Programmes

& fanzines

Pile them up in the spare bedroom

Season 1999-2000 (so far)

Gillingham (9 Oct)

Cost: £2

Pages: 56

Good things: Very strong, attractive club-colour scheme throughout the programme; article from the chairman covering, amongst other things, how he is raising money for the club; an index!; good Division 2 review item; professional feel to layout.

Bad things: None really.

Bizarre things: Advert for the Cannon Pub in Gillingham: “Warm beer, stale food, lousy landlord.”

Great one-liner: From manager Peter Taylor’s column: “I would like to extend a warm welcome to manager Brian Flynn…but I hope he has a torrid journey home thinking about our win.”

Verdict: Excellent.

FANZINE
Brian Moore’s Head Looks Uncannily Like the London Planetarium.
This long established fanzine, 10 years and counting weighs in at 56 pages and costs £1.50 and is one of the best on the market, certainly in the lower divisions. Despite being one of the original club fanzines it has avoided the urge to go upmarket and glossy in the way that a number of its counterparts have succumbed and as a result remains true to the original cause of feeling like a supporters magazine. The fanzine includes the usual mix of opinions, match reports, away match guides, cartoons etc, and while there is not a lot of particular interest to Wrexham fans, it is nevertheless a quality read and worth £1.50 of anyone’s money. Paul Lindsay

Stoke City [23 Oct]

Cost: £2

Pages: 58

Good things: Picture of Mickey Thomas (surprise!). Well set out, intelligently written, generally informative and a good read. Good newsround page, with updates on transfers, loans, etc.

Bad things: Predictable whinging blather from Gary Megson. Nasty plastic-y smell that seems to come with a lot of the new laminated programmes. The now-usual Carling Opta index head-to-head (Ward v Dearden) which in fact tells you precisely nothing meaningful, and refers to keepers as ‘glovesmen’.

Bizarre things: An article looking back at the Wrexham v Stoke programme of 1941, including the helpful tip: “In the event of enemy air activity patrons are advised to get as far under the shelters as possible”. Really? And Arthur Askey was appearing at the Wrexham Majestic in Ghost Train. Ah, the good old days.

Great one-liner: ‘Pottermus has arrived’! (These are fluffy toys based on the slightly camp, mascara’d hippo mascot, and a bargain at only £19.99! The pun on the name is so bad that it’s actually quite good.)

Verdict: Entertaining and good value.

FANZINE
The Oatcake
A bit of an institution, this one. At £1 for 24 A5 pages, probably not the best value for money, but hey, this is a free market economy, and as a new issue comes out with every home game, it won’t surprise you that the editor is full-time and that the current issue is number 226! If you are an obsessive Stoke supporter and start buying The Oatcake, it’s odds-on that you won’t be able to stop buying the damn thing for fear of missing some bang up-to-the minute news. Topicality is all with The Oatcake, and it has the feel of a newsletter - cartoon strip, letters column, recent reviews - and to Stoke fans it must feel just like part of a normal matchday. However, it does leave the outsider with a rather suffocating close-up view of the club, and I wonder whether that in being so intense it misses out on the wider, long-term issues. Nevertheless, very good and completely admirable. Dean Domerecki

Burnley [2 Nov]

Cost: £2

Pages: 58

Good things: Attractive claret-and-blue theme throughout the whole programme. All statistics and information presented well, free of the usual annoying clutter.

Bad things: Very ‘bitty’ feel to the programme, too many different and jarring presentation styles and fonts - doesn’t keep your attention very well.

Bizarre things: A team in the commmunity 5-a-side league called Trelleborg. Nice to see that, being such a big club, they don’t harbour any resentfulness over the success of other, smaller clubs.

Great one-liner: ‘Pretiumque et Causa Laboris.’ No, really, it’s on page 36. By law, only big clubs can use Latin in their programmes, apparently.

Verdict: Needs to be more readable, especially when you don’t want to see what’s happening on the pitch.

FANZINE
Bob Lord’s Sausage
Probably very good also, full of the black humour and wit that you associate with this part of Lancashire - you know, the parts that look at their close neighbours in red and white and pretend that they don’t want to be just a little bit like them. I say probably, because last year’s copy is the only one I still have - fanzines just weren’t available on Black Tuesday, and my postal request for a current issue (enclosing money and a SAE, for goodness’ sake - what else do they want?) has gone unanswered. Perhaps it’s that, being a big club, they’re too busy to deal with smaller concerns like us … but no, silly me, I forgot to tell them how to post the letter. Suddenly I don’t like Burnley.
Dean Domerecki

Kettering Town [10 Nov]

Cost: £1.50

Pages: 36

Good things: Compact A5 size, rather than the larger format we’re used to. Not much in particular to comment on, as the club are obviously not geared up to producing the higher-quality programmes that you’d expect in the football league - for example, only the cover and centre pages are in colour.

Bad things: The fact that a programme was necessary at all.

Bizarre things: The programme was designed and printed by a subsidiary of Leicester City. Is this bizarre enough? It’s not as though Northamptonshire is renowned for being big on strangeness.

Great one-liner: On Hereford United’s win against York City in the Cup (ha!): “Hereford’s success was due, in no small part, to an unusual combination of a male kiss-o-gram, one large bullock and a strange pre-match ceremony involving six fans and a swede”.

Verdict: A game effort.

FANZINE
Patgod II (?)
Or so When Saturday Comes says. I didn’t see any trace of it at the ground, and the lady in the club shop told me why - it has been banned by the club for saying ever so nasty things about the board. As I don’t intend to pursue the fanzine by post in the usual futile way that sadly seems the norm now, we’ll just have to do without it until the Kettering fans start saying nicer things about their club, and we draw them again in the Cup. Don’t hold your breath for either.
Dean Domerecki

Wales v Switzerland (9 Oct)
FULL INTERNATIONAL

Cost: £3.00

Pages: 48

Good things: Glossy, colourful, comprehensive.

Bad things: Pricey; too much like the last one.

Bizarre things: Did you know that the Wales-Denmark game was staged at the “Anfield Stadium, Bologna”? (p.11)

Great one-liner: “You can’t walk around with your chin on the floor.” (Joey Jones, p.17)

Verdict: Very very glossy.