Our ‘On This Day’ featured for 12th October features Newcastle United’s excellent programme from the 1974/75 season. Read our review of the Magpies’ issue below and see all the Division One issues from 1974/75 here.
Newcastle United’s programme for the 1974/75 season contained more pages of content than any other in Division One, with only two and a half of the issue’s twenty-four pages take up by adverts.
The best article in the programme came in the form of ‘The Untouchables’ – a series by Ronald Crowther of the Daily Mail, which in this issue featured the great Tommy Lawton. The author noted Lawton’s achievement of twice having scored four goals in a game for England but also the fact that he struggled financially, with former teammate Joe Mercer commenting “it wasn’t as though Tommy squandered his money. He never had it”.
Black ‘N’ White Comment, written by John Gibson of the Evening Chronicle, was a detailed introductory article that reviewed Newcastle’s recent results, noting the first team’s unbeaten run of nine games in all competitions and that the club’s reserve team were on a run of seven successive victories. The article also looked forward to the day’s fixture against Stoke City, noting the quality of the opposition and their recent signings Alan Hudson from Chelsea and Geoff Salmons from Sheffield United, (the latter of whom scored on the day).
The Stoke squad was profiled in greater detail across two pages that included player biographies alongside a picture of the Potters’ striker Jimmy Greenhoff. The programme also included a full-page team group picture and ‘All About Stoke’, which gave the club’s key achievements and honours.
The Newcastle United Supporter’s Club had a column, which in this issue contained arrangements for the forthcoming trip to Birmingham City, with a place on one of the coaches to the game costing £1.75! There were league tables for the first team and reserves, a profile of the match referee John Goggins, and ‘Scene One’, which featured news from around the top-flight. ‘Looking Back on Post-War United’ meanwhile was a statistical look back at Newcastle’s history, here focusing on the 1953/54 season.
The issue featured a lot of photographic content, including a picture from a recent Texaco Cup fixture against Aberdeen that showed Magpies’ forward John Tudor in action. The centre pages of the programme contained further pictures from that cup fixture, while forward Malcom MacDonald was the subject of another full-page picture.
One of the better programmes of its time, the Newcastle issue contained a good mix of well-written features and action photography. The programme may not have had the colour imagery that some clubs had begun to include in their matchday publications, but this was nonetheless a quality effort from the Magpies.