This is how my reviews appeared in the Rovers programme this season. As we had a few postponements some bits got repeated and I can't be bothered to tidy it up. You see it as it was written.
Hope those that support clubs near the bottom aren't offended.
Anyway see what you think, cheers Jamie.
2008-09 Reviewed.
With the A-Z series at an end I have decided to have a look at the programmes that the travelling pirate army will have picked up at the various grounds visited this season. I have devised a scoring system including size, information, and price that will give a maximum score of 400 points. Now that score will only be reached by a 100 page programme with NO adverts so I will say now that a good score that could be challenging for honours will be 250. So today I ask you to cast your mind back to August when it was nice and warm and fans across the country were all full of hope. The first issue we saw was from Vicarage Road in the League Cup 1st Round. It was a cut down version of the full programme. Now that is ok as long as the price comes down as well. Well at a cost of £2.00 for 32 pages it works out at 6p a page. Trouble is the amount of reading matter for both the home and away has been drastically reduced and works out to a whopping 17p per page. That has brought the score down by a fair old bit I can tell you. The cover looses out as well, the picture is too dark in my opinion and the match info is a little bit difficult to make out. Then again it may be just my old eyes playing up. This gives Watford a total score of 183 points. Is it enough to win? I imagine you could hazard a guess that the answer will be, no. Now we move on to Brighton & Hove Albion. The cover is far better than Watford’s as the picture of Micky Adams is crisp and clear and all the match details are at the top and are written in black on a white background. So much better when you are looking through your collection trying to find a certain programme. Price wise it cost £3.00 for 68 pages, that gives a price per page score of 4p. Where this one gains over Watfords is on the price per page of content. 9p as opposed to 17p, clearly far better value. Not only are there a good number of information pages but many of them are of interest to the travelling fans as well. The section on their new ground at Falmer was a good read and though most of the other pieces are not specifically aimed at the away fans they are still of interest anyway. The pictures within this programme are of a high standard as well. I think that it is all to easy to get good picture nowadays but there are some great action shots here. Now that is not so easy to do I have tried (and failed) myself. Final score for Brighton is 253. The one to beat then. -----------------------------------------------------------
You may well remember that the reviews in the MK Dons programme on Boxing day threw up an early contender for best programme (Brighton) and one that could easily take the wooden spoon. (Watford). Well today we look at two more that may be challengers at either end of the table. Leeds are the first to come under the spotlight. Starting with a nice glossy cover. It has all the sponsors at the bottom leaving plenty of space for the match details at the top. The programme costs £3.00 for 76 pages giving a price of 4p/page. With 42 pages of content working out at 7p/page, things are looking good. The qualities of pictures in this one are also top drawer. Of the content pages a full 42 of them are packed with news and features that are solely aimed at the home fans. Sadly only 4 pages are given over to the away fans and they are simply the standard pen pics and such like. This is a great shame as it brings the overall score down by quite a considerable amount. Overall I felt that this issue has got all the makings of a fine production but falls down on the amount of articles that are of interest to those of us that don’t support Leeds. So have Leeds taken top spot? Yes, but it was close. They beat Brighton by 2 with a total score of 285.
Next we come to Bournemouth in the JPT. Now as mentioned last time cut down issues CAN still be good value if the price is reduced accordingly. So what about this one? It costs £1.00 for 16 pages. So a price/page of 6p is not too bad. Trouble is there are 3 ½ pages of advertisements and a fair few pictures as well so the price per page of content comes in at 10p, not so good. Back to those pictures, though there are a few they aren’t that wonderful and are all in black and white so as you can see that £1.00 cover price does not look such good value after all. So of those content pages how many are allocated to each set of supporters? The Bournemouth fans got 7 while the Pirate Army were treated to a grand total of 4. This gives a total of 160 points. So we have new holders of 1st and last places. Will that change next time? Find out in 2 weeks time. ------------------------------------
You may well remember that the reviews in the MK Dons programme on Boxing day threw up an early contender for best programme (Brighton) and one that could easily take the wooden spoon. (Watford). Well today we look at two more that could be challengers at either end of the table. The Leeds and Bournemouth programmes were reviewed in the Yeovil issue so you will have to wait until next month to find out what I thought of them. So, today I will look firstly at the televised game at Peterborough United and then our friends from up the M5, Cheltenham Town. Posh’s has a hard glossy cover though if you’re like me you will need your specs to see the match details. It has 92 (the most so far) pages with a cost per page of a tiny 3p. The surprising thing is the lack of content. Most pages have very large headings that take up, up to half of their pages. So a cost of 10p per content page rather lets it down. This also leaves very little room for the away fans. Just the standard info over 4 pages doesn’t give you much to look at, at half time. One other article though was aimed at both sets of fans. Phil Nolan has had an idea to make players respect the ref. All I will say is that a pink frilly frock is involved. Have a read and see what you think.
