I love a good football programme and it is almost tradition for me to buy one when I go to a football match. I’ve got some from Sheffield Wednesday, Barnsley, Stockport County and a whole load of random clubs. I’ve even got an ancient Skegness Town one courtesy of my granddad.
But I will admit, the covers are usually a bit bland. It’s always a shot of the latest in-form football looking a bit vacant. Like this one from Fulham.
Now this isn’t a bad cover. It’s well laid out, the picture is appealing to the eye, it’s actually rather lovely. But it is the same as every other programme cover in the country. Surely someone can come up with something different and catch our eye?
Enter Wolves.
Instead of the generic cover, they have decided to commission artwork for each of their matches, usually depicting their mascot the Wolf against whatever the mascot of the opposition team is. My personal favourite is this one below for their match against Reading.
This is awesome, it’s more like an old Medieval painting than a football programme. It’s cool to look at it, and would definitely make me want to buy the programme. I’d be just as excited to see how they depict the next team in the programme cover as I would the match, especially with how Wolves are playing at the moment. Heck, there’s a great merchandising opportunity as I bet many Wolves fans will be looking to buy some of this artwork at some point. I know I’d hang it up in my house.
The only flaw is actually the opposition because the quality of the covers does depend on their nickname is. The Royals was cool because it was a knight, and as you can see from Sheffield Star journalist Chris Holt’s tweet, so did Sheffield Wednesday’s Owls.
Easily the best programme cover of the year so far #SWFC #Starlive #wwfc pic.twitter.com/pfNkby7Noe
— Chris Holt (@HoltChris) November 26, 2016
However for those with more quaint nicknames, it’s more of a challenge. For the visit of Norwich City, a gang of Canaries came to fight the wolf, while the Brewer of Burton Albion seems a bit disgruntled that a wolf has got in way of him making some beer. Yet despite that, the one that makes me laugh is when Ipswich Town paid a visit to Molineux.
I mean seriously.
