View From The Treatment Room at Hednesford Town FC

Football has changed beyond all recognition from Victorian times when players had their hair parted in the middle and wore handlebar moustaches to today where a Premiership player can be a millionaire by signing a contract for just one season.

What has not changed is the desire of the football supporter to be informed.

Football match day programmes have developed from a single team sheet costing one old penny to the glossy magazines on sale at football grounds today.

Collecting football programmes is a popular hobby because they can become more valuable than stamps and coins. As soon as the match finishes the publication takes on a different role. Not only does it become a `collectable` but an important store of memories and nostalgia especially if you were at the match. It chronicles the highs and lows of a season while reminding you of long forgotten players especially the ones that were your favourites.

For boys football programmes was a learning tool (like comics were) for reading but they also taught you the geography of where the visiting teams came from when they played your favourite team. History can also be gleamed from the pages too. Just by looking back on old Hednesford Town programmes I can see adverts for `Fish and Chips` before the concept of `McDonald` and other fast foods. Another advert for a gents outfitters which makes me wonder if anyone wears a suit nowadays unless at weddings and funerals. The adverts in old programmes showed the male domination of the game. Programmes full of adverts maybe looked upon as a nuisance but it gives you a `snapshot` of the economy of the day and what was popular. Have a look at the modern programmes now you will see signs of the culture that we now live in.

 When programmes were first sold decades ago it meant the club had a possibility of making a financial profit but to ensure that the supporter would buy the programmes the content had to be good enough to attract purchases. In the early days the single sheet programme was enough to inform the fan who was playing in the match. Now there are articles on the personalities who play for the team, comments from the manager and action shots from previous games.

Having been associated with football for more years than I care to mention, I have accumulated my own unique collection of programmes. The beauty of this hobby is that all collections are different and can be based on how much or how little you have spent.

It is reported that in auction a programme was sold for £11,500. It was the 1915 F.A. Cup final played between Chelsea and Sheffield United at Old Trafford.

So folks start looking in your Parents or Grandparent’s attic for that `gem` of a programme.