Programme Reviews

Key

PP = Total Pages

Net = Total Pages Less Adverts

P = Perfect Bound

S = Stapled

 

Arsenal (v Coventry City 02/02/85)

£0.50 (24 pp / 23 net / S)

 

Aston Villa (v Arsenal 13/03/85)

£0.50 (24 pp / 21 net / S)

 

Chelsea (v Stoke City 15/12/84)

£0.60 (28 pp / 22.5 net / S)

 

Coventry City (v Tottenham Hotspur 01/12/84)

£0.50 (24 pp / 17.5 net / S)

 

Everton (v Aston Villa 13/10/84)

£0.50 (32 pp / 25.5 net / S)

 

Ipswich Town (v Manchester United 01/09/84)

£0.50 (24 pp / 18.5 net / S)

Ipswich’s issue for their home game against Manchester United featured a somewhat unusual cover image, including defender Terry Butcher; an Ipswich ‘Carnival Queen’; a police dog handler; and twelve bottles of champagne! Inside we learn this is related to a new ‘champagne game’ running in the VIP guest room at Portman Road!

Together with notes from manager Bobby Ferguson the programme opens with a page of news from around the club and a ‘Junior Blues’ page. Sitting alongside news from the Supporters’ Club is a coaching article from first-team coach Charlie Woods. Written with younger fans in mind, this feature encourages kids to concentrate on developing their basic passing skills, using a picture of full-back (and future manager) George Burley to illustrate the point.

‘Flashback’ looks at Ipswich’s fortunes in fixtures held 5, 10, and 20 years ago, while ‘Foreign File’ gathers football news from around the world, including the arrival in Spain of Terry Venables as manager of Barcelona. ‘Girl Talk’ is a profile of one Ipswich player’s wife and ‘Around Town’ gathers together more news from on and off the field.

The issue also features a profile of new signing, Canadian goalkeeper Craig Forrest and a ‘Soap Box’ article that gives an Ipswich fan the chance to air their views. ‘Season Spotlight’ is a statistical history of the club, here featuring all the key figures from Ipswich’s 1966/67 season. The club content is rounded off with the familiar two-page record of the current season’s results, line-ups, and tables.

Opponents Manchester United are given two pages, which are used to provide an introduction that focuses on recent transfer activity, before offering brief notes on the visiting players. These sit alongside a team picture, a list of home and away results between Ipswich and United, and a ‘Great Game’ article that recalls United’s 7-2 win at Portman Road in 1963 – a game that featured a hat-trick from Denis Law.

Ipswich certainly packed plenty of content into their 24-page programme for the 1984/85 season, with an interesting mix of club news and reflections on the game away from Portman Road, offering supporters some worthwhile reading for their 50p outlay.

 

Leicester City (v Liverpool 06/04/85)

£0.50 (24 pp / 16.5 net / S)

The Foxes’ programme was one of the most attractively designed issue of its time, using a consistent colour scheme throughout, except for the opposition section that used the visiting club’s colours to provide a nice contrast. The programme also made use of recurring motifs, carrying forward the slanted design of the front cover as page headers throughout the issue.

The issue opened with ‘Replay’ – a look at a previous game, with match notes, line-ups, and a picture from the match. This was followed by a page of notes from manager Gordon Milne, in which he noted that striker Gary Lineker had won his first full England cap, marking the occasion with the first of the 48 goals he would score for his country. ‘Scene on 1’ looked at all the news from around the First Division, while Alan Bennett penned a column in which he looked at the ongoing challenge of dealing with hooliganism, pointing out the flaws in the government’s proposed identity card scheme. ‘Games of the Century’ was a retro piece that looked at memorable matches from the Foxes’ history. The game covered in the Liverpool issue was a clash against the Reds from 1972, which Leicester won 3-2 with a hat-trick from Keith Weller. ‘At Home’ looked at the off the field life of one member of the Leicester set-up, with the focus in the Liverpool programme on manager Gordon Milne.

The coverage of matchday opponents Liverpool was provided across two pages, nicely presented in the club’s colours. The content included a team group picture, with the league championship, European Cup, and Milk Cup all on display. The accompanying article looked at the incredible run of success that Liverpool had achieved in the previous decade, as well as covering more recent form and transfer news. ‘For the Record’ meanwhile looked at Leicester’s head to head record against their matchday opponents.

In other content ‘Around the City’ and ‘News Desk’ gathered several pieces of news from the club, while ‘Reserves and Youths’ reported on the progress of Leicester’s second string and junior teams. The column included the information that the reserves had won promotion to Division One of the Central League, winning the Division Two title in the club’s first season in the league. There were also two pages of ‘Action’ with pictures from recent games. The programme also included Supporters Club News, details of forthcoming Away Travel, and ‘Birch’s Corner’ – a short column from Alan Birchenall – who was at the time Leicester’s Public Relations Officer. The usual two-page season results, fixtures, and line-ups spread was also present, with the team line-ups on the back page.

This was a fine issue from Leicester, containing plenty of reading as well as action pictures, stats, and news from around the club and its various teams. One of the best issues of the season.

