Programme Review – St Martins FC

29th September 2018

St Martins v Rylands

NorthWest Counties League Division 1 South

Programme Price: £2

As I am a fellow Salopian it probably comes as no surprise when I say that I’ve seen the Shropshire club, St Martins several times over the years. The club is one of the friendliest you could wish to come across in non-league football and they always produce a fantastic programme. Ironically, the programme I have chosen for today’s review isn’t from a St Martins game that I attended. I obtained this issue from my last visit to watch the club (against FC Isle of Man, last season) as they were selling programmes from games played previously.

This near four year old programme consists of 36 pages from the front to back cover, and although there are 15 pages adverts, it is not detract from the enjoyment of reading it.

With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 provides a full page advert with the following page featuring a programme contents list as well as advertising the club’s next home game on 19th October 2018 against Cammell Laird.

Page 4 provides a guide as to who’s who at the club as well stating the year the club was formed (1887) at the time of writing, the chairman was named as Terry Ellis and the manager was Dan Stevens. The manager then gives his thoughts on the following page and amongst other things makes reference to the fact that the game against Rylands would only by the club’s fourth game at home out of thirteen played across all competitions.

Pages 5 and 6 make for very interesting reading as they provide a history of St Martins Football Club. As previously mentioned, the club was founded in 1897 and in those early days the Shropshire club competed in the Oswestry & District League. In the 1930/1931 season, one of the best teams to represent the village and captained by Tom Vaughan, won the village cup by beating Traflach in the final. One of the players for St Martins that day was Don Hopley who later played for both Shrewsbury Town and Wellington Town respectively. St Martins won the Oswestry league in 1953 and 1955 and in the years to 1966 they won the village cup ten times! In the early 1990’s the club joined the Shropshire County League and won the 1993/1994 Challenge Cup. By the 2010/2011 campaign, St Martin were competing in the West Midlands Regional League Division Two and gained promotion to Division One at the first attempt. The club secured promotion to the Northwest Counties League Division One South for the 2017/2018 season and during that same season they competed in the FA Vase for the first time in their history.

Pages 7 to 10 provide player sponsorship details whilst page 11 features two adverts. The following page provides a photograph of the St Martins FC committee members.

Page 12 is an advert and followed on page 13 with previous results and forthcoming fixtures for the 2018/2019 season. St Martins started their season with a 1-0 defeat at Barnton with their next game after the Rylands encounter being away at New Mills.

Page 14 is another advert with page 15 providing the Northwest Counties League Division One South table. This game would be a real top of the table clash because at the time of writing, St Martins were in 2nd position whilst their opponents, Rylands were at the top of the table.

Pages 16 and 17 feature information on Rylands Football Club – Rylands Recreation Club were formed as a local works (wire manufacturer) team in 1911 and in those early days they played in the Liverpool County Combination before joining the Warrington & District League. Rylands won several Warrington & District League titles throughout the 1950’s and in 1969 they joined the Mid-Cheshire League. Ten years after joining they beat Barnton in the League Cup Final. Fast forward twenty years and the club reached another Mid-Cheshire League Cup Final but were lose on penalties against Knutsford. After falling on hard times, the club amalgamated with Crosfields in 2008 to form a new club, Crosfields/Rylands but prior to the start of the 2012/2013 season, the club resumed the name of Rylands FC. The 2018/2019 Northwest Counties league Division One South season would be the first time they had competed at step 6 of the non-league game in their 107 year history.

Page 18 is an advert with the following page providing a match report from St Martins recent 4-0 victory at Stone Dominoes, an excellent display of attacking football by all accounts!

Pages 20 and 21 are both adverts with the following two pages showing a photograph from the club’s recent 4-3 defeat at Vauxhall Motors. The next three pages all contain adverts with page 27 showing player statistics. At the time of writing the top scorer was Tawanda Melusi with five goals from twelve appearances.

Page 28 is an advert with page 29 providing a short piece written by Saints supporter, Dave Bennett who started following the club four years previously when his son, Calum signed for them at the age of 17. The following pages provide several adverts before the programme is completed on the back cover with the team squad lists.

All in all and I like I said earlier, despite the amount of adverts this is still a very enjoyable programme to read and I hope those of you reading this have enjoyed my review of it.

Programme Review – Nottingham Forest

Saturday 27th January 1968

Nottingham Forest v Bolton Wanderers

FA Cup 3rd Round

Programme Price: Ninepence

Back to 1968 for today’s review and a FA Cup fixture between then Division One, Nottingham Forest against Bolton Wanderers who were a Second Division team at the time.

