Bristol Rovers Virtual Museum

The matchday programme is regrettably becoming a thing of the past with many clubs now issuing online or not at all. Rovers stopped issuing programmes at the start of the 2024-25 season to be replaced by a monthly magazine. Colourful and informative but is this a viable substitute? There has however been good news this season with the Supporters Club issuing their own programme that has sold out on many occasions.

Clubs were known to issue a Match Card In the early days of football. We have two examples here: 1896 vs Hereford Thistle & 1897 vs. Aston Villa for the official opening of the ‘Eastville Rovers Athletic Ground’. We have photos of these match cards but we don’t know if any collector has them in their possession.

Some older programmes showed the date but no opponent and photos were a rarity. When Rovers returned to football action in 1945/6 paper shortage meant that only a small folded page was issued for matches and it is quite surprising that some of them still exist.

When Rovers were promoted to Division 2 for the 1953-4 season, the club issued an iconic programme with a photo inserted within a quartered flag that remained the cover for the rest of the decade. Since the early 60’s, programme covers changed regularly and became colourful, larger and more expensive.

Have a browse through the photos on this page and click on the link to our website that includes examples of Rovers programmes both home and away across our 140+ years existence.

When we played Manchester United

Bristol Rovers recently celebrated the 70th anniversary of their great FA Cup win over Manchester United by 4-0 on 7th January 1956. This match has gone down in history as Rovers’ greatest result especially as this was Manchester United’s famous Busby Babes team. The one exception to that team was Duncan Edwards, then injured, and who sadly lost his life in the Munich Air Crash along with other players and staff. As Rovers’ fans remember this great match, so do all football fans remember the awful tragedy at Munich.

1956 however was not the only time that Rovers played Manchester United in the FA Cup at Eastville as the two teams met on 12th January 1935. On this occasion, Man Utd ran out 3-1 victors with Rovers only goal coming from a George McNestry penalty. In goal for Rovers was Bob Adams, a 17 year-old making his Rovers debut, however he was only to play a further 2 games for Rovers before being transferred to Millwall. He later played for Bristol City.

At that time, Manchester United was not the successful team that they were to become. They had been relegated to Division 2 (now the Championship) at the end of the 1930/31 season and remained there during most of the 1930’s. In 1933-34, the season before they met Rovers in the Cup, they finished third from bottom of Division 2 only one point and one place above the relegation places.