Following on from the programme discussion else-thread, I thought it would be interesting to gather peoples ideas in one place as a help to budding program producers.

The current Haddington programme consists of the following content (ie excluding adverts)

1 page - Match details and team lines
1 page - Who we are - contact details etc
1 page - 'Editorial column' - waffle about todays game and any news
2 pages or so - Opposition Pen-Pics
5 pages - East Region tables, latest results and fixture squares
2 pages - Season and player stats for Haddington - lineups, appearances, goals, etc
1 page or so - Cup competitions - results from last round and next round draws
2 pages - Either match reports or some bollox from the archives or both.

A few photos dotted about within all that. It ends up as a 20-pager with adverts on the back and inside covers and 16 pages of content.

Is there anything else that people think is a *must have* for their reading pleasure?

Where is the page 3 burd? I'm no buying any book that doesn't have one of them!!!

I have to say I was impressed with Haddington's programme last time I was there and you've pretty much nailed it with the list above. An optional extra I've seen in other programmes is a quiz, usually on sport and not too closely related to the home club as that would be too obscure for visiting fans. Answers on the back page of course, not next week's programme!

For the home fans, who wouldn't want to buy the same info every game, you could include a featured player interview, possibly one of those "most embarring moment", "who's your senior team", "favourite group" type of things for a different member of the playing or coaching staff each issue.

An original item about the away team. As a travelling fan it gets a bit wearing buying a programme at every away ground and just finding the same pen pics of your team that were in every other programme.

Similarly it gets annoying reading the same bits copied and pasted from Jamie Wire's website....you know the season, played, points.

What the Largs editor has done is take that a little stage further.
He has Season, League/Division, Played, won, drawn, lost, for, against. point, position/no of clubs. The next two columns are for the round reached in the Scottish and round reached in the West Cup (or Inter-Region Cup) - this is done for the last 20 seasons.
He has taken the honours from Jamie's page though - and credited him with the website address given.

Another page has the league tables for the last six seasons for the opposition club (with their row highlighted).

A page of last weeks results and a page for this weeks fixtures. This weeks has three pages with Dundonald's Scottish Cup results since entering the Juniors in 1946 (or whenever).

The middle pages have the season's results with teamlines. There's a page for the opposition results this season.

One page for the West Resion Super League tables, one for the West region District League tables, one for the East Region tables and one for the North region tables. One page has results grids for the West Super Premier, Super First and Ayrshire District League.

A page for the total appearance/subs/goals.

A referee watch page noting how many yellow and red cards handed out each week involving Largs games.

The only picture inside the programme is of the previous home games "Man of the match" award.

Normally there is a page on previous games between the clubs over the years - but Largs have never met Dundonald before so he was left stumped by that.

There is a humorous "Pie Spy" page.

The first content page has the club officials and match details. The final content page is for the squads and referee details.

For economic reasons they've gone for a pre-printed cover this season and an address label stuck on with the match details. If it's good enough for Clydebank with a much larger prin run (I'd guess) then it's good enough for Largs.
I think they had decided on this format long before they saw Clydebank adopt that approach.

My only gripe with the programme as there is not much on Largs Thistle's history but several pages on the opposition.

A bargain at only £1.

The web must be full of that sort of thing - easy enough to grab a few general questions and then chuck in a Junior based one or two.


It wouldn't be too difficult to knock out a wee questionnaire to get that information. Then draw the featured player at random and grill him for 5 minutes at training. Some beggars might have to wait for the following season with only 13 guaranteed issues a year





That's a common theme, I think. Some clubs are better than others at providing info, however. Our secretary is generally quite happy to provide a 'season-so-far' summary (and more if required) for other teams and is sufficiently genned-up to knock together a paragraph or two about other teams fortunes. I generally include a wee bit in the 'Editorial' page - season-so-far and last season's corresponding fixtures - but it could be expanded without doubt.

I'd be interested in seeing an issue, if at all possible. Given that expanding a program has to happen in 4-page steps, there seems to be plenty of ideas there as well as the other suggestions given.