Cheltenham’s programme has fewer pages, 64 at 5p per page and a similar amount of reading matter. 30 at 10p per page. I don’t know if it will prove to be worthwhile United having all those extra pages if you don’t get anything much more inside. Town fans could find 29 pages to keep them happy while the Pirate army only had 5. One of these is Hannah Lugsden’s view on Jamie Carragher’s decision to “put Liverpool above England”. It is a very good read so check it out and see if you agree or not. The standard of pictures in both productions is very good. I have awarded Posh 17 points, 1 more than the Robins. They get that extra point purely on the amount there is so maybe the extra pages do pay off? So, do either of these programmes manage to knock Brighton of top spot? Well they scored 253. Cheltenham came very close with 250 but Peterborough came in with an impressive 276 so move into an early lead. Please get in contact if you have any thought on what I have said so far. It would be interesting to see what others think. ------------------------------
As you may remember from Saturday Leeds are currently in top spot with 285 points. Today we will have a look at the offerings from Yeovil Town and Colchester United to see if the can overhaul United. Yeovil’s programme is approximately the same size as ours and every other one seen so far this season. It comes with 72 pages for £3.00 that works out at only 4p per page. The price per page of content is not so good though. It has around 30 full pages at 10p per page. There are 27 aimed at the home fans while the traveling only had 6 to read during the half time break. In my opinion the one and only page that can hold the attention of most people is the “media view” on page 45. Kierran Howards views on the silly money being talked about nowadays in the Premier League is well written and I simply couldn’t disagree with any of it. The cover is very good as it is well laid out and all the match details are written clearly in the bottom left hand corner. It is a similar story with the pictorial content. There are plenty of them and some great action shots as well. Overall I feel that this programme is a fine production and with a little more reading matter it could have been right at the top. As it is it gained 260 points. A score that leaves Yeovil in 3rd position.
Colchester’s programme begins very well indeed. I have awarded the cover 19 out of 20 points, the best so far. It continues with the pictures as there are a good number within the large amount of pages. There are actually 84 and as the price is the same as most others (£3.00) the price per page is a low 4p. The reading matter is also better than most. 34 pages for the home fans and 8 for the away supporters. This gives a score of 8p per page, only the Leeds issue has done better. I am not sure why but this game was designated as the official opening of United’s new stadium, this meant that there was also some historical articles about Layer Road. I don’t know about you but as I get older myself I find that I enjoy this sort of thing more and more. From the very start I felt that this was going to be a good programme. I was not disappointed. It has managed to go into top spot with a score of 290 points. Will anyone beat it? Time will tell. . -----------------------------------------
First up today is Leicester City. So far this season just about every programme seen on our travels have been around the same size as our own. City’s breaks from that tradition. It is a square design which I believe is a shame. This a pain for fans of all the other clubs in the division as it won’t fit in the binders. The cover is also a little cluttered with adverts for various sponsors plus some teasers for what lies within. £3.00 buys you 84 pages which equals the most so far. Around 39 of these contain reading matter with a good 31 of them aimed at the home fans and 8 for the away contingent. I liked the good mix of pictures and as usual they were well taken and very clear and crisp. I also enjoyed the Foxes Footsteps feature. Though this article on page 37 is mainly aimed at the home supporters I think many others will have found it interesting. It gives details of where their old Belgrave Road ground was with maps and pictures of what was built