I’m delighted to say that I’ve been asked to write for the Manchester City match programme again this year. This time I’ll be doing a feature on each of the seasons City have spent at their current home. It won’t be chronological – I’ll vary the seasons each game – but I do start this weekend with the 2003-04 season. I’m looking forward to it developing over the season.
This season will see the 30th anniversary of my first article in the MCFC match programme. It was a piece on the history of the Kippax Stand for a special pull out section of the programme for the final game of the 1993-94 season (the last in front of the old Kippax). After that I was asked later in the decade to fill in for City’s historian/statistician John Maddocks on occasion. It meant the world to me when John put my name forward to Polar Publishing to cover for him during a period of ill health. John trusted me to keep up the excellent work he’d been doing since the 1980s and I wanted to make sure I delivered to his standards and that of publisher Julian Baskcomb.
Eventually, following John’s death I was asked to continue writing for the programme throughout the 2000s. Many years ago I was dropped (and quickly reinstated thanks to some moving letters & emails to the person responsible from fans) and some competitions (typically FA Cup & League Cup) do not always have my feature in them, but other than odd programmes I have been fortunate to write my own feature every season for about 22 seasons (apart from that season when Covid meant a programme was not physically printed).
Thanks to Reach for asking me again but mostly thanks to those who read my programme articles and have helped over the years. I’m always amazed when I hear that someone has enjoyed my articles, so thanks. It means a lot and here’s hoping this next season is successful both for the articles and for City of course (what am I talking about – it already is successful for City! Another European trophy! Nice work Blues!).
Gary James' Football Archive 