Our ‘On This Day’ feature for 1st November looks back at the Charlton Athletic programme from their match against Arsenal in the 1986/87 season – Charlton’s first year back in the top flight of English football for nearly 30 years. Read our review of the programme below and click here to see the other Division One issues from the season.
The 1986/87 season marked Charlton’s first in the top-flight for nearly 30 years. They issued a 24-page programme, which contained 16.5 pages of content. Although only Leicester City and Newcastle United provided fewer pages than this, there was still room for some interesting reading in the Charlton issue.
The programme opened with ‘Scene One Take One’, which commented on the unpredictable nature of the first few months of the season, with Norwich City and Wimbledon both having topped the table, whilst Liverpool had fallen to a 4-1 defeat at Luton Town. Charlton had made a decent start themselves, having won at four of the previous season’s top six clubs. Manager Lennie Lawrence’s column previewed the day’s fixture against Arsenal, noting that both teams were on a run of six straight wins. The ‘News and Views’ page meanwhile featured a picture of midfielder Robert Lee with his first England Under-21 cap, won in Italy the previous season. The news page also noted that Charlton’s recent win at West Ham was the club’s 1000th victory in all competitions. That victory at Upton Park included a goal from Jim Melrose after just nine seconds of play, and the goal was featured across several video stills.
‘Off the Park’ profiled Charlton’s Alan Curbishley (who would of course go on to manage the club) who was making his way back to fitness following six months out injured. There was also a column from club captain Mark Aizlewood, while the centre-pages of the programme featured pictures from Charlton’s midweek win at Queens Park Rangers in the League Cup. ‘Reds in Reserve’ contained basic notes on the club’s reserve and youth teams, and there was a two-page statistics section featuring results and tables for each of Charlton’s teams. There were also two pages on visitors Arsenal, which featured a short introduction together with brief biographies of the club’s players and a team group picture.
The best feature in the programme was ‘Flashback’, which opened with a look at the attendances achieved by Charlton when Arsenal were the visitors. The Highbury club were described in the column as “always the star attraction in our calendar” given the historic connection of the Gunners to Woolwich. The article recalls the first meeting of Charlton and Arsenal at The Valley, which was won 2-0 by the North London club with goals from Ray Bowden and Denis Compton. Further meetings between the two clubs were also covered, including a famous 5-2 win for Charlton at Highbury during the 1950/51 season.
‘Flashback’ was a top-class feature from Charlton, offering a greater insight and quality of writing than the standard historical fare common to many issues of the time. Taken together with other very readable articles, the Charlton programme overcame its low page count to provide a solid value for money issue.