PROGRAMMES! PROGRAMMES! Football and Life from Wartime to Lockdown
Programmes!
Programmes! Football and Life from Wartime to Lockdown is a dig through a collection of 2,000 programmes. From the days when paper was rationed and getting a team out depended on army leave, to today’s fat, glossy match-day magazines showcasing global stars and offshore gambling, the programmes weave the stories. They tell of the evolution of football and of the lives of players and fans, grounds and towns, Ford Zephyrs and car phones, coal miners and cryptocurrencies. On this journey through time we encounter villains and heroes, tragedies and celebrations, noodle partners and fan-owned clubs. It’s a journey spiced with bad poetry, adverts for sex magazines, boy bands who never made it, and explanations of a “magic sponge” for American converts to the beautiful game.
There are unlikely World Cup winners, schoolboy internationals destined for stardom and others whose glimpse of glory proved fleeting, along with first-hand accounts of unforgettable games, the crush of the crowd and matches in Eastern Europe as the Soviet Block unravelled. Programmes! Programmes! will rekindle memories for generations of fans. It is a “must” for lovers of football nostalgia, with fascinating, funny and quirky tales galore.
TAKING A LOOK BACK
This book is a unique exploration of times past and present as seen through a collection of programmes, some for special occasions, some for humdrum fixtures – each with a story to tell. Amongst the folds, the half-time scores, league tables, team changes, managers’ notes and advertisements are legends and forgotten favourites, the smell of liniment and the click of the turnstiles.
What was needed to persuade a ref to take the players off during an air raid?
How was “November-foggyish” Britain introduced to Pepsi and American pizzazz?
When did women, black players and ethnic restaurants start to appear in British programmes?
How did television change the game, again and again, taking us from the terraces to the worldwide sofa?
Who were the golden boys and who were the no-hopers among England’s 1966 World
Cup winners?
How did computer dating, IT and finance industries replace local breweries and manufacturing in the pages of programmes?
Or billionaire absentee owners or fan-owned clubs collecting clothing for homeless people?
...and why are there 73 programmes of matches involving Torquay United in the collection?
Cliff Hague grew up playing football in the drizzly terraced streets of post-war Manchester, idolising the Busby Babes and collecting football programmes. Moving to Scotland in the late 1960s, eventually he became a globe-trotting urban planning academic, consultant and author. Like many men past their prime, he can still picture vividly a goal he scored when he was a boy.