PROGRAMME PLUS – VOL. 2, NUMBER 3, APRIL 7 th , 2017 Hello readers, and welcome to the third edition of ‘Programme Plus’ so far this year, and the 15th in total. This information bulletin received another welcome boost in the programme for that classic Allianz NHL game between Tipperary and Kilkenny in Semple Stadium recently when avid reader and collector Seamus O’Doherty devoted three very interesting pages to our hobby. The piece was embellished by the stylish layout deployed by Tom Beirne, with the use of various images bringing the text to life. Thanks to the initiative shown by Seamus, the spotlight was shone on programme collecting at one of the biggest games of the year thus far, and I received numerous e- mails in the days that followed from additional personnel requesting inclusion on the mailing list. There was a crowd in excess of 14,000 for the game, and the programme was a sell-out. Now, there’s an endorsement for the worth of the ‘Pick Up A Programme’ scheme if ever I saw one. A couple of collectors had offered their services for the match, and if you made contact and asked for assistance you have no worries as regards procuring the programme. On the other hand, if you didn’t bother, and didn’t attend the game in person, then you might find it difficult to get the programme now! The moral of the story? When help is offered, take it at every opportunity! Regular readers will recall the journey I took before Christmas, covering hundreds of miles all over the country primarily in my desire to procure the numerous club histories published in 2016. Well, I’ve been embarking on a very different type of journey since the last edition, and it’s an ongoing process. In terms of travel, it’s the complete opposite of what I undertook towards the end of 2016; I have been confined to my own home this time, treading a well-worn path from one room to the next as I undergo the onerous task of cataloguing my entire collection from top to bottom. I finally took the plunge on March 1st, deciding that I would devote some time every single night, even if I can only spare 20 minutes, to putting my programmes into some sort of manageable order. I know I have exasperated fellow collectors down through the years owing to my inability to provide a swaps and wants list. And to be quite honest, in the past four weeks I’ve come across various items that I didn’t know I had in the first place, or had forgotten about completely. How did this come about? The sheer size of my collection made it very difficult to manage over the years. At one stage, when I was an officer of Wexford County Board, I had to move some of it to storage space under the main stand in Wexford Park because it couldn’t be accommodated in my original homeplace (some of it was exposed to damp conditions when it was moved therein without my knowledge, but that’s an entirely different, and very traumatic, story for another day! Suffice to say that the sight of rust marks on the staples of a programme is enough to bring tears to my eye!). When I moved into my current abode in 2009, all of that Wexford Park material along with everything from my former home was finally under one roof, but in various piles and bundles scattered around several rooms. In 2011 I got some decent shelving along with reinforced sliding doors in one room, and that at least helped to make the collection, not to mention the house itself, look a bit tidier. However, the material still wasn’t in any kind of order, either year- or competition-related. All that I is finally starting to change. Since March 1st I have been opening plastic bags and envelopes, in several instances for the first time in many years, and unearthing a succession of real gems. I have set myself a target of completing the project by next Christmas, and I believe it will take that long because there’s so much material to get through; I’m concentrating on programmes first, and the books and magazines will follow. The memories that one associates with programme collecting are easily triggered by undertaking a project of this nature. For example, most of my material from 1981 to 1983 is ruined, I believe, by my own handwriting. My nine- to eleven-year-old self clearly thought it was the done thing to scribble in scores and team changes on these precious items of sporting history; my 44-year-old self looked at these in the past month and thought: ‘you bloody fool, what were you thinking?’ Some collectors mightn’t be too bothered by writing on programmes, and of course if you’re determined to procure some of the older material it’s hard to avoid. I don’t mind buying something from the pre-1970 era if it’s been marked by a human hand, but if had my childhood back I would definitely be keeping the pen away from my stuff from that era! It’s interesting to note how collecting can take a back seat, but never quite go away, during certain periods of one’s life, something I’m sure most readers will readily identify with. For example, I was pre-occupied with my Leaving Cert. in 1989, a reality brought forcibly home when I opened various envelopes full of programmes from that period and realised that many of them had been obtained at the time but left to one side; literally untouched for more than one quarter of a century! That gave rise to the presence of various swaps in mint condition, looking as good as if they were only printed yesterday. While the more ardent collectors among us will no doubt have all they need from that late-’80s era, I have possibly unearthed a little goldmine of programmes for the more recent converts to our hobby who may be keen to work back in terms of building up a collection. Moving forward considerably, 2007 was another year when collecting took a back seat for me. I was assistant manager of the Wexford Senior camogie team, and we utilised every spare hour in the day in our efforts to win the All-Ireland for the first time since 1975. Thankfully it paid off, and I wouldn’t change it for the world, but it meant that a pile of material from that year looks like it was hardly touched, let alone read! Why spend so much money on a hobby like ours and then not even bother to read the material accumulated? I know, I know, it’s a question I’ve asked so many times over the years, although clearly I’m talking to myself since I also posed it last month in this bulletin but none of the esteemed readers deemed it important enough to share their own thoughts on the topic! Anyway, my project will continue, and by the end I will have an absolutely huge list of swaps; so far, there’s a rough ratio of two swaps for every one programme catalogued, because I always bought in bulk at matches, even in those days in the by now dim and distant past. It’s time consuming, but it’s extremely enjoyable at the same time. John English from Mitchelstown is one of my great friends in the programme collecting world, an absolute gentleman and a passionate and loyal Limerick supporter. Every time we meet he tells me about the hours he spends going through his collection, often losing track of time and staying up until 4 a.m. after becoming engrossed in some programme from the past. I’ve only managed 2 a.m. a couple of times so far, but I understand exactly what he means. I shall keep you updated on my project as the months progress; and for those of you who thought that pigs might fly before I produced a swaps and wants list, the aim is to prove you wrong before 2017 is done and dusted! Now for the rest of this month’s material, and there’s a slightly different, more retro, theme. Last month I appealed for more contributions from subscribers, and I’m happy to say that three people stepped up to the mark. John Kelly and Liam Rabbitte had written an article apiece for earlier editions, and they kindly did the needful once more, while I also have a report from a special correspondent who was there in person to watch the Lynes and Lynes auction unfold in Carrigtwohill. For that reason, I have held over the regular ‘month in programmes’ and ‘programme of the month’ features, and I will double up on those in the next edition instead, covering all of March and April. We’ll get straight into it so, without further ado! MY FAVOURITE THINGS (BY JOHN KELLY, CARLOW) ‘My programme collecting habit began as a result of going to matches as a young fella with my father. The programme seemed to be a nice way of remembering that you were at the game. My collection is based on games that I have been to, but as with all collections it has developed and expanded over the years and now has many programmes from games that took place before I was born. As a young lad I was always on the look-out for autographs at matches and as a result some of my earlier programmes have been signed by players and even the odd RTE sports reporter.