackle issues that fans would relate to such as ticket prices and merchandise costs.

The 12th Man is not trying to compete with the corporate entities that are Four Four Two or World Soccer etc. We are first and foremost a football fanzine, and while the designs may look far from the cut & paste look of yester-year don’t let that fool you, every contributor to the fanzine does so voluntarily, without reimbursement and they are all football fans. We felt that such glossy mags as Four Four Two and World Soccer, were neglecting their Scottish fan base and noticed a gap in the market for a fanzine for Scottish fans, that would cover Scottish football and nothing but Scottish football.

We have taken our inspiration from club fanzines such as, Not the View, More than 90 minutes, The Gooner, A Love Supreme; and past fanzines such as The Absolute Game. While we would love to emulate the popularity of the fanzines mentioned, we are not trying to copy them or their practices – we want to make sure we have our own identity and not be labelled a copycat to the likes of TAG.

From Issue One to Issue Six all of the publications have been free to download via our website, as a gesture to Scottish football fans. Not only to give them something to read about the game up here, but also to realise that we are not doing it for the money. If we were then we would have certainly began charging straight away.

July 2009 will see the evolution of The 12th Man. Issues 1 to 6 were published in PDF format online only, but Issue 7 will be our very first Printed fanzine and it is a huge step we are taking in the ‘life’ of the The 12th Man. We know there is a market out there for football fanzines, given the number of fans downloading our issues since June 2007 and after conducting our own market research campaign [an online survey to you and me] we noticed that the Printed issues were still popular and that the fans out there preferred them to online issues. PAYMENT OPTIONS

Disclaimer The 12th Man is an independent Scottish Football publication and is not connected to or any official product of any club or organisation within Scottish Football in any form. All articles are correct at the time of publication and all views are that of the writer who expressed them. You have the right of reply to anything written on this website or in the fanzine, and any such correspondence email to letters@scotzine.com may be printed in full within the fanzine with responses from the relevant writer or the editor. For anyone wishing to reproduce anything from The 12th Man, we would appreciate it if you contact us first to get permission.

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