With our Programme of the Season Awards now completed, our attention turns again to looking at programmes from yesteryear, starting today with Chelsea’s programme from the 1977/78 season. Read our notes below and see all of the Division One issues from the season here.
The Blues’ programme for their return to the top-flight, following two seasons spent in Division Two, was a 20-page affair. The programme used predominantly dark blue and black text against white backgrounds, with a striking cover that showed the lion from Chelsea’s crest on a football against a dark blue backing.
The programme opened with ‘Chelsea View’, which featured various news items from around the club. In the Newcastle United issue, one of these items noted that, in the recent game at Derby County, both Peter Bonetti and Ron Harris had made their 700th first-team appearances for the Blues. Each Chelsea issue for 1977/78 contained a wealth of stats, including a page showing the tables for Division One, the Football Combination, and South-East Counties league, with corresponding appearance and scorer details for Chelsea’s first-team, reserves, and youth team respectively. Two further pages of stats included results and fixtures for each of these teams, while ‘Match Summaries’ provided full stats from recent games, including brief write-ups of first team matches.
The programme included a couple of pages of pictures from recent matches. The Newcastle issue contained several images from Chelsea’s recent league victory over defending champions Liverpool at Stamford Bridge, just a few months after having knocked them out of the FA Cup. The team line-ups for the day were included on the centre pages, while ‘In Off the Post’ featured letters from supporters. The programme also included notes from Chelsea’s official supporters club and ‘Blue Spotlight’, which featured the thoughts of one of the Blues’ players on his time at the club and his career prospects. Meanwhile, the visitors were covered across two pages, which included a team group picture, brief pen-pics, a history of results from matches between the two sides, and notes on the club’s form.
A tidy programme then from Chelsea, albeit one that focused more on statistical content than readable features.