This programme consists of 20 pages from the front to back cover and is a good read. With Page 1 being the front cover, page 2 features a full page advert with the following page titled News and Views. It is written that this game would be Forest’s 25th home Cup-tie since the war. The piece also looks back to Forest’s run to the semi-finals in the previous years competition.

Page 4 starts what is a run of several pages of information on Bolton Wanderers, probably the most information I have seen on an away side in any programme in my collection. The piece starts off by looking at Bolton’s run in the 1957/1958 FA Cup when they beat Preston North End, York City, Stoke City, Wolves, Blackburn Rovers and Manchester United by 2 goals to 0 in the final at Wembley. The following page shows a squad photograph of the Bolton Wanderers players for the 1967/1968 season.

Page 6 looks at Bolton’s form in the current season and although they were then in Division 2, Forest knew they would be in for a tough game as earlier in the season Bolton had knocked Liverpool out of the League Cup! The following page shows two action pictures of Forest’s 1959 FA Cup win in the Quarter Finals against Bolton. They won the game 2-1 courtesy of a brace of goals by Tom Wilson.

Pages 8 and 9 provide pen profiles for the players at Bolton Wanderers. Goalkeeper, Eddie Hopkinson was a former England International and at the time, the club’s longest serving player having been at the club since 1952. Half-back, Gareth Williams signed for the club in 1957 from Cardiff City for a reported fee of £50,000. The following two pages show the team line ups with the referee named as Mr. N. C. H. Burtenshaw from Great Yarmouth.

There are more Bolton pen profiles on page 12 with the same page showing all of Bolton’s league results thus far in the 1967/1968 campaign.

Page 13 provides the standings at the time of writing in the Central League. Nottingham Forest were residing in 9th place in the 22 team division. The same page also advertises some merchandise on offer at the City Ground, ranging from enamel badges to car stickers and rosettes.

Page 14 looks ahead to some forthcoming fixtures for Nottingham Forest. On Saturday 3rd February the club would be travelling to Stamford Bridge for a Division One game against Chelsea. Meanwhile, the next game at the City Ground would take place on 6th February against Aston Villa in the Central League.

Page 15 shows the standings at the time of writing in both Division One and Division Two. After playing 26 games, Forest were sitting in 10th position in Division One. Over in Division Two, Bolton were in 8th position but just ten points behind leaders QPR.

Page 16 provides Forest supporters with travel details with regards to the club’s forthcoming game at Chelsea. The following page provides all of the statistics for Nottingham Forest in the 1967/1968 season. The club started their campaign with a 3-1 win at Sheffield United in front of 29,223 spectators. Meanwhile their first home league game saw them drawing 3-3 against Coventry City in front of a crowd of 44,950.

This entertaining programme is then completed by three pages of adverts. Another review from yours truly this time next week.

Programme Review – International Surrey Football

8th May 2022

Surrey v Matabeleland

Programme Price: £2

I was delighted to receive this programme earlier on this week after having a piece written by yours truly included in it. More of that later, but for now let’s start the review of what I have to say is an excellent programme.

The programme consists of 32 pages from the front to back cover is packed full of information. With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 is a full page advert whilst the following page features a short piece welcoming all to the game.

Pages 4 and 5 feature notes written by the Surrey manager, Matt Nash. The manager states how much both he and his players are looking forward to not only this game but also forthcoming fixtures against Hampshire Charity FC, Chagos Islands and Cascadia respectively.

Page 6 advertises a game between the Surrey Women’s team and the Afghanistan Women’s Development Team, to take place on Sunday 29th May. A very interesting fixture as we all know the troubles faced by women in Afghanistan and this fixture certainly goes to prove that football is a game for all of the world’s people – long may that continue!

Page 7 is a full-page advert and is followed on pages 8 and 9 providing some excellent information on Surrey. It is written that International Surrey Football follows the historic boundaries of the county used between the 8th century and 1899, prior to the county of London, which later grew into what is now known as Greater London after 1965. This means that International Surrey Football recognises Surrey as stretching from Rotherhithe, where the game against Matabeleland was taking place, down to Gatwick Airport, and across the North Downs towards Farnham and Camberley. The area encompasses over 3 million people and includes over 50 senior men’s football clubs and 30 senior women’s football clubs.

