Today’s On This Day feature looks at Coventry City’s programme for the 1978/79 season. Read our review below and click here to view all of the Division One issues for the season.
Sky Blue was largely unchanged from the programme of the previous season, with 24 pages of content presented in an A5 format. The opening few pages featured the line-ups for the day’s fixture, whilst ‘Looking Back’ listed results between Coventry and their matchday opponents. Manager Gordon Milne reflected in his column on the ongoing issue of hooliganism in the game, as well as the busy Christmas and New Year schedule ahead.
‘Roundabout’ featured various short news snippets, with information about the match referee for the day and details of travel to forthcoming away matches, while the centre pages showed action pictures from a recent match. A two-page stats section featured the usual content for Coventry’s first-team and reserves, with the first-team’s season spread using some especially small text! The reserves had taken part in several high-scoring games in the first half of the season with 5-2 and 5-4 wins as well as 6-5 defeat! The programme also included a couple of player features, as well as a rather left-field column from captain Terry Yorath.
The visitors were profiled across three pages, with the first two running through the away team, with details of the club’s transfer activity, and pictures of several players. A key member of the opposition was then profiled in ‘Danger Man’, which for the visit of Everton, profiled striker Bob Latchford. The forward had been the only player in Division One to register 30 league goals the previous season and was described here as “the biggest danger man of all in the last couple of seasons”.
This was a decent enough issue from Coventry, although several of the articles were on the short side. Any sense of a consistent feel to the programme was hindered by the variety of colour schemes used, from the red, yellow, and blue of the cover to various pages of green inside the issue.