Today’s On This Day is a little unusual in that it features Sheffield Wednesday’s programme for the 1968/69 season, with a look at the issue for a game that did not take place. Arsenal were due to be the visitors to Hillsborough for a 2nd November clash, but the fixture was postponed. Read the review below and click here to take a look at all the Division One issues from that season.
There was a familiar look to this Sheffield Wednesday programme, retaining from the previous season an illustration of the club’s Hillsborough stadium for its cover. The issue was slightly narrower than A5 size and featured 16 pages for the one-shilling cost.
The inside front-cover, which noted that 1968/69 was Wednesdsay’s 70th at Hillsborough, featured results and fixtures for the first-team and reserves. The team line-ups were given on the centre pages of the programme, which also featured a sketch of Wednesday forward Jack Witham, and there were club appearance records and a profile of the match referee towards the back of the programme.
The main reading was provided by ‘Club Notes’, which was an extensive article that ran to three pages. The feature referred to Wednesday experiencing a patchy run of form after a promising start to the season, the highlight of which had been a 5-4 victory against Manchester United. It was also noted that the club had been invited, as part of British Trade Week, to make a trip to northern France to play a team drawn from league clubs in the area. Wednesday lost the match 3-1, but the column writer took the view that “all experience is valuable”. The column also dealt with the club’s injury situation, matters affecting the club’s reserve team, and the challenge posed by upcoming matches.
The programme included plenty of coverage of visiting club Arsenal. The main article was a two-page spread that featured writing from Tony Pullein. This provided a potted history of the club and notes on all the club’s key players. The columnist claimed that the development of Arsenal striker John Radford had made him “one of the most dangerous goal-scorers in the game”. A separate ‘Spotlight’ article put the focus on the Gunners’ wing-half Frank McLintock, who was recognised as an important part of the Arsenal side despite having submitted a transfer request in the summer. There was also a profile of manager Bertie Mee, which remarked on how his playing career had been affected by injury during the Second World War, inspiring him to work towards on off the field role.
A well-presented programme then from Wednesday. Whilst it had more in common with the issues of the mid-1960s than the more modern programmes emerging from certain clubs at the tail end of the decade, the programme nevertheless offered some interesting ready and plenty of opposition coverage within its pages.