Pages 10 and 11 provide some very interesting information on Matabeleland, firstly with a piece explaining who, and where, is Matabeleland. It is written that Matabeleland is geographically part of Zimbabwe in the southeast of Africa, and represents the Ndembele people, a distinct group many of whom have deep historical reasons to distrust the Zimbabwean government. The area’s heartland is Bulawayo, and Matabeleland was its own independent country for much of the 19th century, before being incorporated into Zimbabwe as a province following two vicious wars. The piece then goes on to talk about Matabeleland with regards to football. The team was managed by English coach, Justin Walley during the 2018 CONIFA World Cup in London and during the tournament the great goalkeeper, Bruce Grobbelaar appeared briefly in one game for the team. Grobbelaar can trace his roots back to the Matabeleland area.

Pages 12 and 13 both feature adverts which are followed on page 14 with a tribute to Gabriel Stauring and Katie-Jay Scott who both lost their lives in a tragic car accident in November 2021. Both Gabriel and Katie-Jay were volunteers for the iACT charity.

Page 15 is a full-page advert which is followed on page 16 with details on the venue for the game at the Moatside Ground, home of Mertsham Football Club. The club was founded in 1892 and in 1897 they were amongst the founding members of the Redhill & District League. In more recent times they reached the first round of the FA Cup for the first time in their history in the 2016/2017, a record home crowd of 1,920 witnessed them losing 5-0 to Oxford United.

Page 17 is an advert and is followed on pages 18 and 19 with a player profile on Surrey’s striker, Tiago Andrade who plays his club football for Roffey FC. His first game for Surrey was in December 2019 against the Chagos Islands and states his long term ambition is to represent Surrey in the World Unity Football Alliance World Cup.

Pages 20 and 21 are both dedicated to providing information on the superb voluntary organisation – Her Game Too. The organisation is run by female football fans, who are committed to growing the campaign with the aim of fostering an ethos in football in which women are welcomed and respected equally.

Pages 22 and 23 look at the International Surrey Women’s team who are looking forward to intriguing fixtures against the Afghanistan Women’s Development Team on 29th May and against the Kashmir Football Association on Sunday 12th June respectively.

Page 24 provides information on CW Sport Radio which is the brainchild of budding commentator Chris Walker, Chris would be providing commentary on the game. The following page advertises some International Surrey Football merchandise, amongst other items, you could treat yourself to a shirt for £20 or a scarf for £5.

Pages 26 and 27 provide a book review written by some bloke from Shropshire by the name of Gareth Thomas! The review I wrote was on the excellent One Football No Nets written by the ex-Matabeleland coach, Justin Walley. If you haven’t yet read the book then please do as it is not only the best football books I have ever read, but also right up there with the best books of any subject that I have had the pleasure of reading.

Pages 28 and 29 both feature adverts with page 30 showing the previous results from games played since 2018 by the International Surrey Men’s Team. Some the results include a 2-1 win against Barawa in 2018, a 6-0 win over the Army FA in 2019 and a 3-1 defeat against the Chagos Islands in 2021.

Page 31 is an action photograph from a game between Surrey and the Chagos Islands with this excellent programme ending on page 32 with the team line ups for the home team and Matabeleland.

For the record, Surrey won this game against their opponents from Matabeleland by 5 goals to 2.

Programme Review – Clyde FC

Saturday 11th March 1972

Clyde v Kilmarnock

Scottish League Division 1

Programme Price: 5p

As I have mentioned during my recent programme reviews, I have not long added to my collection a wonderful haul of programmes collected from a football enthusiast who lives not too far away from me. I am still going through my new additions and have come across this issue that I have chosen for today’s review.

This programme consists of twelve pages from the front to back cover and provides a very interesting read.

With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 provides a list of who was who at Clyde FC back in 1972 as well as a list of previous honours won by the club. The club was founded in 1878 and they first tasted success by winning the Second Division Championship in 1905. The same page also features a piece which is titled ‘New to You’ – this was a series in which the younger members of the Clyde playing staff were being featured in each programme issue. The player to be featured in this programme was Allan Brown who at the time was a 19-year-old central defender and had joined the club from Vale of Leven.

Page 3 features two articles with the first titled CLYDE – “home” at last – and searching for Ayrshire double. The piece starts off by talking about Clyde’s three previous games at Dundee, Arbroath, and Hibernian respectively, and how good it felt to be back playing at home again. The Ayrshire double part of the article comes from the fact that in their last home game, Clyde beat Ayr United 3-0 and with Kilmarnock also being in Ayrshire, there was the opportunity for an Ayrshire double. The second article on page 3 is titled Johnny on the Ball and looks at Clyde’s centre forward Johnny Flanagan. The player joined the ‘Bully Wee’ as Clyde are nicknamed, from Partick Thistle in 1969 and was in a rich vein of form having scored four goals in his previous three games.