there after City and Later Leicester Tigers moved on. As this is Leicester’s first ever season in League one I found it refreshing that unlike Leeds the people writing in this seemed to treat the rest of the division with the respect that they deserve. Overall I felt that with a better size and a few slight tweaks inside this programme could have been right up there with the best. As it is it gained a total of 275 points. A score that puts them in 4th place. Of course as you know Bournemouth are fighting for their lives as they try to overcome a 15 point deduction at the start of the season. I imagine that this is still not the full production from Dean Court as it only has 40 pages for a cost of £2.00. That works out at 5p per page which is not too bad but! Only 17 pages of content at 12p per page means that once again things are not looking too good. 15 of the pages are aimed at the home fans with 6 for the travelers. At least the Cherries produce a standard size programme with a nice cover that is easy to find the match details on. A total of 211 points puts it in a lowly 8th position, but it is the best of the three cut down issues. I am sure the Cherries fans would be very happy with a finishing position of 3rd from bottom this year. -----------------------------------
On we go then with our look at programmes that the Pirate Army will have come across on their travels this season. First up this evening is Hartlepool United. I can’t make my mind up about the cover, it is one of the clearest yet but the small graphic of a player in the center is, well odd to say the least. The standard and amount of pictures is very high as well, in fact there are so many it cuts down on the amount of space for reading matter. There are about 19 pages for the home fans and 6 for the away contingent. This is considerably less than others seen this term. All together there are 64 pages in this issue which works out at 4p per page. Overall I liked this programme but felt that it relies a little too much on pictorial content rather than giving the fans some more to read. It scores a total of 241 points to move into 9th position.
Next up is the offering from Millwall. Again it starts of very well with a well laid out cover that makes it easy to find the match details. An important detail when flicking through an entire seasons worth looking for one date in particular. Once inside the pages are awash with plenty of well taken action pictures but unlike Hartlepool, not too many. 27 pages to read is not as good as some but is not the worst either, sadly though the amount given over to the visitors is a very light 4 pages. There are a total of 69 pages in the programme which works out the same as Hartlepool, 4p per page. A total of 251 points moves Millwall up to 8th place and pushes Hartlepool back to 10th. ------------------------------------------------------------
As the season moves towards it’s conclusion I thought I would remind you of the top and bottom three programmes so far. All of the bottom 3 are cut down issues, namely Bournemouth, FAC, (211). Watford, LC, (183) and Bournemouth, JPS, (160). While at the top is Peterborough, (276). Leeds United, (285). And Colchester, (290). Today we will see if either Huddersfield Town or Stockport County can knock the U’s off the top. For their £3.00 terriers fans get a slightly smaller programme than we are used to here at the Mem, but it has 80 (at a cost of 4p per page) pages which is 16 more than us, an impressive start. The question though is have they used that space to best effect? Well they certainly haven’t done a bad job. I counted approximately 28 pages for the home fans and 8 aimed at either the away following or both sets of supporters. (9p per page) The cover is well laid out but I can imagine that with a different picture the match details could be harder to pick out. It is something that I will have to wonder about as I don’t have a copy of any other Town programmes to look at. With the large amount of pages there are plenty of pictures within and as usual in today’s productions they are of a good quality. With just a little more reading matter this programme could very easily have been right up there at the top, as it is though it finished with 270 points slotting in, in 5th place.
