big to slip into your coat pocket so you have to sit holding them for the whole game.
The typical Chesterfield programme of the fifties was three sheets of A4 matt paper folded to make twelve pages. There was little information other than club news – or ‘Saltergate Chatter’ – the team line-ups, pen pictures of the visiting team, the league tables and results of the first team and reserves and a key to the board which displayed the half-time scores from other grounds. The rest of the space was taken up by display advertisements. Yet in those days before local radio, Ceefax, and saturation TV coverage of the game, these flimsy programmes were the main source of match information for supporters. The national papers contained little other than the results and goalscorers. Even the local paper, the
Sheffield Star
, never carried more than a few paragraphs of pre-match information.
Barring injury or a late change of plan on the part of the manager, the eleven you saw in the programme was taken to be the team to be fielded that afternoon. (Today’s matchday magazines list squads, which might be anything up to thirty-five players.) What’s more, a supporter always knew where to find the team line-ups within these programmes: in the centre pages or, failing that, on the inside front cover.
The programme from my debut game against Colchester made much of the fact goalkeeper Ron Powell was set to make his three hundredth consecutive appearance for the club. My selection, of course, denied him that milestone. Although Ron himself was fine about it, I did wonder what sort of reaction I would receive from the Chesterfield faithful when they saw me run out in the goalkeeper’s jersey. The very fact that he had been dropped on the eve of his record-breaking game taught me a lesson about football: there is no room for sentiment in the game.
I had been wondering whether my appearance would be a total surprise to supporters, or whether word would have gotround the terraces that I was set to make my debut. Near the back of the programme, however, I noticed a small paragraph headed ‘Special Note’. It read, ‘The opening paragraphs of Saltergate Chatter were printed before team selection. We now welcome and congratulate Gordon Banks as goalkeeper for today’s match. Ron Powell will receive congratulations on his 300th appearance soon, on the appropriate occasion.’ I took that to mean that they weren’t expecting my elevation to the first team to be a lengthy one!
As I look through that programme now, I’m reminded how different football was in 1958. And it’s a snapshot of a society that has changed almost beyond recognition. Nowhere is this more evident than in the adverts. There is one for the National Coal Board encouraging people to ‘Work in modern mining because it pays’, with ‘many jobs available in mining, mechanical and electrical for men and boys’. Meanwhile, ‘Joyce Mullis ALCM, AIMD (Hons), the gold medallist soprano’, offers teaching in singing and piano, obviously appealing to parents whose idea of providing their offspring with opportunities they never had was to hear them play ‘The Blackbird Gavotte’ on the family heirloom they themselves had never learned to play. Then there is the Dickensian Nathaniel Atrill, ‘For all your coal, coke and anthracite needs’, and T. P. Wood and Co., with the message, ‘Don’t get a reputation for always being seen in pubs, order your home supplies of bottled beers from us’ – the consumption of beer at home then was ambiguously referred to as ‘lace curtain drinking’.
These adverts mirrored football at that time. They were parochial and parsimonious, the organs of small High Street businesses that provided the town with not only commerce but its social glue and identity. Much the same as the football club. The big multinational companies had yet to realize football was a major cultural force and how they could benefit from an association with the
The typical Chesterfield programme of the fifties was three sheets of A4 matt paper folded to make twelve pages. There was little information other than club news – or ‘Saltergate Chatter’ – the team line-ups, pen pictures of the visiting team, the league tables and results of the first team and reserves and a key to the board which displayed the half-time scores from other grounds. The rest of the space was taken up by display advertisements. Yet in those days before local radio, Ceefax, and saturation TV coverage of the game, these flimsy programmes were the main source of match information for supporters. The national papers contained little other than the results and goalscorers. Even the local paper, the
Sheffield Star
, never carried more than a few paragraphs of pre-match information.
Barring injury or a late change of plan on the part of the manager, the eleven you saw in the programme was taken to be the team to be fielded that afternoon. (Today’s matchday magazines list squads, which might be anything up to thirty-five players.) What’s more, a supporter always knew where to find the team line-ups within these programmes: in the centre pages or, failing that, on the inside front cover.
The programme from my debut game against Colchester made much of the fact goalkeeper Ron Powell was set to make his three hundredth consecutive appearance for the club. My selection, of course, denied him that milestone. Although Ron himself was fine about it, I did wonder what sort of reaction I would receive from the Chesterfield faithful when they saw me run out in the goalkeeper’s jersey. The very fact that he had been dropped on the eve of his record-breaking game taught me a lesson about football: there is no room for sentiment in the game.
I had been wondering whether my appearance would be a total surprise to supporters, or whether word would have gotround the terraces that I was set to make my debut. Near the back of the programme, however, I noticed a small paragraph headed ‘Special Note’. It read, ‘The opening paragraphs of Saltergate Chatter were printed before team selection. We now welcome and congratulate Gordon Banks as goalkeeper for today’s match. Ron Powell will receive congratulations on his 300th appearance soon, on the appropriate occasion.’ I took that to mean that they weren’t expecting my elevation to the first team to be a lengthy one!
As I look through that programme now, I’m reminded how different football was in 1958. And it’s a snapshot of a society that has changed almost beyond recognition. Nowhere is this more evident than in the adverts. There is one for the National Coal Board encouraging people to ‘Work in modern mining because it pays’, with ‘many jobs available in mining, mechanical and electrical for men and boys’. Meanwhile, ‘Joyce Mullis ALCM, AIMD (Hons), the gold medallist soprano’, offers teaching in singing and piano, obviously appealing to parents whose idea of providing their offspring with opportunities they never had was to hear them play ‘The Blackbird Gavotte’ on the family heirloom they themselves had never learned to play. Then there is the Dickensian Nathaniel Atrill, ‘For all your coal, coke and anthracite needs’, and T. P. Wood and Co., with the message, ‘Don’t get a reputation for always being seen in pubs, order your home supplies of bottled beers from us’ – the consumption of beer at home then was ambiguously referred to as ‘lace curtain drinking’.
These adverts mirrored football at that time. They were parochial and parsimonious, the organs of small High Street businesses that provided the town with not only commerce but its social glue and identity. Much the same as the football club. The big multinational companies had yet to realize football was a major cultural force and how they could benefit from an association with the
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