Page 4 looks at the fortunes of the reserve team at Clyde FC. The team which mainly consisted of young players had clocked up two wins from their past three league games. These wins had seen them residing in 9th place at the time of writing in the 17 team Scottish Reserve League table.

Page 5 is titled ‘Bully Wee’ News Service – this page provides all the latest goings on at the club. Joe McBride had recently joined his teammates for his first full training session following a knee operation. Meanwhile, John Wright was also showing signs of making a full recovery from his own knee injury having made three recent appearances for Clyde’s reserve team.

Pages 6 and 7 show the team line ups with the referee named as W.J. Mullen from Dalkeith.

Page 8 provides a short history on Kilmarnock Football Club who were formed in 1869. The club won the Scottish Cup for the first time in the 1919/1920 season. Meanwhile, the club’s greatest triumph came in the spring of 1965 when, under the management of Willie Waddell they clinched the Scottish League Championship on goal average.

Page 9 provides player pen profiles for the Kilmarnock team. The versatile player, Alex Cairns was an inside forward who previously played for the Glasgow based club Millerton Thistle, and John Gilmour was described as a clever midfield player and had joined the club in 1967 from Hamilton Academicals.

Page 10 features two adverts with the following page being titled Shawfield Statistics, Shawfield Stadium being the then home of Clyde FC. The Scottish Football League Division 1 table saw Clyde sitting in 16th position in the 18-team league. Jim Burns was the player with the most league appearances to his name having played all of Clyde’s 26 league games during that 1971/1972 season. The club opened their league campaign with a 9-1 defeat at Celtic and on 5th February 1972 they were knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Ayr United.

The programme ends with the back cover showing a half-time score board. Some of the other games going on that day included Airdrie v Falkirk, Morton v Dundee and Queen of the South v Albion Rovers.

An enjoyable programme to review which in my opinion provided everything that is ever needed for any programme.

For the record, Kilmarnock won this game at Shawfield by 3 goals to 0 with the season ending with Clyde finishing second bottom of the table meaning they were relegated to the Second Division.

Programme Review – Queens Park FC

Double Issue Programme

Friday 4th August 1967

Queen’s Park FC Centenary Celebration Match

Queens Park v British Amateur Select

Saturday 5th August 1967

Grand Challenge Match

Celtic v Tottenham Hotspur

I am still enjoying looking through the haul of programmes that I recently added to my collection. Whilst doing that early this morning, I was absolutely delighted to come across this quite unique issue.

As you can see, this programme is a double issue which celebrates the centenary of Queen’s Park FC, the club that gave association football to Scotland! Their part in the celebrations of that August weekend was to take part in a game against a British Amateur Select XI which the first few pages cover. The latter pages focus on the game taking place on the very next day between Celtic and Tottenham Hotspur, not only two of the best teams in the Great Britain at that time but also two of the best in the whole of Europe!

The programme consists of 20 pages from the front to back cover, and as you would expect is packed full with the most wonderful information.

With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 focuses on Queen’s Park FC and provides a very interesting historical look at this famous Scottish Football Club. The article starts off by explaining that at the time of writing, Queen’s Park Football Club were the only amateur club still to be found in league football in Great Britain, although Bohemians and Cliftonville were keeping the flag of amateurism unfurled in Ireland. I was very interested to read that it is one of football ironies that only the casting vote of the chairman at the first committee meeting of Queen’s Park prevented the club from being known as Celtic! Starting life in the English F.A. since when they were formed there was no Scottish Football Association, Queen’s tasted a modicum of success by reaching two FA Cup Finals, only to beaten by Blackburn Rovers on both occasions at the Kennington Oval. Queen’s Park withdrew from the English F.A. in 1886 as the S.F.A. was now up and running and have course stayed in the Scottish Football System ever since.

Page 3 of the programme is titled The Three Hampdens and provides an interesting look at the history of the famous Hampden Park stadium. Queen’s Park began life by playing their home games at the Queen’s Park Recreation Ground, with ironically the land that once housed that ground was in 1967 being used as the car park for Hampden Park! In October 1873 the club moved to the first ever Hampden Park which they leased from the Corporation of Glasgow for £20 per year. The Second Hampden was close to the original one and for many football enthusiasts it is better known as Cathkin Park and the home ground of Third Lanark Football Club. The ground was formally opened on 31st October 1903 with a Scottish League match between Queen’s Park and Celtic which the home club won by 1 goal to 0. A third Hampden was completed in 1937 and in the April of that year nearly 150,000 spectators attended the Scotland v England international which officially opened the stadium.