The programme from Edgeley Park starts well. It has to be about the clearest cover I have seen for many a day. In a panel at the bottom there is simply the two teams involved plus the date and kick of time surrounding County’s 125th Anniversary crest. The price is the lowest seen yet for a league game. £2.50 buys 68 pages at 4p per page, again the lowest of the low. There are 22 pages of content. This is where things begin to take a turn for the worse as 11p per page is a fair bit more than the top 3. At least 8 of these pages are of interest to the travelling fans so there you could take up a little time on the long journey home. Check out Simon Smedley’s page (19) where he hoped that the game passes without any mention of the postponed game in Bristol a couple of years back. Well haven’t you just mentioned it Simon? This programme has nothing wrong with it but simply doesn’t have enough content to make it a serious contender. It scores 245 points and sits in 10th place. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
Ok then, we now have arrived at Leyton Orients programme from January of this year. It’s size is that of most others in the league which is a good start, at least it will fit in my Rovers programme binder. It has a nice clear front cover with all the match details in the bottom right hand corner. There are plenty of high quality action shots inside which is not surprising as this issue contains no less than 80 pages. This is a very good price per page as it works out at 4p each page in a programme that costs £3.00. Content pages come in at a less than impressive 11p per page though. There are 28 pages for the home fans and only 4 for the away contingent. Orient gain 265 points in a total that puts them into 5th place overall. I felt that this was a programme that promised much but in many respects fails to deliver which is a shame. Next up is the offering from Scunthorpe United. At first glance the cover looks to be well laid out and clear enough to read the match details easily. Sadly the size (in my mind at least) lets it down. Like Leicester’s it is a square design which means it won’t fit in the binders without being folded. Not an ideal situation. Your £3.00 buys you a total of 64 pages at a cost of 5p per page. 29 of these are reading matter which comes in at a reasonable 10p per page. Of these 24 are aimed at the Glandford Park regulars while the Pirate army has only 6 to give them something to read at half time. As usual the pictorial standard is high. There are plenty inside and they are of the quality that is expected nowadays. In general I liked this programme; it had all the features that you expect interspersed with great pictures as previously mentioned. What lets it down is the size which is a shame as it could have come in a bit further up the table. As it is it finishes up with 244 points and slots into 10th place. -----------------------------------------------------------------
This evening I am checking out the programmes from our games at Northampton Town and Southend United. In the past I have looked forward to the issue from the Cobblers as it is usually very good. Have they kept the standard up? Well let’s have a look. Town must have more advertisements on their cover than anyone else. This does give what at first glance is a nice design, a bit of a cluttered look. Sixty four pages for £3.00 means that it costs a reasonable price of 5p per page. Thirty one of these are content pages, which comes in at around 10p per page. Of these, six are for the away fans but unfortunately they are nothing more than the standard pen pics of our players and management plus a page on some of the strikers that have played for us over the years. This is of course the same page that you can see in so many programmes this season and can be a little boring after a while. There is a slight difference in the pictorial content though. Large pictures seem to be the norm this season but Northampton have filled their pages with many smaller ones. I liked this way of doing things as it made it possible to show far more shots than normal. This programme is of a decent enough quality but I feel it is let down slightly by the lack of articles aimed at both sets of fans. An omission that means you tend to flick through rather quickly looking for something to read, and then find that you’re at the back page before you know it. A score of 255 points puts them just outside the playoffs in 7th place.
Southend, like Huddersfield have opted for the smaller than average format with more pages. Even so it still works out at 4p per page. The cost is the same as most, £3.00 and it has 84 pages and only Peterborough have had more than that so far this season. The cost of the content pages is low as well. It is only 8p each page, a score that again has only been bettered on one occasion, by Leeds United. The home fans get 29 of these pages to read while the traveling supporters had 9 to keep them occupied at half time, again this statistic is up there with the best. In a programme with this many, albeit smaller pages you would expect there to be plenty of pictures interspersed with the rest of the articles. Well you would be right and as always they are of a very good standard. This is a very good programme, with a final score of 281 points and it finishes in 3rd place overall. ---------------------------------------------------
