With the dawn of the Internet we were told that all the answers we were looking for would be found on the World Wide Web. We were told that libraries would shut down, book and magazines would become things of the past.
It was 1990 when Tim Berners-Lee was the man credited with created the World Wide Web. There is no doubt we now have access to information when we want it via our laptops, tablets and mobile phones, but the problem is as we are frequently being told there is a lot of “fake news” online. It is not only fake news, there is plenty of misinformation to be found and for those researching the past this can become hugely problematic. How do you know whether the facts you are reading are correct?
This is why archived newspapers from yesteryear have a key role to play, although even these cannot be relied upon. Take for example the doctor at Royal Ascot running not to the track to save a man’s life in the early part of the past century. One paper said the injured man was a jockey struck in the head by a horse’s hoof, another had it as a protestor who ran onto the track. Then we had the Doctor taking emergency action to release the swelling on the brain on the track and in the ambulance. Who do you believe?
When it comes to sport over the years match day programmes and printed scorecards at Test Matches were the perfect way to find out what had happened. Programmes can be a treasure trove of information, whether it is the club chairman talking or the Manager giving his assessment of the opposition. Frequently you will find an update on injured players which will explain why a player’s name has been missing from the line up in the previous few weeks.
For those who love the history of their particular sport they will know how frustrating it can be trying to find out what happened in a match. Frequently match reports are full of trite cliches from coaches rather than describing the events as they happened. Was it a diving header at the back post or did the player soar above the defender and fire a bullet of a header into the net?
In the early days of the Internet the BBC used to publish match reports on all the games in the four top divisions in England. In those early days they did not list the team line ups and one only knew who had played if they were mentioned in the match report. Pressure from fans saw them change and now each game has the starting line-up and the substitutes listed, and who went on and in what minute. This has made them a go-to site for many who follow clubs outside the Premiership.
What is sad is to hear that the Football League clubs in England have voted at their Annual General Meeting that clubs no longer have to produce a match day programme for season 2018/19.
There were rumblings back in April of this year that some clubs wanted the option not to print programmes because of declining sales and increased costs.
Now Championship, League One and League Two clubs can make their own decisions as to whether they produce a match day programme on a match-by-match basis. This will be a dagger to the heart of those who have spent a lifetime collecting programmes.
Dr Alexander Jackson, collections officer at the National Football Museum was quoted on the BBC website as saying, “There’s so much news that people are accessing instantly through their phones now, I can see how it’s a struggle at lower levels to keep the programmes fresh. It makes the economics of it tough, in future programmes will probably be accessed digitally so, in a sense, they won’t go away, they’ll mutate with technology.”
That may be the case but will the information and the quality be the same? To many part of the match day experience has been to buy a program, if only to see who is playing for the opposition.
Dr Jackson who has written a thesis named ‘Football’s Consumer Culture and Juvenile Fan Culture’ which focused on the years 1880-1960, when programmes were in their formative years and were often just team sheets, told the BBC that a section of the museum, based in Manchester, is devoted to the rituals of going to a match and includes an array of programmes across the decades.
“In terms of what we get offered programmes are probably one of the most popular donations,” he told BBC Sport. “Programmes bring back memories of going to a specific game. A programme is a very powerful thing, as once you look at it you can start reeling off names of players from that era.”
Programmes are a time capsule in so many ways. They are a momento of what to many is a special event. That was why so many people were upset that there was no program when the Matildas played their first international against Thailand in Perth; apart from the fact few knew any of the Thai players!
Dr Jackson advised that museums have already started to prepare for the day that programmes – and other memorabilia – cease to be hard copies and become purely computer-based. “That’s the challenge museums will have in all sorts of ways – how do you collect digital history? Museums are looking at how to address and approach this as it progresses,” he said.
What this will mean is that printed programs and hard copies of memorabilia will rise in value, is the prediction of one Memorabilia dealer we contacted. “At the end of the day people like to touch and hold pieces of history, it is not the same looking at it on a computer screen.
As if to back up that statement the BBC pointed out that in 2014, a copy of the 1901 FA Cup final programme between Tottenham and Sheffield United was sold for £19,000 at auction.
While some clubs may look to cease producing programs as a cost-cutting measure it is believed that others are looking at providing free programs next year as opposed to making fans pay.
With the modern day fan having a voracious appetite for information on their favourite players it seems as if the clubs could be missing a trick by stopping programs completely.
Clearly those running the English Football League feel that way despite what the clubs have voted as they have announced that they will continue to produce programmes for all their major games, including the Carabao Cup final and all three play-off finals.
Some may say that this is simply the game evolving, moving with the times, but one can’t help feeling a great deal of history will be lost, unless as Dr Jackson stated a way of saving digital programs and making sure that they are reliable in terms of their information can be found.
