AN article at the back of the April issue of the City Gent fanzine the long article by John Watmough concludes with a reference to the hairstyles of contemporary professional footballers and current football pundits such as Robbie Savage and Mark Lawrenson.

John cites the December issue of Doncaster Rovers fanzine Popular Stand. In it a contributor complains, wryly, that he cannot concentrate on football anymore because he's distracted by footballers' hairstyles.

Forty years ago professional footballers in their mid-twenties took to styling their barnetts as though they were Rock stars. Perms and mullets were the rage.

Kevin Keegan had a curly perm. Chris Waddle, who in the 1990s had a spell in Bradford City's colours, sported a mullet in his youth that U2's Bono would have been proud of at the time.

Today being FA Cup semi-final day, when Bradford City instead of Reading might have been playing Arsenal at Wembley, I was reminded of the mid-1970s - coincidentally the last time that City had a real run in the FA Cup, also reaching the quarter-finals as they did this year.

During the Seventies, stalwart Bradford City fans will remember the likes of Garry Watson and Don Hutchins whose hairstyles were, shall we say, distinctive. Hutchins played on the left wing and when he was in one of his wizard of the wing spells had the skill and pace to turn any defender.

During the latter part of the decade, with City going up and down between the old Football League Divisions Three and Four, one of the finer sights at Valley Parade was Hutchins darting down the line hair flying behind him like a swarm of bees.

Then, nobody imagined that a later generation of footballers would go completely the other way, shaving their skulls Vinnie Jones style to make themselves look tough and uncompromising.

Now, as John Watmough observes, facial hair is making a comeback, not only in the shape of players with beards.

He writes: "Facial hair seems to be popular amongst football presenters and pundits at the moment. Gary Lineker has something straggly growing on his chin. Martin Keown goes for the designer stubble; Robbie Savage has experimented from time to time.

"Then I saw Mark Lawrenson on Match of the Day after the Liverpool v Blackburn FA Cup tie and I thought 'You scruffy git.' He had several days of white beard growth and looked like a tramp."

In the days of mullets and perms the one thing you could never say about professional footballers was that they looked scruffy. They wore jackets with wide lapels, kipper ties and flares. Some had droopy moustaches. But there was nothing droopy about the way they played.