As the season moves towards it’s conclusion I find that I have too many programmes left to be able to continue with only two each time. So tonight’s offerings are the two from Crewe Alexandra, plus Oldham Athletics’. There are two Crewe issues due to the postponement of the original game in January. For this game £2.50 bought you a 68 page standard sized programme. The cover, though a little cluttered does have all the match info at the bottom so it is easy to decipher. Inside there are plenty of pages to read with approximately 28 of these being aimed at the Crewe faithful and 8 for the Pirate army. These pages are also enhanced by plenty of high quality pictures as well. For a struggling club Crewe have produced a fine programme that has gained a score of 267 points. This places them in 6th place overall. Alex’s programme for the rearranged game on the 17th of March is strangely a far inferior production. It is cheaper at just £2.00 but you only get 40 pages for your money. This of course means that there is less room for articles and illustrations. There are 12 for the home fans and just 5 for the away contingent. This works out at around 13p per page of content as opposed to just 7p in the January programme. The one thing that I find really annoying about this programme though is the fact that you can’t find the date of the game anywhere. In fact if a collector in 20 years time came across this one would will be hard pressed to be able to even work out what season it is from. I have looked long and hard but without a fixture page or the league table inside I simply cannot find a date anywhere. I found this one frustrating and frankly quite poor and it only scores 199 points. This puts it in 18th position. I am not sure which of these two is the standard Crewe programme, but for the home fans I hope it’s the first one. Oldham have produced a 68 page programme that costs £3.00. It has all the expected features and stats inside but one page stood out for me. Page 11 has a pictorial tribute to a certain Mr. Dean Windass and his 200th career goal. Funny I can only really recall one of his goals. He scored it right at the end of last season, remember? There are approximately 30 pages of editorial content which works out at a fairly good 10p per page. With a good number of decent action shots and a nice clearly laid out front cover this programme wins 257 points and sits in 8th place in the table. A position that I imagine the Latic fans will be hoping will be slightly bettered by their team come the end of the season. --------------------------------------------------
Today we will be taking a look at the programmes from Carlisle United and Hereford United. Believe me when I say, that they are two VERY different programmes, and so as a one of I am going to rate them side by side rather than the usual format of one after the other. OK then let’s start with the covers. Carlisle’s has an action shot superimposed on a blue background. It has the match details in the top left hand corner with various sponsors along the bottom. Herefords is far more cluttered. The details are spread between top left and bottom left which is confusing and distracting. Carlisle 19 points, Hereford 16. Next we move onto the standard of the pictures. The Cumbrians have a good variety of size and type in their production while the Bulls, well the Bulls haven’t. What they do have is of good enough quality, it’s just that there isn’t very many of them. Scores are 19 and 15. The price for these two is £3.00 and £2.50 so for the first time Hereford come out on top, but it doesn’t last long. A few years ago I was less than kind about Carlisle’s programme as it had very little to read. Well since then it has steadily been improving and that improvement has carried on this season. There are a total of 35 pages of content to read which puts it in the top 5 programmes. And this works out at 9p per page of content and only 4p per page overall. As many of these are relevant to both sets of fans this means that the home support get a good 20 to keep them interested while the away contingent also have 20 pages as well. This away figure is the best I have seen so far. The number of interesting, well written articles that not only apply to both sets of fans on the day but to anyone with an interest in football in general is a credit to the team that the editors have put together. Herefords programme as mentioned costs less but has far less pages (40). This gives a price per page of 6p which isn’t that bad. But when you find that it costs 23p per page of actual reading content you soon realize that the lower cover price is not so good. There are only 11 pages to read in the entire programme 7 of these are for the home fans, (which equals the worst of the season), while only 5 are devoted to the away fans which is very nearly the worst. As you can imagine these two programmes end up in very different positions in the table. Carlisle score 286 points and miss getting top spot by a mere 4 while Hereford scored a meager 186 and find themselves down in 21st position a bit like the team. ---------------------------------------------------------------
