Our ‘On This Day’ feature for 5th November looks at the Queens Park Rangers programme from the 1983/84 season. This was Rangers’ first season back in the top flight, having been crowned Division Two champions the previous year. Read our programme review below and click here to see all the other Division One issues from the season.
Despite being one of the smaller programmes in Division One during the 1983/84 season, featuring just 20 pages, the QPR issue still provided several readable features. The programme was well laid out, making full use of quite small, but perfectly legible, text to increase the amount of content that could be included in the space available.
‘Bush Telegraph’ served as an introduction to the programme, reflecting here on recent results and the contentious issue of QPR’s ‘Omniturf’ plastic pitch. Clearly the pitch had been in the headlines, although the column noted the success enjoyed by Liverpool on their recent visit, which the writer felt had come about through effective adaption of their usual style to the surface. ‘Michael Wale Report’ meanwhile saw the BBC sports correspondent interview Rangers defender Terry Fenwick, who had scored twice on the club’s recent victory away at Norwich City.
The issue featured a couple of full-page colour pictures, the first of which showed Gary Waddock firing in a shot at goal, whilst ‘International Gallery’ showed a photo of John Gregory in his England kit. The centre pages put the spotlight on one Rangers player, with his likes and dislikes listed alongside pictures of him on and off duty. ‘Behind the Scenes’ dealt with various items of club news, while ‘Ranger to Ranger’ featured letters from supporters. A two-page ‘Facts and Fixtures’ section covered results, fixtures, and tables for QPR’s teams at the various levels of the game.
‘The Luton Town File’ was penned by Tony Pullein and covered trophies won, current form, and ‘pointers’, which mentioned the fact that Luton were (at the time of writing) the only club to have dropped from the top-flight to Division Four and then regained their place in Division One. The section also noted the potency of the Hatters’ strike force in the shape of forwards Paul Walsh and Brian Stein. ‘Statistics Wizard’ Derek Buxton offered a large collection of facts about Luton in his column, including recollections of their win at Loftus Road in the first match to take place on the artificial pitch, back in September 1981. The back page of the programme, which featured the expected match line-ups, included pen-pics of both sets of players.
Despite not including certain items that tended to appear as standard in most programmes (including an opposition team group picture and some news and reports from reserve and youth teams) the number of columns included ensured the QPR issue was still a decent read.