Programmes

& fanzines

Pile them up in the spare bedroom

Season 1999-2000 (so far)

Brentford (7 Mar) by Daniel Jennings

Cost: £2

Pages: 48 including cover

Good things: A lot of pages. PACKED with info. There was also a good section which fans wrote into; A MATCH REPORT!!; and “Second Division Scene” - previewing who could be coming up from the Third and down from the First. Also a section called “Away Days” (which publicised an over-priced coach trip - £20: Brentford to Scunthorpe and back!) Very few adverts.

Bad things: “Coach’s Chatter” - very boring. “Meet the Visitors” - more on the team’s history than the current players.

Bizarre things: It had some dodgy pictures from their last game as well as a match report (in a completely different place).

Great one-liner: “So the training for tonight’s game has been all about giving people options on the ball” (from Coach’s Chatter).

Verdict: A very good read. 10 out of 10.

FANZINES
Hey Jude
No fanzines available on the night of Wrexham’s visit, but we do have a recent back copy to review. And, to be honest, Hey Jude is one of the most impressive lower-divisions fanzines I’ve seen. It’s chunky (even though there are no page numbers), well laid out and really varied in content. There are interviews (Stan Bowles, Richard Cadette) and lots of features and reviews. And it’s readable and reader-friendly in the way that some fanzines aren’t.
Peter Davies

Cambridge (18 Mar) by Dean Domerecki

Cost: £2

Pages: 48

Good things: Just about everybody contributes to this programme: manager, general manager, commercial manager, supporters’ association, web-site, PR manager, etc, etc - it’s a real team effort. In addition to the usual features on players common to both clubs and a historical review of previous meetings, there is a good Division 2 review and a couple of articles on the wider aspects of football.

Bad things: None really, unless you count Rooster’s pic, in which his shirt is a delicate shade of pink. However, if every time the programme shows him in a pink shirt he scores two goals I won’t be complaining.

Bizarre things: One of the previous meetings mentioned ended with a 4-3 scoreline, after which: ‘United pulled away from the bottom four briefly, but it wasn’t to last. The Robins eventually accelerated away to mid-table.’ Spooky. Also, strange typesetting leads the featured player, Andrew Ingham, to say “I haven’t had too bad a season really, I haven’t broken”.

Great one-liner: In the programme writer’s review of their game at Bury, he notes that ‘corporate facilities were ideally placed to watch the builders inaction from the opposite corner’. I wonder what he meant.

Verdict: Much better than their team.

FANZINES
The Abbey Rabbit
Another fanzine not available when Wrexham were in town. The Harlow-based magazine (nice rabbit-dominated logo, by the way) is billed as “An alternative look at Cambridge United FC” and is full of pessimistic pieces about the future of the club and the side. Lots of newspaper snippets, gossip and letters too - and available from outlets in Cambridge, Ely, Ipswich and Nottingham (strangely).
Peter Davies