Thursday 17th October 1987
Birmingham Senior Cup 1st Round
Halesowen Town v Oldswinford FC
Venue: The Grove
Programme Price: Not Stated
I have been to The Grove once on my groundhopping travels, however, that was to watch Black Country Rangers V Bilston Town, a few years ago in the West Midlands Regional League Premier Division, a game which Black Country Rangers won 4-0. I’m yet to watch Halesowen Town play but it is something I really would like to do in the future.
This programme consists of 28 pages from the front to back cover with 18 of those pages featuring adverts. With that in mind I will not go through the programme page by page and will instead just talk about the football related information that the programme has to offer.
The first thing to say is that I really like the front cover which I believe shows an illustration of a Norman-era church in Halesowen called The Parish Church of St. John The Baptist.
One of the first pages to contain football related information comes early on and provides a who’s who at Halesowen Town. At the time of writing the chairman was named as C. Murphy and the manager as P. Page. The same page also shows a list of honours won by the club with the earliest mentioned as being the 1947 Birmingham League.
Next we have an FA Cup Round-Up which looks back at Halesowen’s 3-1 victory in the 3rd Qualifying Round by 3 goals to 1 against Racing Club Warwick. It is written that they were then rewarded with a home draw in the 4th Qualifying Round against Bishop’s Stortford. I decided to carry out some research into Halesowen’s FA Cup run for the 1987/1988 season and was able to ascertain that they beat Bishop’s Stortford 1-0 in the 4th Qualifying Round. This gave them an attractive looking game against Kidderminster Harriers at The Grove in the 1st Round Proper. The game finished 2-2 with Kidderminster winning the replay 4-0 at Aggborough.
We then see a team photograph of Oldswinford FC with the same page also featuring an article titled ‘Where would we be without the Ref’ – the author of the article, Trevor Hackwood, looks at why anybody would want to be a referee due to the amount of abuse they sometimes receive. This is followed by piece on Oldswinford FC who were founded in 1955 and began life playing in the Kidderminster Leagues. The same page also provides pen profiles for the club. Nicky Jackson was an ex Wolves Youth and reserve team player whilst Salem Hamed had previously played for the youth team at Shrewsbury Town.
There is a facts and figures page which provides you with all of Halesowen’s previous results and forthcoming fixtures for the 1987/1988 season. The club opened their campaign with a 2-1 home win against Wellingborough in front of 1,006 spectators. The following page shows the team line up’s for the game against Oldswinford with the referee being named as P.J. Clarke from Kingswinford.
Next we see a Club News section which provides all of the latest goings on at Halesowen Town. The club were in the process of organising their first ever football programme fair which was to be held on 18th October 1987. This is closely followed with a very interesting article on the Birmingham County F.A. Senior Cup. The competition was first held in the 1875/1876 season and was won by Tipton who beat Aston Villa 1-0 in the final. This piece of information is the last of the football related topics featured with the rest of the programme being completed by adverts.
An all round decent programme which provided a very interesting read.