The pre-printed cover is now a viable and attractive proposition. If you haven't got a tame printer in the town then the internet is your friend. We got 500 rattled off for shit-pence via the web and, because of a ridiculously low print run (20-25 copies ) I can over-print the match details directly using my home printer.

Largs purchased a second hand photocopier for a few hundred quid. Prints both sides at once and does A3 posters for advertising games/fund raising events. With paper only costing £1.74 a ream and toner costing £22 (12,000 A4 pages) by the end of the season the photocopier will have paid for itself compared to having it commercially printed.

If your on the Yahoo Juniors group then the Thistle editor uses the name "thesel1994" - I'm sure he'd be happy to do a swap of programmes.

Smart. I'll try to make contact

For the few programmes we did last season, we had a "supporters view" section where a keen supporter or season ticket holder was invited to write a piece about the club, and what it's like to support them.

Some interesting points were raised, so maybe an idea.

Bet that was a "best seller"!!

Player profile,East Region fixtures/results grids

Not in this week's one - I usually have it but for some reason I forgot to put it in. Odd - I increase the pages and forget to put in one of the regular features.

Click to view attachment

Another way to do the date/game with static covers is to slice a corner off the postage stamp side with the date and match on the non static third page, its done quite a lot with English non league clubs and the Glasgow speedway programme did it last season.

Yeah I've seen that at Tayport.

AT LOk when I stated doing the prog I did what the Bankies did which was to print a load of labels and stick them on., However, it ended up being a mad rush to get them on before the game as I didn't live locally and we canned the idea after a season.

How low is "shit pence"??

68 of your finest UK pounds for 500 double-sided A4. Printers were quoting about £200. They seemed quite keen on using quite heavy paper - 200gsm or so - whereas as 140gsm seems to do the trick for us.

We paid around £160 for 500 A4 double sided full colour covers on, probably, 160/200gm paper.

Let me know where you got them done, and I'll file it away for next season

www.clickclickprint.com

£150 for 1200

I've still to finish the bloody programme - talk about cutting it fine. Thank goodness it's a 3pm kick-off. The actual printing and compiling is done. Just one page to re-do. Then staple, fold and label it.

Think I'm going to have a few left over given it's absolutely pishing it down here today.

Much obliged.

1200 140gsm £125
1200 210gsm £135

are the quotes offered from yon website. I suppose once the print run gets high enough then the cost per sheet drops dramatically.

PS Cheers for the PMs. Appreciated


Incidentally, how many would you produce for a normal league game say?

We normally print 30/40 depending on opposition.

Photocopier decided to play up when I went to re-do a page. Eventually got it done.
108 paying punters - excluding committee.
Printed 70 programmes and sold 56 - which given the day was a lot better than I expected.

For league games I do a minimum of 50. I'll look at the attendances and programme sales for a corresponding fixture over the last couple of season and then print more if it was higher than average before. Given the revenue is brought in more through the advertising than the actual sales I would rather have a few extra unsold copies than have someone not get a programme on the day.

Burnie_man, do you know if we are definitely playing you on the 18th, and will you be doing a programme for this game?

I haven't heard any fixtures yet. If we draw next week against Lochee Harp then we'll be facing them in a replay on 18th, and I'll be abroad.

There should be a programme against you guys whenever the game is played.

Respect to all programme editors- even the ones who knock out a folder sheet of A4. I've been involved with doing programmes in the East of Scotland League and the East Juniors and it's a thankless task most of the time- there were those bawbags who criticised you for the programme without bothering to actually contribute anything.
Opposition pen pics are fairly easy to knock up in this day and age of the internet- pre-internet it used to be a right b*gger to find out anything about a team and it usually involved buying a copy of last week's local paper and guessing who was the danger man from the match report! My pen pics for Craigroyston, for example, used to consist basically of "Jim Bowie is a veteran who used to play for Meadowbank and Brian Foster's height could prove a danger at set pieces"