Like a good wine, or Gordon Strachan, Rothmans seems to get better with age, but it is not always in demand for reasons you might expect

This close season has been the closest ever. The curtain has been down just 41 days on Euro 96 and we are already gearing up for the "curtain raiser to the new season", as the billing of tomorrow's Charity Shield reads. However, as those of us who earn our grubby shilling writing about the beautiful game will tell you, the real curtain raiser to every new season is the launch of the Rothmans Football Yearbook, now in its 27th edition.

Like a good wine, or Gordon Strachan, Rothmans seems to get better with age (last year it sold 37,000 copies and was on the best-seller list for six months), but it is not always in demand for the reasons you might expect. Charlie Buchan, then a football reporter on The Guardian, recalls this tale from his trip to Simferopol in March 1982 for the first leg of Aston Villa's European Cup tie with Dynamo Kiev (it was too cold in the Crimea to stage the game). "We were having a shot of vodka in a local bar before the game and the owner was muttering to us. The Russians on the next table explained, in perfect English, that she was asking us not to smoke. It transpired this Russian had been living in Bolton and he ended up acting as our tour guide."

After the game (a 0-0 draw; Villa won the second leg 2-0 and went on to win the trophy) Buchan decided to thank the Russian for his hospitality by giving him a copy of Rothmans. "We met in nearby park [locals were not allowed in tourist hotels] and, as I was handing the book over, three policeman jumped out of the bushes and arrested him. The following day he contacted me to explain they had confiscated the book, before abandoning him at the opposite end of the city where there was no public transport."

It would be nice to think it was the Simferopol coppers' love of football that forced them to take such drastic measures to obtain a copy of Rothmans. The simple truth is that they thought Buchan was giving the Russian a copy of the bible.

Which, in a sense, he was. Because Rothmans is the football bible. In fact I would go so far to say that those in the trade swear by it, use it - as Jim Rosenthal put it at the launch on Thursday - "as a friend and an ally in times of need" (that is, lack of knowledge). In fact I bleat "Where's the Rothmans?" so frequently during the season and find it is being used so often, that within weeks of each edition's launch, it has grown dog-eared and well-worn, its loose pages put back at random so that Port Vale's statistics appear next to Burnley's, or Oxford's fixtures end up next to Crewe's.

Such defacements seldom detract from Rothmans' appeal, however, even if some people do find strange uses for their copies. When I first met Walter Smith, the Rangers manager was dipping chunks of bread into a bowl of bright red tomato soup (a rather meagre meal given the grandiose surroundings of his Ibrox office) which was balanced precariously on top of a copy of Rothmans. It was not his usual use for the book, he assured me; like most managers Smith would not be without it (although he obviously didn't spend his summer scouring the players listed in Rothmans, judging by Ibrox's latest recruits). David Pleat's use for the book is more basic: "If my wife has a headache," the Sheffield Wednesday manager says, "she'll take a pill. If I have a headache, I read Rothmans."

John Motson is a man with a greater need for Rothmans than most. In fact Motty was recently photographed for a newspaper article clad in trademark sheepskin jacket, clutching a copy of Rothmans. "It sums up what I think of the book," says the nearest thing to a human equivalent of Rothmans. "It's the first book I turn to; there's nothing else like it. It's a great compliment that others have tried to imitate it, and failed."

The BBC commentator boasts two complete sets of Rothmans, worth between pounds 250-pounds 300 each at today's prices. The most expensive and desirable edition is the first, which fetches up to pounds 70; other editions in demand (1972/73, 1974/75 and 1977/78) sell for anything between pounds 20 and pounds 40. John Eastwood of the Extra Cover bookshop in London, NW5, says he recently sold a complete set to a man claiming to be "America's only full-time soccer writer" and another to a Chinese man who introduced himself as "Peking's only British- speaking commentator..."

Not even Rothmans' executive editor, Jack Rollin, who has worked on the books since 1972, owns a complete set. Rollin first produced the editions on a lone typewriter; now he says he could not do it alone. He and his editor daughter, Glenda (a lifelong fan of the Icis League Division One side Aldershot Town, sadly not granted much space in Rothmans) started work on the 28th edition three weeks before the 27th was even printed. "If you get behind, you're finished," Rollin admits. "From May onwards we work seven days a week."

It is bang up-to-date, too. Alan Shearer's transfer, which took place three days before the edition was published, is included.

Generally each addition adheres to a tried and trusted format. When Rollin rang the changes last year by putting the players in an A-Z directory after the club listings, there was an outcry. "We've never had such a huge response over anything before. The chairman of one First Division club rang me and said we'd lose the support of the industry (that club subsequently rang me for the dates of the signings of six of their players so we couldn't have fallen too far from grace). I thought people who bought the book loved football generally, but it appears that most of them are just interested in reading about their club. Football has always been resistant to change, and Rothmans is no exception."

But as we start a new season, in which we have to get used to the Endsleigh Football League being Nationwide, and put up with Littlewoods being stuck in front of anything that used to be sacrosanct in the game, it is nice to know that one thing about Rothmans is never likely to change: its name. Few people ask to buy a copy of the Rothmans Football Yearbook, they simply ask for Rothmans. Anything else just isn't football...