‘On This Day’ today looks at Derby County’s programme from the 1969/70 season – the club’s first back in the top flight after winning promotion the previous year under the management of Brian Clough. Read our notes on the programme below and click here to see all the other Division One issues from the season.
The Rams’ programme was one of the more modest of the 1969/70 season, consisting of 16 pages, 7 of which were taken up by adverts. The issue was in keeping with Derby’s issues from their Division Two days in the 1960s, with one change being a small price rise from ninepence to one shilling on promotion to the top-flight.
The cover of the programme for the festive fixture against West Bromwich Albion featured an action picture of Willie Carlin heading goalwards in a recent match against Newcastle United, which Derby had won 2-0. Inside there were ‘Club Notes’ from George Edwards – Sports Editor at the Derby Evening Telegraph. Edwards discussed the prospects of the Rams finishing as the highest placed Midlands side at the end of the season, in a division that also included Nottingham Forest, Wolverhampton Wanderers, Coventry City, and Stoke City, as well as the matchday visitors from the Hawthorns. Derby would of course take those bragging rights, finishing fourth on their first season back in Division One.
There was also a message from the Chairman’s office, in which he offered festive greetings to the Derby supporters and expressed delight that managerial partnership Clough and Taylor had signed new contracts at the club. Captain Dave Mackay penned a short column, in which he reflected on recent results and admonished himself for picking up a yellow card for kicking the ball away! The issue also featured league tables and appearance and scorer records for the first team and reserves, as well as the Division One and Central League tables, while the team line-ups were shown on the centre pages. Visitors West Bromwich Albion were covered with pen-pictures of the players, some brief notes on the club’s form, and a full-page picture of centre-forward Jeff Astle.
Only two clubs offered fewer pages of actual content for the 1969/70 season than Derby, although the programme was tidily presented. Although Derby had made great strides on the pitch in the late 1960s, it would take until the club’s title winning season in 1971/72 for their programme to be overhauled with the introduction of the newspaper style issue that lasted throughout the rest of the decade.