Matchday programmes have been produced for St Albans City since the 1921-22 season. To say 'produced for' emphasises the point that for the early years the club did not have a direct involvement in the finished product. Production was left in the very capable hands of the Herts Advertiser who, along with their then sister paper, The Hertfordshire News, covered the affairs of the Football Club extensively. The partnership between the Club and the newspaper was a business matter with the Herts Ad paying for the franchise season on season. When City won the Isthmian League for the first time in 1923-24 the programme sales for the season were 22,290. A total of 20 home games were played that season, this includes five friendly matches. Assuming that programmes were produced for all of the friendlies sales still topped 1,110 per game. During the 1925-26 season the Club enjoyed two successive home gates of just short of 10,000, making the likelihood of this being the season with the highest number of programme sales per game.
The collection viewed here includes two items that pre-date the first official programme. The 1894 programme is actually a flyer advertising an FA Cup tie between the original St Albans Football Club and Luton Town. It was owned by the St Albans goalkeeper Jack Dickerson who also had a spell with Luton.
The second item from 1912 is another flyer promoting City's Spartan League game at Clarence Park with the short-lived Watford Orient club. The flyer mentions that a collection will be taken for H. Gathard. This was Arthur Gathard who suffered a leg injury during a Reserve team match on the 9th November. Arthur was one of seven City footballers to perish during the Great War.
Sticking with the unwanted theme of war, the collection includes the cover for our final programme before the outbreak of World War II and our first during that conflict. For the first season after the war the club produced just single-sheet efforts for each games, many clubs were already back to producing full editions.
The design of the cover has changed many times down the years but also stayed unchanged for many years on other occasions. There have been some very smart designs along with plenty of quite shocking efforts that should never have seen the light of day; several years from the second half of the 1970s and 1991-92 and 1992-93 sit perfectly in the latter category. Some years not only failed to mention the match in question on the cover but also the season.
Since the latter part of the 1990s the cover has changed for each match with an action photograph replacing the static appearance of earlier years.
Hover over an image for the date and click for large scan.
The 1890's |
The 1910's | ![]() | | | | | | |
The 1920's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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The 1930's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | |
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The 1940's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
The 1950's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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The 1960's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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The 1970's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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The 1980's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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The 1990's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ||
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The 2000's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | |
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The 2010's | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() | ![]() |
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