Programme from the Archives: Norwich 1989

New Years Day brings the visit of Norwich City to Selhurst Park and you won’t be surprised to find out that we’ve met before. To be precise, the visit of Norwich will be the 110th meeting of the Eagles & the Canaries.

To celebrate such a milestone I thought I’d go into the room that the kids call dad’s room, the wife calls a waste of space and dig out an old programme from one of our previous battles. Keeping the festivities in mind, it is to the 30th December 1989 that I dust down the 36 page programme to see what was going on in the world of Crystal Palace. With Palace in 13th place in the top flight and 5 games unbeaten Steve Coppell’s programme notes were upbeat. The main feature returned to our recent historic victory at Old Trafford when a Mark Bright brace silenced the majority of the 33k crowd. Now there’s a talking point, it’s easy to forget Manchester United didn’t always sell out their ground. Earlier in the year just over 23k fans had turned up to see Man Utd v Wimbledon, now how does that song go, ‘where were you when you were……’.

A further talking point has to be the Lifeline draw on page 9. Lifeline, set up by Ron Noades, was a scheme put in place to do exactly what it says on the tin, create a financial lifeline to Crystal Palace Football Club. Fans would pay an annual membership, in return there would be a weekly draw. Congratulations to J Besley of South Godstone for winning first prize, but hold it, I smell an Uncle Ron scam, second prize of £100 goes to a certain S Coppell. Wait a minute, doesn’t our own Monty Burns have a golf course in Godstone? No doubt it is run by a certain J Besley. Straight from page 12 of the Mafia Guide to Laundering Money. If you’ve not read the book page 16 shows you how to asset strip a club then sell it to a fool with braces.

I’m always a big fan of the celebrity fan feature that you get within a match day programme, this weeks’ one is a real humdinger as it features the Bishop of Norwich, The Right Reverend Peter John Nott. If you require a cure for insomnia I can recommend the interview. A feature consistent in all programmes is the away team pen pictures. Special praise is given to the inspiration that is Andy Townsend. Andy, a Republic of Ireland international and a bargain £300,000 purchase from Southampton, has all of the potential to become a really great player in the World Cup Finals in Italy next summer. The article goes on to say, following his retirement Andy, will bore the living daylights out of you every Wednesday night with his inane drivel on ITV. Some of the above may or may not be true.

Finally, Palace’s next home game is the FA Cup 3rd round tie versus Portsmouth, with terrace tickets from £5, seats from £8, the programme asks us to support our boys, ‘could this be our year to get to Wembley?’ I’ve a sneaking feeling it will be.

Result

Palace 1 Norwich 0

Crowd: 14,250

Palace: Martyn, Pemberton, Dennis, Gray, Hopkins, Thorn, McGoldrick, Barber, Bright, Wright

Norwich: Gunn, Culverhouse, Bowen, Butterworth, Linighan, Townsend, Gordon, Mortensen, Rosario, Crook, Phillips

Note from the Editor.

This is a new feature and our first pop at it. Thanks to Carl Davies for this first attempt. It will change drastically over the coming weeks as we seek our the perfect format. I am excited to see where it goes.

I will also like to point out that this article was written prior to the death of Ron Noades. If you find the comments about insensitive then I apologise, however, just because he passed away it does not mean that people's views have to change.