I got involved shortly into the 1993-94 season. This was John Yems’ first full year in charge of the team and Maurice Shevlin was the editor of the programme. I think the idea was to produce something of a bit better quality than the photo-copied programmes of previous years, so it could be used to bring in advertising revenue. The club came to Horsham Press where we printed the colour covers, and then reproduced the copy from Maurice for every game. Unfortunately, Maurice didn’t have the resources to produce decent artwork and the content was very limited as well so, instead of being something that benefited the club by attracting sponsors, the programme came in for a lot of criticism.

It got so bad that some of the supporters decided to produce their own fanzine instead. And in the first issue, that was given away free, Pete Tanner made some comments about the programme that didn’t go down too well and Maurice promptly left the club. To be fair, Pete’s comments were perfectly fair and weren’t insulting in any way, but Maurice took them to heart.

This left the club in a dilemma as there were not a lot of volunteers involved at the time and a new programme editor was difficult to come by. Working at Horsham Press, I had taken an interest in the programme as I had been a Horsham supporter since the early 1970s, and still had all my old programmes from that time. I just thought that it was something I would like to do, so I volunteered to take over.

It was a bit of shock. My first programme was for the Leighton game when we won 3-2, with Luke Anderson scoring a great winner near the end. As the club hadn’t paid their printing bill, my second programme never appeared, leaving the West Sussex County Times to report that HFC had a new programme editor but would probably be fined for not producing a programme for their AMT Cup game! I went on to the committee at the same time and the average age was over 65 years (and that included me and I was in my twenties)! Also, nobody knew who the Directors of the club were; it seemed to be a big secret. The whole environment was quite strange.

I wanted to put match reports in the programme but it was quite dull writing about the team losing every game so I made up stories instead. It provided some entertainment and made the programme a bit different from the others in the league. I started putting stats in the programme about how many minutes each player had played over the season. It was meant to be a bit of a tongue-in-cheek swipe at the anoraks – but people seemed to take it seriously!

When I started doing the programme I thought the club would have some records I could use, but there was nothing at all. Apparently, the club had owned a collection of all of its old programmes but these had been stolen some time in the troubled years from 1979-1990. Everything was a mess. I found a collection of photos from the early 1900s, that somebody had donated to the club, laying on the floor in the little area where the floodlight switches were. They had got damp over a period of time and were mostly totally ruined. These were irreplaceable things – and quite valuable in their own right, not just to the club. It was heartbreaking.

In order to get any information on the club’s past I had to delve into microfilm of old newspapers. I used to spend at least half my annual leave in various libraries and I reckon in the early years I spent over 1,000 hours a year on the programme. I still have a lot of work to do to get all the club’s results collated, but I can’t devote so much time to it these days. No doubt, though, I will spend a few mornings in the library over the Summer. Money-wise, I have spent a fortune over the years on photocopies, programmes, photographs and ephemera. Just the other day I managed to recover some framed photographs that used to hang on the clubhouse wall, but went missing some thirty years ago!

Any programmes that are unsold either go to the club shop, or are recycled. As for numbers, I am not too sure these days. I believe if the club sells around 120 then it breaks even on the printing for that game. We used to sell that quantity pretty regularly at Queen Street. That doesn’t count the cost of printing the covers and the colour pages but these are paid for through the advertising. The worst thing is when a game is postponed. We seldom re-use out of date programmes as the rescheduled games are usually some distance in the future. Programmes from postponed matches generally go straight into the recycling bin, but I always save a few for myself so there are some rare unissued programmes in existence!

I couldn’t care less if we win awards or not. I suppose it helps to raise the profile of the club, but it means nothing to me at all.

The best way of improving the programme is to spend more time on it. In 2007-08 I was able to put a little more time in and was happy with some of the issues we produced. The programme for the Carshalton match that season was the best one I have ever done. There were features on Leavesden Asylum, The Kinks, Charlie’s Angels, the Paris Massacre and the Beatles’ Abbey Road album as well as all the football stuff. I get my satisfaction from knowing I have produced something decent, and not from winning awards. I was really happy with a series of articles I wrote on Rob O’Shaughnessy discussing the great philosophers; that’s the reason I still do the job. Unfortunately, Rob hated it, so it ended prematurely, but hopefully I can come up with some other stuff I enjoy writing.