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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
Sport
Elis James

The end of an era: football programmes – outdated or great pieces of history?

A Swansea City fan reads a page in the programme dedicated to mental health as part of the Mind charities work on the Heads Up campaign.
Matchday programmes were a football tradition for decades but some clubs are now phasing them out to go digital. Photograph: Kieran McManus/Shutterstock

I have recently upgraded my living arrangements from a flat with an attic but no garden to a house with a garden but no attic. Unfortunately, in London my ideal set-up of a house with an attic and a garden costs around £28m, but moving to a place with no storage in the loft means I’m forced to confront a problem that has been nagging away at me for years – what to do with my old football programmes.

Clearing the attic before the big move should be relatively easy. I have no sentimental attachment to the Nutribullet my brother-in-law bought me three years ago, I am quite content to throw the gigantic, mosaic-tiled mirror my partner was given by her best friend as a 30th birthday present into a disused canal and I can live without Christmas decorations. But throwing out hundreds of largely worthless football programmes from the matches I’ve attended since I was a child will prove more challenging. If I hadn’t got round to buying a programme for the friendly Wales played against Jamaica at Ninian Park in March 1998 would I regret it? No, of course not.

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