Page 4 is a full-page advert with the following page displaying a photograph from the Scottish Cup tie between Queen’s Park and Celtic in February 1965. The photograph shows Bobby Lennox of Celtic firing the ball past the Queen’s goalkeeper Bobby Clark to give the Glasgow giants a 1-0 victory.

Page 6 provides some words from three international football players which detail some of their memories of playing at Hampden Park. The players included in this section were Sir Stanley Matthews of Stoke City, Blackpool and England – Alan Morton of Queen’s Park, Rangers and Scotland – and Bertie Peacock of Celtic, Coleraine and Ireland.

Page 7 is titled – Queen’s Park’s Olympic Record 1938-1938. Again, this is section is a very interesting read and starts by saying that the game between Queen’s Park and the British Amateur Select team was also being used as an Olympic trial to gauge performance of players hoping to be selected for a Great Britain XI, that could come through the qualifying rounds and represent the country at the 1968 Olympic Games to be held in Mexico. The article then looks back at former Queen’s Park players who had played for Great Britain from 1936 onwards. The 1936 British team included four Queen’s Park players which were as follows – Jackie Gardner (later to become the president of Queen’s Park Football Club) Jimmy Crawford, Joe Kyle, and Mac Dodds.

Page 8 advertises two home movies available to buy and watch via an 8mm or 16mm projector, featuring two famous games played earlier in 1967. The first was the 1967 European Cup Final that of course Celtic won by 2 goals to 1 against Inter Milan with the second game being the 3-2 victory for Scotland over England at Wembley Stadium. The following page shows photographs of the people who oversaw the respective club’s playing over this special weekend in August 1967. For Celtic it was Chairman Robert Kelly, Queen’s Park with President Balsillie Russell and for Tottenham Hotspur, Chairman Frederick Wale.

Pages 10 and 11 show all the team line ups for both games taking place with the following page providing Celtic player profiles. Some of the great players at Celtic at that time were Tommy Gemmell, Jimmy Johnstone and Billy McNeil who before joining Celtic played for Blantyre Victoria. The great defender joined Celtic in 1957 and stayed with the club until the end of his career in 1975!

Page 13 is a full-page advert whilst page 14 provides Tottenham Hotspur player profiles. Just like Celtic, there were some great players at Tottenham in 1967 that included the likes of Pat Jennings, Dave Mackay and of course the great Jimmy Greaves! The Spurs player profiles are followed on page 15 with a team photograph.

Page 16 provides two articles with the first one looking back at Celtic’s quite brilliant victory over Inter Milan in the 1966/1967 European Cup Final as well as the origins of this famous Scottish Club. The second article takes a similar look at Tottenham Hotspur who had won the 1966/1967 FA Cup as well as finishing in 3rd position in the English First Division. The following page provides a brilliant photograph of the jubilant Celtic players on their return to Parkhead with the European Cup.

Pages 18 and 19 both feature full page adverts with the programme being completed on page 20 with an aerial photograph of Hampden Park.

A quite brilliant programme and one that I am very happy to have in my ever growing collection.

Programme Review – Barnsley Football Club

Tuesday October 2nd 1962

Barnsley v Wrexham

Football League Division 3

Programme Price: 4d

Last week I was given the opportunity to collect a load of football programmes and books from a fellow Salopian, Stuart Davies, who lives in a village called Yockleton, not too far from my home in Westley near Shrewsbury. There were lots of programmes and I can see I am going to have great fun going through them all. I think it goes without saying that the programme I have chosen for today’s review comes from that haul of programmes collected last week.

I really like these smaller booklet style programmes and I now have a small number of them in my collection. Before I get into this issue the first thing I would like to talk about is the price because if you are like me and were born after 1971 you probably won’t know how much 4d was. Until 1971, British money was divided up into pounds, shillings, and pence – One pound was divided in 20 shillings, one shilling was divided into 12 pennies and one penny was divided into two halfpennies, or four farthings. There were therefore 240 pennies in a pound. Pennies were somewhat confusingly abbreviated to ‘d’. This because the Latin word for this coin was ‘denarius’. So, to end this short history lesson and by using a currency calculator, the price of 4d would be worth approximately 35p in today’s money – good value for a programme in my opinion!

It’s about time that I started reviewing the programme, it is after all what this article is about. This issue consists of 20 pages from the front to back cover and is a decent enough read throughout those 20 pages. Added to this, for a programme that will be 60 years old later this year, it is in really good condition still.

With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 advertises two hotels in the Barnsley area with the following page providing a list of club officials at Barnsley and news about the recent draw for the Third Round of the League Cup. Back in October 1962 the Chairman was Mr J. Richards whilst the manager was J. Steele. Meanwhile, the draw for the Third Round of the League Cup saw Barnsley being drawn at home to play then Second Division Luton Town.

