THE HISTORY OF THE BUCS UK - 1984 TO 1987 The original idea for the formation of the Bucs UK came in 1984. I had become a Tampa Bay fan in December 1982 having seen them beat the Dolphins on one of the early shows on Channel 4 and had yet to meet anyone else who followed the orange and white. Touchdown was the first British gridiron magazine, followed shortly afterwards by Gridiron UK. One of the early issues of Gridiron had a picture of Bart Starr scoring for the Packers against Dallas in the famous Ice Bowl game but the caption was wrong. A call to the new editor Ross Biddiscombe later, and I was contracted to cover an early Britball game featuring the Crawley Raiders. It was following one of the these reports that Ross and I got talking about my support for the Buccaneers and we decided to put a letter in the December 1984 issue asking if there were any other Tampa Bay fans out there in the UK. I wrote to the Bucs asking if starting a potential UK booster club was a feasible idea and began drafting an initial issue of a Bucs-related newsletter. The Bucs give their approval The arrival of a package air mail from Tampa that included a media guide, background information, a GameDay magazine and other details gave the go-ahead from the Bucs themselves. Rick Odioso was the team PR director at the time and he could not have been more supportive of the idea. Five replies to the letter in Gridiron UK came back and the Bucs UK was formed with Ron & Charles Proctor, Chris Marchant, Steve Barry and Anton Baker joining me in forming the initial half-dozen members of the club. The initial newsletters were pretty basic in terms of information and appearance. Six or seven pages of typed A4 on single-sided copies with only the most basic details of results and news. There was no internet, no USA Today available in this country and definitely no merchandise. The link with the Clearwater Bucs Bunch started in March 1985 after I had written to all six of the official Bucs' booster clubs in Florida. Incidentally, after all of these disbanded in the mid 1990s, we are the last one left. We also had our first piece of media coverage in issue 5 of The Buccaneer as it was known as Bob Henderson, now of The Tampa Tribune wrote about the formation of our club in The Clearwater Times. The first club meeting By issue 6, we were up to 11 members, with Gary Sutton joining the ranks of the club. He remains a member to this day. We also had our first meeting planned for August, as the inaugural BritBowl was scheduled to take place at Villa Park. The London Ravens might have beaten the Streatham Olympians 45-6 on the field that day, but the get-together of half-a-dozen Bucs UK members outside the ground was a memorable one. Chris Marchant had designed the first Bucs UK shirt which was proudly worn by all in the club, and we also had a big feature in The Clearwater Sun . The membership continued to grow and Alan Needham became the 18th member in November 1985. Rick Odioso continued to send us merchandise and magazines, the most notable of which were some of the Bucs' official 10-year patches that were given out to all the members. RIck also fondly remembers me calling him after the Bucs' first win that season against the Cardinals, and he made a point of letting all the Florida newspapers know of our support in the process. The first anniversary of the Bucs UK brought the membership to 27 with current-member Peter Parsons being one of the newest converts to the Bucs' cause. Channel 4 had a SuperBowl party at The Video Cafe with live links hosted by Nicky Horne. Producer Gary Franses invited myself and three friends for a night of Bears, Patriots, free food and free beer. I staggered across camera during the first quarter much to the delight of other Bucs UK members watching. Issue 15 in March 1986 brought an interesting interview with the Bucs' Director of Player Personnel after I called him in his office one afternoon. Jim Gruden was his name. Perhaps I should have asked him about his son Jon at the time! July 1986 and Ross Biddiscombe ran a full page feature entitled "Me and My Team" which gave the Bucs UK some fantastic publicity. It also led me to agree to never again print the picture of Dan Marino teaching him to throw a pass during a UK coaching session from earlier that year! Bob and Lil Timoney came to the UK in the summer and brought over a bunch of souvenirs for the club and the membership reached 30 for the first time. The first American Bowl The first American Bowl game took place at Wembley in August 1986 with the Bears playing the Cowboys. Alan Needham and I invited the US Ambassador to a tailgate party out of the back of my Mini - he declined, but invited the two of us to his official residence to meet the players and coaches of the team at an official lunch. Result! Alan spent 10 minutes trying to convince the legendary Tom Landry to join the Bucs UK. Alan also managed to get 200 copies of his fanzine Third and Long confiscated by Wembley officials outside the stadium before joining myself, Chris Marchant and RIchard Lambert at the game. The highlight was when an inflatable doll did a lap of the stadium in the fourth quarter. This was however to be the highpoint of the Bucs UK for sometime however. The firm for which I was doing PR work at the time went bust and I reluctanctly handed over the reins of the organisation to Alan Needham. He was unable to sustain it at its previous level and just two more magazines were produced over the next two years, one in July 1987 and another in March 1988. The likes of Phil Carter and Gary Botteley were past of the club at this point, but it seemed as though the Bucs UK was about to die a death like so many other UK fan clubs would in the future.