Programmes! A History Through Football Programmes by Richard Crooks – Review
By Karl Hornsey
Full disclosure – I am a football programme editor. I’ve also had a fascination with them for as long as I can remember, and any football match from my childhood wasn’t the same if I didn’t go home carrying a programme. The care and attention we put into creating the matchday programme for Beverley Town FC is, thankfully, still replicated across the country, even though many clubs, professional and amateur, have long since ditched the printed programme and only produce an online version. The rise of the fanzine in the 1980s seemed to be the first threat to programmes, but these days they are just about hanging on in there.
Another man with a fascination for programmes is Richard Crooks, who draws on his extensive knowledge of the game to trace the history of programmes from the Victorian era to the modern day, often using his own club, Sheffield Wednesday, for examples of their development.
“Through the lens”
Crooks moves chronologically through the decades to methodically tell the story of how programmes grew in popularity and size, which is an excellent way of gauging how they changed hand in hand with society. For each decade, Crooks highlights examples from programmes across the divisions, which gives this book a very personal feel, and then goes into great detail about the types of advertisements one could find in your standard programme and, with seemingly great relish, the various beers, brewers and alcoholic beverages that could also be found therein.
In addition, and also of great interest, Crooks delves a little deeper into some of the more noteworthy, and tragic events, through the lens of the matchday programme. These include chapters on the two World Wars, how programmes dealt with the scourge of hooliganism that blighted the game from the 1960s, an insight into the thoughts of referees and how pirate programmes started to challenge those officially produced by clubs.
There are also fascinating chapters around disasters at Ibrox, Heysel, Bradford, Munich and Hillsborough, and how an outpouring of support for the clubs involved was chronicled in the programmes. All of which give the reader and in-depth perception of his integral the programme has been to the sport down the years and, hopefully, still will have in the future, even it does depend on the likes of us dedicated programme editors to keep it alive and kicking.
Programmes! A History Through Football Programmes by Richard Crooks is published by Pitch Publishing
Karl’s love of writing was piqued at the age of eight, when he won a Blue Peter badge in an essay-writing competition. The location of said badge might be a mystery now, but the memory never fades. Hours spent writing about sport as a teenager, in pre-internet years when you had to make your entertainment, honed his skills, and Karl has worked in TV and radio listings at PA Media for 28 years, and the age of hybrid working means 50% of that can be at home listening to Classic FM and thinking about his next visit to his beloved Yorkshire Dales.
hornskar