Page 4 features several adverts with page 5 providing words written by the Barnsley Manager Johnny Steele. The ‘gaffer’ looks back with pride at his team’s performance against the Second Division Grimsby Town in the Second Round of the League Cup, a win that he hoped would help Barnsley to kick on in their own domestic league campaign.

Page 6 advertises Barnsley’s next away fixture which would be away at Bradford City on Saturday 13th October. Rail travel was being provided with trains departing Barnsley at 12:27pm with arrival at Bradford set for 1:43pm.

Page 7 sees a welcome to Wrexham, a short history about the club and several player profiles. The club was founded in 1873 and they were one of the original members of the Third Division on its formation in 1921. With regards to the player profiles, it is written that goalkeeper, Kevin Keelan had been signed from Kidderminster Harriers in November 1961 having previously made several first team appearances for Aston Villa. Meanwhile, left half, Tecwyn Jones was a local lad and at the age of 21 was already in his fourth professional season with the club.

Page 8 provides several adverts with the following pages showing details of the next games to be played at Oakwell, the home of Barnsley FC. On Friday 5th October (18 years later to the date yours truly was born) Barnsley were to entertain Coventry City in League Division 3 with a 7:15pm kick off. The following day, the club’s Junior team were to have a game at against their counterparts at Wolverhampton Wanderers in the First Round of the N.I.L. Cup.

Pages 10 and 11 show the team line ups for Barnsley and Wrexham with the referee named as F. Cowen from Manchester. This is followed by several adverts on page 11.

Page 13 shows the standings in the Football League Division 3 up to and including Saturday September 29th, 1962. In the 24-team division Barnsley were sitting in 22nd place whilst their opponents, Wrexham, were in 14th position. The following page provides further adverts.

Page 15 provides a list of previous results and forthcoming fixtures for Barnsley in the 1962/1963 season. The club started their campaign with a 1-1 draw at Oakwell against Swindon Town. The same is shown for the reserves at Barnsley in the Central League. The second XI also started the season with a draw, 1-1 at Sheffield United reserves.

There are more adverts on page 16 with page 17 providing news from the Barnsley Supporters Club. A bar had been introduced on what is described as the ‘popular’ side at Oakwell but the supporters club secretary, Maurice Brown, had been disappointed with the sales within the first month of the bar’s existence.

Page 18 is titled ‘Oakwell Echos’ and provides information on several topics. Firstly, it is written that the music to be played at this game against Wrexham comes from records that have been loaned to the club by Messrs. Alwyn Isherwood Ltd. of Market Street Barnsley. Next, it is reported that 5,408 people attended Oakwell for Barnsley’s recent League Cup win against Grimsby Town. There is news on the club’s Colts team who back in 1962 played in the Sheffield Under 18’s League. Their recent results included a 3-0 against Rotherham United, a 3-5 loss to Charlton United and a 4-4 draw with Sheffield United. This followed by players appearances and goals scored during the 1962/1963 season for Barnsley’s first team and reserves team respectively. The top appearance makers for the first team were Brookes, Winstanley, Hosie and Leighton who all had twelve appearances to their names. Meanwhile the first team’s top scorer was O’Hara who at the time of writing had scored five goals.

This near 60-year-old programme is then completed by two pages of adverts. For the record I have managed to ascertain that Barnsley won this game against Wrexham, 2-1 in front of 7,484 spectators.

Programme Review – 1986 Staffordshire F. A. Vase Final

Monday 12th May 1986

Rocester FC v Eccleshall FC

Staffordshire FA Vase Final

Venue: Marston Road (Stafford Rangers FC)

Programme Price: 30p

Although I am yet to watch Rocester FC play in a home game (I do have a programme featuring them from watching a Stafforshire County cup Final a few seasons ago), for some reason I do seem to have quite a lot of programmes in my collection that feature the club. Not that I’m complaining as all the programmes in my collection are important to me, especially in this day and age when more and more clubs up and down the country appear to be going down the online route. Anyway, that’s enough about that so without further ado, let’s get into this programme.

This issue consists of twelve pages from the front to back cover with seven of those pages containing adverts, so quite light on football related content. The front cover provided me with some interest as it seems to focus on Rocester FC and with this being a county cup final I thought this to be and for want of a better word, a bit odd.

Next, there are three pages adverts before we see a short piece regarding Rocester FC. The club were founded in 1895 and since 1919 have played at Mill Fields, as they still do today. There is a list of honours included in this piece with the earliest one mentioned being when the club won the Staffordshire County League (North) in 1970.

