The original posterGary Goals → In 2014 I stuck posters up around Hackney in London advertising the skills of a fictional Irish football player named Gary Goals. On the poster I included a phone number and email address to contact Gary, should anyone require his bombastic skills. I also recorded an outgoing voicemail message to greet anyone who called. Intrigued to see what might happen, I was hoping for a few texts and fun conversations. Instead it blew into a storm on Twitter and then in the online press. You can see me speak about the adventure in this talk for Nicer Tuesdays, and you can hear some of the voicemails below.
It’s been six years since I put those posters up and Gary’s still going strong. There’s been game characters created, t-shirts printed, magazine features written and fake Twitter accounts opened. What I’m most happy about though is that the hashtag #garygoals is used almost weekly on Twitter and Instagram (usually to describe something going wrong on the pitch). I hope the spirit of Gary Goals will long continue. ⚽️
