Welcome

Welcome to the St. Mirren Programme Archive. This is an unofficial site devoted to the history of football match programmes involving St. Mirren Football Club from season 1945/46 to the present day.

The Archive is the work of Derek Drennan, a lifelong programme collector and a contributor to the current St. Mirren Matchday publication.

Background

Collectors of Scottish football club programmes have always faced difficulties in determining if a programme was issued for each of their club's matches. The late 1980s saw an attempt to redress the situation, with the publication of programme guides for Celtic, Rangers, Falkirk and Kilmarnock. Some years later, these were joined by similar booklets for Hearts, Hibs and Stenhousemuir.

In late 1991, 'A Collector's Guide to St. Mirren Programmes 1946/47 - 1990/91', was produced to provide a similar resource for Saints' collectors. Owing to the limited print run, this booklet may now be a collectable item in its own right. During 2009, the information from the Collector's Guide was revised and updated to form the basis of this Archive.

What you'll find here

The site has a simple structure :

• 1st Team provides links into nine decades of match information, including dates, opponents, venues and scores. Each season contains a description and fully-browsable copy of the match programme and all of the fixtures can be accessed to view team line-ups, scorers, goal times, attendances and programme information. Where available, a scan of the programme cover, match teamsheet and ticket can be displayed.
• Reserves provides information and programme scans for all St. Mirren Reserve and Youth matches for which a programme or teamsheet is known to exist.
• Big Match contains a number of full programmes from St. Mirren's appearances in domestic Finals and Semi-Finals, European matches and Anglo-Scottish competitions.
• Miscellaneous contains programme scans for known pre-war programmes involving St. Mirren, together with a number of other unusual programmes and tickets.
• Articles links to a number of articles on programmes from famous games in St. Mirren's history and which also document the production of the St. Mirren programme from its humble beginnings just before the Second World War through to the glossy matchday magazine of the 21^st Century.
• Links provides a list of similar sites and useful programme resources.

Postponed and Rearranged matches

Postponed matches cause the greatest sense of confusion amongst collectors as it is difficult to ascertain if a programme was produced. Likewise, depending on when the fixture is eventually played, the original programme may be re-issued (with or without an updating insert), a brand new programme may be produced, or indeed nothing may exist. The Archive has therefore taken a simple and consistent line :

• Postponed matches are only included if it is known that something exists bearing the original date of the match.
• Rearranged matches include the date of the original fixture and state what was produced, if anything.

Throughout the archive, an official teamsheet is deemed to be an acceptable substitute when no other item exists bearing the date of the game.

Acknowledgements

The majority of the images come from my personal collection, but I would like to thank the Club-specific web sites listed on the Links page and fellow collectors Jim Crawford, Leslie Robertson, William Clark, Stuart Black, Mark Smith, John Lynn, Paul Pettigrew, Richard White, Eric Gregor and David Cochran for the use of programme scans and to Steve Bell for additional match reports.

Match information has been sourced from contemporary newspapers, various Scottish Football record books and programmes. The historical articles in the St. Mirren programmes over the years have been an invaluable reference and gratitude is also due to the authors of "Marching On...: 125 Years of the St. Mirren Football Club" for producing such a well documented history of the Club.

Errors and omissions

Inevitably, with so much information gathered in one place, there are bound to be errors and omissions. Please contact me if you have any queries, suggestions, corrections, additional information or good quality scans of any missing programmes, teamsheets or tickets.