H, Tubbs posted when I was typing. Like me he'll probably have said programme. The views expressed in my posts are not necessarily mine.
There is a pirate edition of the Man Utd 1949 FA Cup programme. I used to have one, from memory it was a white cover with a tigers head on. Inside it was very basic, few pen pictures of both teams, a bit of a write up and a team sheet. I read somewhere that it was a big money earner at the time similar to 'pirate rosettes'. The club didn't produce any thing except the official match day programme and any enterprising wide boy could earn himself a weeks wages and more in a couple of hours stood on the club car park. Pirate programmes for big games were common place just after the war. I seem to remember there was an outbreak again for City's two games v Chelsea in the FA Cup 65/66/
There are at least 3 different pirate progs for that game. Think that repro of the Lincoln game might be from last game at BP or centenary game v Spurs (if in fact, a repro exists at all....)
It does exist because I have one. I also have the original and there is a difference, biggest being the staples and the colouring on the reproduction is a lot brighter. There is also a reproduction World Cup Final programme from 1966. Again the only difference is the stapling and the colouring otherwise it's difficult to spot the replica.
Most of the pirate progs were produced in London by wide boy cockney entrepreneurial printers, then some chap drove up the A1 in a van..... At Lokeren in a sidestreet near the ground some chap was selling a snide prog (in fact the only prog that day). When I asked how much, the inevitable cockney bastard replied 5 Euros for fairly basic Flemish issue. Goes in ebay for about a tenner now. At Trencin, they were FOC help yourself in the ground.
A lot of the crowds outside of games at Wembley were somewhat disappointing. Old Trafford had crowds in the twenties for more attractive games than those in the North East. The semi-final at Goodison had 15,000 less than one of the group games played there. Games involving the USSR, Chile and North Korea were hardly attractive. Don't think they would have got much better crowds here. The rugby mad City of .Hull saw a crowd of 3,000 for a RLWorld Cup game involving the World Champions on a day when City v Mansfield in Div 4 drew over 9,000. The last RL World Cup saw its 2 lowest gates in Hull. They had larger crowds in the non .RL city of Bristol. World Cup crowds don't have any relationship to club support.With ourselves Sunderland and the smaller town of Middlesbrough operating on a level playing field in the PL who gets the larger crowds? Who gets the least travelling away? And that applied pre Allam as well.
I've got a few spares of the Trencin programme if anyone needs one. I'm keeping my bootleg Lokeren one with my half and half scarf though. When in Rome...
The ones from 1946 are very flimsy and the paper very thin as you would expect from immediate post war.
The current World Champions of the RL world, Australia played in Hull only a couple of weeks ago against that other giant of the RL world, erm, Scotland. The crowd just touched 5,000.
Meanwhile, in Chicago,New Zealand and Ireland, two teams from countries with a combined population less than that of London played in front of 62,000 in Chicago. Neither of which will have been mentioned by .Gwillam. You have to hand it to New Zealand, a country where rugby union is king, and which has only one professional rugby club which has to play in Australia to get a game, has won the RL World Cup, a feat never managed by England.
I think that the Barnet and last game at Boothferry explanations are most likely - I've only ever bought programmes at the actual games and, although I don't specifically remember the Barnet game, I have seen them at Boothferry Park and I definitely did attend the Darlington match.
Can confirm that. I was jammed on the rail behind the goal on Bunkers and got soaked. Went with my dad and granddad and have dad's programme somewhere among my old junk. Heard a while back someone say that City came out to "Tiger Rag" but cannot remember if they did. 2 other posters on here have said they were also there- charles stokell and TigerRoo.
To be fair NZ has competed in all 14 RL World Cups with England competing in 7. The other 7 involved a team from Gt Britain where England provided the vast majority of the squad and they have won 3. I do not know if in any of the GB wins only England players were involved.
The ones Great Britain competed in only had 4 teams in it for most and 5 for others. Well, it wasn't an all England team when Clive Sullivan was captain. They won the Cup after drawing 10-10 with Australia due to topping the group of 4, having played 3 games prior to the final. It obviously enthralled the host nation, 4.200 packing into the stadium for the final.
It wasn't strictly an all NZ team either that won the 2008 world cup. 2 of the team were born in Aus and another (now playing for Hull) is the current Samoan captain.
Still only one professional club in NZ, so England's performances in comparison to a country with half the population of NZ is pretty abysmal. To represent your country at RL you only have to be resident in the country for 3 years. Like Rangi Chase , the player born in New Zealand who played for England. Doesn't happen more because the players from Oz don't come here nowadays until their careers are on the slide.