This Afternoon I am taking a look at the programmes issued for our games with Tranmere Rovers and Walsall. Can either of them knock Colchester off the top spot? If they are going to they will need to reach 291 points of more. We start off with Tranmere’s offering from the 5th of April. Initially the cover looks good but then you realize that the match details are rather spread out and some are even written sideways. As I have mentioned before this makes it awkward to find when thumbing through looking for a particular issue. As we move inside the programme we come first to the variety and quality of the pictures. Well there are plenty of them with a differing mix of sizes as well. What about reading matter then? There are only approximately 26 pages to read with 18 of interest to the home fans and 7 for the away following. In a programme containing 64 pages in total for a cost of £3.00 I felt this was a little on the low side. I did feel though that pages 46, 47 and 48 were some of the most interesting and well put together I have seen so far this season. If only there could have been a few more pages like these for people to read at half time then this programme would have scored more than the 238 points it managed. This gives it a finishing position of 19th which is a shame as it so easily could have been much higher. Walsall are one of only a handful of clubs that have held the price of their programme at £2.50. It hasn’t paid of for the others so does it for The Saddlers? Let’s have a look. They must have more adverts on the cover than any other club but somehow it still looks good and the details are easy enough to locate. For your money you get 52 pages which works out at 5p per page. Only 16 of these have something to read, and there are less photos than most as well. This means you are paying 16p per page of content which is poor when compared to the higher priced productions. 14 of these are for home consumption while the away fans have to make do with just 3 pages. There is just one article that stands out as a break from the norm. Neil Morris had been on a trip to South Africa and recounted his experiences watching a couple of games while there. I thoroughly enjoyed this and you can find it on page 33, see what you think. A final score of 214 puts this one right down in 20th place. Hate to say it, but an increase in the price may well be in order at The Banks’s Stadium next season. -------------------------------------------------
MK Dons have priced their production at the lower end of the scale. So what do you get for your hard earned £2.50 then? Well it has a decent 64 pages, 27 of which are reading matter. 6 of these are for the away fans, though they are pretty much the same as you get in all the others. The home fans are better catered for though with 21 pages to read. I liked the cover as it has got all the match details clearly at hand. Sadly, though the quality of pictures is high there aren’t that many of them. Maybe this is due to the large amount of adverts within. This shows in the price per page of content as well. Although 9p/page isn’t the worst I have seen it is some way of the best. MK gain only 247 points. A score that puts them in a position of 16th place. Swindon’s offering comes in at £3.00 for 68 pages which works out at a credible 4p per page. Sadly though, only 23 have reading content which is rather on the low side. 21 are aimed at the home fans with 6 for the visitors, 3 of which were a piece on the “HELP for HEROES” event. So, with a price per page of 13p Swindon like their team, are slipping down the table somewhat. I did feel that the cover was amongst the best seen so far, it is glossy with a nice clear layout. This led me to think that the pictorial content would be of a similar standard, well I was wrong. Due to a fair few adverts there seems to be less room for everything else and the illustrations are one thing that have made way in this case. The final score for Swindon comes to 241 which puts them in equal 19th place with Hartlepool. Now we finally get to “The Pirate”. I have used the programme from our last game with Millwall for this comparison. I have to say that the cover scores well as it is as clear as any seen this season. Rovers charge £3.00, but as noted before this seems to mean that a better standard can usually be achieved. Fans at The Mem get a 64 page production and approximately 39 of these are for us to read. The away contingent is well catered for as well as they get 11 pages to while away half time with. There are plenty of fine pictures, many of which are great action shots, which as I have mentioned before is a real favorite of mine. 52 pages of content in total gives a price per page of 6p which is as good as it gets in this division and is one of the reasons why The Pirate scores a total of 292 point. Now I have tried to be as unbiased as I can but in the end I find I have to agree with Programme Monthly. Our programme does indeed finish in 1st place pushing MK and Swindon down one place in my table. I think we should be rightly proud of it. -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And here's the final table.
Bristol Rovers 292
Colchester 290
Carlisle 286
Leeds 285
Southend 281
Peterborough 276
Leicester 275
Crewe (Post) 267
Leyton O 265
Yeovil 260
Oldham 257
Northampton 255
Huddersfield 254
Brighton & HA 253
Millwall 251
Cheltenham 250
MK Dons 247
Stockport 245
Scunthorpe 244
Hartlepool 241
Swindon 241
Tranmere 238
Walsall 214
Bournmouth F.A.Cup 211
Crewe 199
Hereford 186
Watford L.Cup 183
Bournmouth JPT 160
_________________
I am not gas, I am a Pirate.
www.bristolroversmemorabilia.weebly.com The definitive list of Bristol Rovers programmes
Album
Search
Memberlist
My Wants List
Register
Profile
Log in to check your private messages
Log in
