On This Day returns today with a write-up of the Brighton & Hove Albion programme from the 1980/81 season. Read our review of the Seagulls’ issue below and see all the 1980/81 Division One issues here.
Brighton retained their ‘landscape’ style programme from the previous season, but now with a nearly square shaped issue.
‘Seagull News’ featured a page of updates on footballing matters around the club, including the information that the fixture was the 3000th top-flight match for opponents Everton. ‘Scene Around the Goldstone’ performed a similar role for off the field news, while ‘Division One News’, written by Tony Pullein, had a write-up of the fortunes of various clubs from around the top-flight, noting the early season goalscoring exploits of Everton’s Peter Eastoe. ‘Football Around the World’ meanwhile gathered news items from various leagues in Europe and beyond
‘Albion on the Road’ featured in-depth coverage of the Seagulls recent visit to Liverpool, where they were beaten 4-1. Across a page and a half, the article provided a detailed match report and included two action pictures from the match. That fixture was further reflected on in ‘What the Papers Say’, which featured extracts from press coverage of the match. ‘Flashback’ contained briefer notes from another recent fixture at Coventry City.
In other Albion content, a player feature under the heading ‘Introducing’ profiled defender Gary Williams. The club stats page included line-up details and a league table, as well as information from recent youth team fixtures.
Coverage of visitors Everton was provided across the centre pages of the programme, with various snippets of information contributing to a lengthy introduction to the club, covering everything from recent form to notable honours won by the club. There was also a team group picture and pen-pics of the club’s players. In ‘Voice-Piece’ a young-looking Alan Parry wrote further on Everton, discussing their lack of success over the preceding decade and declaring Goodison Park “arguably the best stadium in Britain”.
The Seagulls programme contained 28 pages – along with Liverpool a high for any Division One club in the 1980/81 season. The space available for content was reduced somewhat by a high proportion of advertising content, although there was still a decent amount of reading material included.