The next two pages feature the team line ups with the referee named as Mr J. Caulkin. Either side of the line up’s is a message from the Staffordshire FA Vase Committee with the opposite side seeing a message from the Manager of Rocester FC, Alan Beaman. The following page sees a short piece all about Eccleshall FC. It is written that the club was reformed in 1971 at a meeting at the George and Dragon Public House, with the landlord, the late Mr. M. Beale being at the forefront of the club’s first committee.

The remainder of the programme is completed by several pages of adverts. As I previously mentioned, the programme is quite light on football content but as I have always said, a paper programme is always better than nothing at all!

For the record, I have been able to ascertain that Rocester won the 1986 Staffordshire FA Vase final but unfortunately my research as fell short of finding an actual result.

Programme Review – Canterbury City FC

Monday 28th August 1967

Canterbury City v Tonbridge

Southern League Challenge Cup 1st Rd 1st Leg

Programme Price: 6d

Quite a short review today due to this leaflet style issue which will be 55 years old in August.

Upon opening the programme there is a few pieces of information to be read. Firstly there is a list of club officials at Canterbury City with the chairman being named as Cllr L.R. Bennett. Meanwhile the manager back in 1967 was named as I. Clarke. Below the list of club officials there is a list of forthcoming fixtures for Canterbury. The club’s next game after this cup tie would be at home against Dunstable Town. In the middle of this section the team line up’s are displayed with the referee being named as R. H. Pearce.

Next we see some information about the Southern League Cup. The trophy is described as being a Silver Cup on base, with silver plate for engraving names of winners and known as the Worcester Vase. A list of previous winners of the Southern League Cup is also displayed with the earliest winners being named as Headington Utd in the 1952/1953 season.

Looking at the back of the programme there is a full fixture list provided for the whole of the 1967/1968 season for games involving Canterbury City. Opposite the fixture list is a small piece written by the Canterbury City chairman, Cllr. L. R. Bennett who welcomes everyone to the game and looks forward to a good sporting encounter.

So, like I said this was a shorter than usual review due to the size of the programme but it is still one that provides a great historic record of this game that was played more than five decades ago. You don’t get that with online programmes folks!

Programme Review – Chatham Town FC

Saturday 5th September 1981

Chatham Town v Hastings United

FA Cup Preliminary Round

Programme Price: 15p

Like many of my other reviews in the past, this programme has been selected completely at random from my collection. It is of eight pages in length and whilst compared to other programmes it is quite short in terms of quantity, it does not detract from my enjoyment of reading and reviewing it.

With Page 1 being the front cover, page 2 provides some information on Chatham Town FC. The club was founded in 1882 and back in 1981 the chairman of the club was Guy Swayland. Another piece of information on the page that I found very interesting was that the club were FA Cup Quarter Finalists in the 1888/1889 season.

Page 3 is titled ‘Club Notes, Gossip and Chat’ and firstly welcomes the directors, players, officials and supporters of Hastings United to the game. The club also welcomes Chatham’s new sponsors, Leisure Investments to the game which ironically was their first ever visit to the club. The article goes onto say that the club had made an impressive start to the season on the pitch, winning nine points out of a possible ten.

Page 4 provides the team line up’s for the game with the referee named as Mr V. Roberts from London.

Page 5 shows the Kent League Division One table and at the time of writing, Chatham were sitting at the top of the division, one point clear of Crockenhill in second place.

Page 6 provides two pieces of information. Firstly the club report on the success of their lottery and secondly there is news on forthcoming fixtures for teams at Chatham Town FC. The reserves would be away at Welling on Tuesday 15th September whilst the first XI would have a home league game against Sheppey on Saturday 26th September.

The final two pages of the programme contain several adverts which completes this nice little issue.

For the record, Hastings United won this FA Cup Preliminary Round encounter by 4 goals to 1. They then went on an amazing run all the way to the First Round proper where they lost 2-0 at Enfield.

Newhall United – A Second Programme Review

Saturday 23rd October 2021

Newhall United v Mickleover Athletic

Midlands Regional Alliance Division One

Programme Price: £1.50

A few weeks ago I wrote a programme review of a Newhall United game against Barlestone St Giles that took place in 1995. After I had written it, I discovered that Newhall United had a page on facebook and I shared my review with them. Following this they kindly sent me a programme from this current season and it is that programme which I will review today.

The programme consists of 24 pages from the front to back cover and is very well put together and provides the reader with a good amount of information.

