Source: FOOTYMAD
We Interrupt This Programme
Will season 2011/12 see the beginning of the end for the Football Programme or ' Match Day Magazine ' in Scotland. Two lower league clubs have already decided they can do without. For those fans who like the traditions of the game, pie at half time, standing room only etc the news will come as almost a desecration of the fitba' temple when they learn that football programmes could soon be surplus to requirements. Arbroath have announced they are happy to do without the programme this season while Stirling Albion have looked at a monthly magazine that will be available at all home games rather than the traditional match day mag. It's enough to make the purists burn their anoraks in protest but sadly it is a sign of the times. Recession and the rise of the internet could soon consign lower league programmes at least to history within a few years. Scottish clubs outside the top half of the SPL have mainly always relied on fans to write, compile the stats and even design the club's programme with the club footing the bill for printing and distribution but now this could soon be a thing of the past. While it might seem like sacrilege to go a full campaign without a prog, it has been done in the past. Cowdenbeath went nearly three years without a programme from 1975 to 1978 before a group of fans resurrected the tradition with an eight page match day mag at the start of season 1978/9. When the supporters lost interest in the project after three seasons the Fife club was again happy to go without until an Edinburgh programme dealer decided to double as writer and producer of the club's prog. In the 80's programme shops existed in Bread Street in Edinburgh and Renfrew Street in Glasgow and many an afternoon was spent thumbing through the boxes of old programmes on display. This was Trainspotting for the round ball enthusiast and the sub-culture of programmes in many ways led to the creation of Fanzine culture. Some basement league clubs in Scotland found it was better to produce a 'cheap as chips' effort than face the ignominy of having no programme at all and the tut-tutting of the die-hard visiting fan who was also an avid programme collector. These days the focus of fans has shifted to the web and with even newspapers finding it hard to compete against the net what chance really of the football programme stemming the tide of fan info and comment on forums and websites that now makes the paper pen pics and profiles on a Saturday seem rather quaint. I, for one, want to see the tradition of the football programme survive a bit longer in Scotland's lower leagues but how ironic that two of Scotland's pioneering clubs should now decide the match day mag is not for them. Whatever your thoughts on Stirling's X Factor auditions for players at 200 quid a pop, and re-naming their stadium to suit a sponsor, the club who once used flat bed trucks as Grandstands, and were among the first in the UK to favour the plastic pitch, seem to be blazing a trail again albeit an unpopular one with anyone over 40 who has been a fitba' fan all their life. Historically Arbroath 36 Bon Accord 0 may yet come second to the tag 'The club that killed the Scottish football programme' but somehow I doubt it. Even this 40 something fitba' purist has seen the writing on the web wall. The Scottish football programme may soon be interrupted but look on the bright side. Those old issues sporting pics of players with short shorts and haircuts straight out of 'Life On Mars' may yet become more expensive at football auctions than one ever imagined!
