KEEPING IT COVERED
MIKE FLOATE BRINGS US THE STORY BEHIND HIS NEW BOOK
Twenty years is a long time for a project to come to fruition, so much so that I cannot be
completely certain how it started. Looking back I have to think hard as to how how I actually came to be collecting the programmes which have now come together in my new
book Covered.
Back in 1995 I had just self-published The Non-League
Football Grounds of Kent, was the programme editor at
Crockenhill FC and had just opened a club shop / museum
in the old teabar at their Wested Meadow ground. I
bought a number of programmes in bulk as a start,
swapped at other club shops and was pleasantly surprised
when visitors started to drop bundles off as well. One such
person was Charlie, a lovely old guy who’d lost a leg as a
youngster and who volunteered in a local Red Cross shop.
He’d buy any football-related items that came in and bring
them to me. Among these were a number of West Ham
items, small pocket-sized programmes from the late fifties
and early sixties, one of which had a photo of the main
stand on the cover. I put it to one side and put fifty pence
in the till, little knowing what I’d started.
Another regular visitor around this time was Phil Paine
who as well as being an avid groundhopper was keen to
seek ideas as to how he too could self-publish books. This idea became his Innings Complete series, even more extensive than my grounds series, and which focuses on the headstones and stories behind those who’d played at least one first class cricket match. Phil got
to grounds and club shops I missed through following the Crocks home and away, and
even now often brings me programmes for my collection. He also told me of Sports Programmes, a catalogue selling programmes run by Roy Calmels, who had incidentally just
written with an order for my book.
Now web-based (http://www.sportsprogrammes.net/) with
an excellent search facility, back then it was a weighty photocopied publication with tightly packed details of programmes
up for auction, and for the most part in no particular order. It
was necessary to quickly become adept at speed reading,
looking out for key club names and other details. It was in this
way that I became acquainted with the term Groundview,
the same term I still search for on their website.
From this source I bought some of the best programmes in
the book – a Wolves programme from 1938, and an Everton
issue from 1939, both of which I bid three figure sums for. I
was now seriously committed, but what great covers. The
1946 Stockport County and 1947 Doncaster Rovers programmes also came from this source, again with images that
were interesting then but a valuable archive resource now,
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