With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 shows the results from the previous week of games and all of the fixtures taking place on 23rd October across all three tiers of the Midlands Regional Alliance. The following page shows the squad lists for both Newhall United and Mickleover Athletic.

Page 4 provides two match reports from the previous week for the first team and reserves at Newhall United. The first team enjoyed a comprehensive 5-1 victory over Burton United whilst the reserves drew 2-2 at Melbourne Dynamo Reserves. At the bottom of page 4 and continuing onto page 5 is a Midlands Regional Alliance review which makes for very interesting reading. It was the opening line of the review that caught my attention – ‘A solitary goal from former Derby County striker, Marcus Tudgay, was sufficient for Allenton United to overcome Mayfield on Saturday’ – I have heard of Marcus Tudgay and after carrying out a bit of research I discovered that he scored 17 goals in 92 league games for Derby County and then went onto score 48 goals in 195 league games for Sheffield Wednesday. In my opinion it is great to see that he is still obviously enjoying playing football at the age of 39 years old. Page 5 also features news about the reserve team at Newhall United and also provides some very interesting reading. It is written that in a recent game, 52 year old (yes 52) Dean Smith scored a goal in a match against Markeaton! Quite remarkable!

Pages 6 and 7 provide a feature called ‘TWITTERWATCH’ which takes a look at some of the recent tweets with regards to the football world.

Page 8 provides the standings at the time of writing for both the Midlands Regional Alliance Division One and Division Two. The first XI at Newhall United were sitting pretty at the top of Division One whilst Mickleover Athletic were in second position in the 14 team division. Meanwhile, in Division Two, the reserves at Newhall United were in 4th place in the 11 team division. The following two pages feature several adverts.

Pages 11 to 14 provide a fascinating and comprehensive history of both sport in general in Newhall and of the club itself. Some of my favourite pieces of information appear early in the article and are shown as follows:

The village of Newhall has produced many professional footballers including England internationals. Probably the most famous was born at the Thorntree Inn on Bretby Lane in May 1879 – Ben Warren went onto become one of professional football’s earliest superstars, appearing in an FA Cup Final for Derby County before being snapped up by Chelsea in 1908. He played in every minute of England’s successful 1908 Home Nations Tournament, and was also ever-present in England’s first tour outside the United Kingdom, scoring in the Three Lions 11-1 win over Austria in Vienna.

Boxer, Jack Bodell was born in Newhall and he went onto become British Heavyweight Champion on two occasions and later winning the Commonwealth and European Heavyweight titles.

Local sporting historian David Salisbury has traced the earliest recorded football match in South Derbyshire to 21st October 1878 when Newhall lost 2-0 at home to Burton Wanderers.

There is much more information that I could provide but I might do that in a separate blog post at some point in the future.

Pages 15 and 16 feature several adverts with page 17 showing the top scorers in both Division One and Division Two of the Midlands Regional Alliance. At the top of the list in Division One was Newhall United’s Callum Riddell who at the time of writing had scored 10 goals. Meanwhile in Division Two, it was Newhall’s reserve team striker, Dylan Burke who topped the list with 9 goals to his name.

Pages 18 and 19 feature an article which is titled ‘NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT’ and makes reference to the cover quote guest, Sir Michael Caine. The article goes onto to talk about one of Caine’s most famous appearances in a movie, namely the brilliant Escape To Victory. Of course this film also saw appearances made by football stars such as Pele, Booby Moore John Wark and Osvaldo Ardiles to name but a few.

Pages 20 and 21 see a feature that is titled ‘ELEVENSES’ and continues on the theme of football players appearing on screen. Two of eleven the players featured are the former Chelsea and France defender, Frank Leboeuf who played a Doctor in the Stephen Hawking film – ‘The Theory of Everything’ and, the former Rangers and Scotland striker, Ally McCoist who starred as Jackie McQuillan in 1999 film ‘Shot at Glory‘

Page 22 is titled ‘STATZONE’ and looks at player appearances and goals scored at the time of writing for the 2021/2022 season and career totals. The current player with the most career appearances made for Newhall United was Richard Foster who since making his debut in 2010 had played 164 times for the club.

Page 23 shows the previous results and forthcoming fixtures for both the first and second XI at Newhall United. The first team started their season with a 3-1 win against Little Eaton Reserves whilst the reserves also started with a win, 3-2 against Pinxton United. The same page also reports on historical events on the date of this game.

This entertaining and enjoyable programme is then completed on page 24 with a full page advert.

In closing, I would like to thank Newhall United for sending me this programme and I would also like to wish them all the very best of luck for the future.