Our ‘On This Day’ feature today looks back to 1985 with a look at the programme for the match between Sunderland and Chelsea. Read our full review below and click here to see all of the Division One issues from the season.
Sunderland’s 1984/85 programme was one of the smaller issues in the division in terms of pages of content, though it still packed in plenty of content, with good use made of the landscape layout and a small text size for most articles.
The Sunderland issue was well designed with the cover containing the club’s name and a framed picture on the cover. The nice design touches continued inside with a panel showing the club’s key information and honours headed by an image containing the club’s crest. This sat alongside a column from manager Len Ashurst who, in the Chelsea issue, praised the club’s supporters for their showing at Wembley the previous weekend when Sunderland lost the League Cup final to Norwich City. A similar message was conveyed by Alan Gray, Chairman of the Sunderland Supporters Association, in a column headed ‘Under the Sign of the Black Cat’.
The visiting club were given two pages of the programme, which featured a team group picture, brief biographies and career stats for each player, and some notes on previous meetings between the two teams. ‘A Trip Down Memory Lane’ provided match stats and a brief report on the last few matches between Sunderland and their opponents, as well as featuring other memories of other ‘Happenings This Week in the Past’. In the Chelsea issue, the latter featured a 6-0 defeat at local rivals Middlesbrough in Sunderland’s championship season of 1935/36.
An article in the Chelsea programme looked at ‘Sunderland Strikers’, a well-written piece that looked in detail at great Sunderland goal-scorers of the past. The article concluded that Brian Clough had the best goals to game ratio, but also praised the scoring consistency of pre-war forwards Raich Carter and Bobby Gurney. ‘Data File’ provided details of one member of the Sunderland squad, including a biography and a picture of the player, while ‘Football Round Up’ presented news and match details for the club’s reserves and junior team. The centre pages of the programme featured a mix of colour and black and white images from a recent game, and ‘Talk from the Terraces’ gathered together snippets of club news. There was a page of letters to the editor, and two pages of stats from the club’s various teams, all well laid-out and easy to digest.
As one of the cheapest programmes in Division One that season, (only Manchester United’s issue cost less), the Sunderland programme represented good value for money. Offering some excellent reading and input from supporters as well as club officials, this was an impressive effort from the Black Cats.