Book review - 32 Programmes by Dave Roberts

Seven game in to this season and, with at least one FA Cup game to come, Norwich fans have 32 programmes left to get a complete set.
And, by coincidence, 32 Programmes, by Dave Roberts is a great book that I finished reading this morning and it’s a cracking read that I’m sure will be enjoyed by City fans.
Norwich don’t get a mention in the book, which, simply put, is one man looking back on the games that shaped his football-watching CV linked of course to the match day programmes he picked up along the way.
The reason for the book’s title is because author Roberts had been set a challenge by his second wife to cull over a thousand programmes down to just one box for a move to the USA, and this is the story of why he chose the ones he did, each triggering a memory from part of his life.
Football fans will strike a chord with loads of feelings and emotions that jump out in this book – there’s the games of Roberts’ youth when he first purchased a programme, tales of going round to Denis Law’s house to get an autograph, trying to impress girls and one of the best chapters is when he went all the way to Nottingham Forest just to get a programme for the school bully.
As Robert’s gets older women, drink and random decisions figure more and more – not to excess by any means, but as regular themes on why this fan who doesn’t support one league club, ends up at different grounds.
Certain teams get more mention than others, and even though most of the action in the book is a generation before my own, the nostalgic references to World Cups and Cup finals are great. Some of the recall is brilliant and at times it really feels like you actually know Roberts, such is the depth he goes into.
The one shame is that the book is so detailed in the early stages with two or three games a season and you really get a sense of Roberts’ change from boy to youth to man, with 18 years covering the first 29 programmes.
Then there are just a couple of entries for the 1980s as we learn that Roberts’ life took a major downturn in the 1990s. The last chapter is all about the 32^nd programme, and without giving away, the reader learns it is the most important one of all, and I admit, I could feel my eyes welling up reading the last chapter.