Red & Black is always a great read

There is one part of the Match day experience that a lot of us look forward to. It's not merely the first sight of the Goldsands Stadium or the walk up to the stands. It's seeing those friendly faces who are waving those little Red & Black programmes in front of you. I want to know who is on the cover? I'm pondering over who Super Fletch has interviewed and I want to know what the captain and above all the Gaffa has to say about today's game. Now I'm rifling through my pockets hoping that I did not spend all my loose change before getting to the game.

You know the feeling, don't you? I expect I appreciate the Red & Black pogramme a lot because as a print journalist I know exactly how much hard work goes into producing that little booklet every match day. It's not a five minute project but something that has to be researched and carefully put together with very little time. It must be even harder when the club has a mid-week fixture and a weekend game.

Sure, the club has excellent resources in the way of photographs to hand and experienced staff to put the book together but every edition I read last season was excellent. If you go through the copies and read them from cover to cover, whether at the match or later down the pub or at home you know you have had value for money. And yet I am usually wanting more.

Hopefully some of you feel the same about Cherry Chimes. We certainly hope to keep you entertained and we aim to keep improving the service.

When I compare Red & Black to the pamphlet we would have back in the 1980s as a match programme you can see how much more fairly clubs like AFCB are reaching out to their supporters now. While the basic elements of a team sheet and the managers' introduction to the game are always to be found at the front and end of the programme, sandwiched in between them now is a wealth of entertaining opinion and views on everything you can think about to do with the club from the first team to the juniors.

Ah well, not long to wait to the next Red & Black programme.