Saturday 11th March 1972
Clyde v Kilmarnock
Scottish League Division 1
Programme Price: 5p
As I have mentioned during my recent programme reviews, I have recently added to my collection a wonderful haul of programmes collected from a football enthusiast who lives not too far away from me. I am still going through my new additions and have come across this issue that I have chosen for today’s review.
This programme consists of twelve pages from the front to back cover and provides a very interesting read.
With page 1 being the front cover, page 2 provides a list of who was who at Clyde FC back in 1972, as well as a list of previous honours won by the club. The club was founded in 1878, and first tasted success by winning the Second Division Championship in 1905. The same page also features a piece which is titled ‘New to You’ – this was a series in which the younger members of the Clyde playing staff were being featured in each programme issue. The player to be featured in this programme was Allan Brown, who at the time was a 19-year-old central defender and had joined the club from Vale of Leven.
Page 3 features two articles with the first titled CLYDE – “home” at last – and searching for Ayrshire double. The piece starts off by talking about Clyde’s three previous games at Dundee, Arbroath, and Hibernian respectively, and how good it felt to be back playing at home again. The Ayrshire double part of the article comes from the fact that in their last home game, Clyde beat Ayr United 3-0 and with Kilmarnock also being in Ayrshire, there was the opportunity for an Ayrshire double. The second article on page 3 is titled Johnny on the Ball and looks at Clyde’s centre forward Johnny Flanagan. The player joined the ‘Bully Wee’, as Clyde are nicknamed, from Partick Thistle in 1969 and was in a rich vein of form having scored four goals in his previous three games.
Page 4 looks at the fortunes of the reserve team at Clyde FC. The team which mainly consisted of young players had clocked up two wins from their past three league games. These wins had seen them residing in 9th place at the time of writing in the 17 team Scottish Reserve League table.
Page 5 is titled ‘Bully Wee’ News Service – this page provides all the latest goings on at the club. Joe McBride had recently joined his teammates for his first full training session following a knee operation. Meanwhile, John Wright was also showing signs of making a full recovery from his own knee injury having made three recent appearances for Clyde’s reserve team.
Pages 6 and 7 show the team line ups with the referee named as W.J. Mullen from Dalkeith.
Page 8 provides a short history on Kilmarnock Football Club who were formed in 1869. The club won the Scottish Cup for the first time in the 1919/1920 season. Meanwhile, the club’s greatest triumph came in the spring of 1965 when under the management of Willie Waddell they clinched the Scottish League Championship on goal average.
Page 9 provides player pen profiles for the Kilmarnock team. The versatile player, Alex Cairns was an inside forward who previously played for the Glasgow based club Millerton Thistle, and John Gilmour was described as a clever midfield player and had joined the club in 1967 from Hamilton Academicals.
Page 10 features two adverts with the following page being titled Shawfield Statistics, Shawfield Stadium being the then home of Clyde FC. The Scottish Football League Division 1 table saw Clyde sitting in 16th position in the 18-team league. Jim Burns was the player with the most league appearances to his name having played all of Clyde’s 26 league games during that 1971/1972 season. The club opened their league campaign with a 9-1 defeat at Celtic, and on 5th February 1972 they were knocked out of the Scottish Cup by Ayr United.
The programme ends with the back cover showing a half-time scoreboard. Some of the other games going on that day included Airdrie v Falkirk, Morton v Dundee and Queen of the South v Albion Rovers.
An enjoyable programme to review which in my opinion provided everything that is ever needed for any programme.
For the record, Kilmarnock won this game at Shawfield 3-0, with the season ending with Clyde finishing second bottom of the table, meaning they were relegated to the Second Division.