 

Liverpool (v Nottingham Forest 02/03/85)

£0.45 (24 pp / 17.5 net / S)

 

Luton Town (v West Bromwich Albion 18/12/84)

£0.50 (24 pp / 16 net / S)

 

Manchester United (v Luton Town 17/11/84)

£0.35 (24 pp / 18.5 net / S)

 

Newcastle United (v Everton 15/09/84)

£0.40 (24 pp / 17 net / S)

 

Norwich City (v Watford 22/09/84)

£0.50 (28 pp / 22 net / S)

Norwich City’s ‘Canary’ programme was one of the larger Division One issues for the 1984/85 season, with 22 pages of content.

The issue for the fixture against Watford opened with manager’s notes from Ken Brown, who offered his thoughts on his side’s struggles away from home, following a recent defeat at the hands of Southampton. There were also columns from coach Mel Machin and captain Dave Watson, as well as a page of photographs from the Dell defeat.

There were two pages of updates from around the club in ‘Carrow News’, while ‘Press Comment’ noted the financial risks and rewards arising out of the decision to seed teams for the League Cup draw. The issue featured a brief profile of winger Steve Goble and an article on young defender Steve Bruce, who had signed from Gillingham in the summer, quickly becoming a regular in the Canaries team. Meanwhile, City forwards John Deehan and Mick Channon were interviewed about penalty taking duties, reflecting on the club’s opening day draw with Liverpool when Channon converted a late spot kick with Deehan having missed one earlier in the game.

‘Canaries Through the Years’ provided a statistical look back at Norwich’s history – here offering a complete record of the 1907/08 season – the club’s last at its Newmarket Road home. The feature included a team photo from the time, which was a nice touch. A column from Commercial Manager Mac Mackay noted the opening of a new matchday programme store at Carrow Road, at which supporters could obtain a bundle of 10 programmes for £1! There was also a two-page feature examining England’s World Cup qualifying prospects under Bobby Robson, as the nation looked to move on from the disappointment of not qualifying for Euro 84.

There were two pages on visitors Watford, containing brief introductory notes alongside profiles of the club’s players, and manager Graham Taylor. Separately, the programme provided a profile of Watford striker George Reilly, who had appeared for the Hornets in the 1984 FA Cup Final, having been close to quitting the game before joining Watford from Cambridge United.

‘Canary’ thus offered a good amount of reading for the 50p cover price, with a variety of features on Norwich City past and present.

 

Nottingham Forest (v Leicester City 25/11/84)

£0.40 (24 pp / 16 net / S)

 

Queens Park Rangers (v Sunderland 23/02/85)

£0.50 (20 pp / 16 net / S)

 

Sheffield Wednesday (v Ipswich Town 22/09/84)

£0.50 (28 pp / 20.5 net / S)

 

Southampton (v Queens Park Rangers 29/09/84)

£0.50 (32 pp / 23 net / S)

 

Stoke City (v West Ham United 20/10/84)

£0.50 (20 pp / 15.5 net / S)

 

Sunderland (v Chelsea 30/03/85)

£0.40 (24 pp / 17 net / S)

Sunderland’s 1984/85 programme was one of the smaller issues in the division in terms of pages of content, though it still packed in plenty of content, with good use made of the landscape layout and a small text size for most articles.

The Sunderland issue was well designed with the cover containing the club’s name and a framed picture on the cover. The nice design touches continued inside with a panel showing the club’s key information and honours headed by an image containing the club’s crest. This sat alongside a column from manager Len Ashurst who, in the Chelsea issue, praised the club’s supporters for their showing at Wembley the previous weekend when Sunderland lost the League Cup final to Norwich City. A similar message was conveyed by Alan Gray, Chairman of the Sunderland Supporters Association, in a column headed ‘Under the Sign of the Black Cat’.

The visiting club were given two pages of the programme, which featured a team group picture, brief biographies and career stats for each player, and some notes on previous meetings between the two teams. ‘A Trip Down Memory Lane’ provided match stats and a brief report on the last few matches between Sunderland and their opponents, as well as featuring other memories of other ‘Happenings This Week in the Past’. In the Chelsea issue, the latter featured a 6-0 defeat at local rivals Middlesbrough in Sunderland’s championship season of 1935/36.

An article in the Chelsea programme looked at ‘Sunderland Strikers’, a well-written piece that looked in detail at great Sunderland goal-scorers of the past. The article concluded that Brian Clough had the best goals to game ratio, but also praised the scoring consistency of pre-war forwards Raich Carter and Bobby Gurney. ‘Data File’ provided details of one member of the Sunderland squad, including a biography and a picture of the player, while ‘Football Round Up’ presented news and match details for the club’s reserves and junior team. The centre pages of the programme featured a mix of colour and black and white images from a recent game, and ‘Talk from the Terraces’ gathered together snippets of club news. There was a page of letters to the editor, and two pages of stats from the club’s various teams, all well laid-out and easy to digest.

As one of the cheapest programmes in Division One that season, (only Manchester United’s issue cost less), the Sunderland programme represented good value for money. Offering some excellent reading and input from supporters as well as club officials, this was an impressive effort from the Black Cats.

 

Tottenham Hotspur (v Newcastle United 08/12/84)

£0.50 (28 pp / 21 net / S)

 

Watford (v Sheffield Wednesday 17/11/84)

£0.50 (24 pp / 19.5 net / S)

 

West Bromwich Albion (v Southampton 27/10/84)

£0.50 (24 pp / 20.5 net / S)

 

West Ham United (v Norwich City 06/05/85)

£0.50 (28 pp / 19 net / S)