My name is Ian Hine and I’ve been a Brighton & Hove Albion fan since 28th August 1968. On that evening, a day after my 9th birthday, my Dad and my Godfather took me to The Goldstone Ground for Brighton’s game against Torquay United in Division Three. My Godfather’s brother was Robin Stubbs, a bustling centre-forward for Torquay United and it was through him that we got tickets.

Before that I had been obsessed with the GAME of football but after that August evening, I now had a TEAM I could call my own. Like most boys in the mid-to-late 60s, I liked to collect stuff but after buying a copy of the programme for the match, I became obsessed by these little publications. I was absolutely fascinated and all my pocket money was spent on postal orders to send to various programme dealers for bundles of programmes from clubs up and down the country.

I started off collecting everything I could get my hands on and tried to get a programme from every Football League club each season. As I moved into my teens, I realised a few things. Firstly I found out there were other things to spend my money on (beer and music mainly) and in addition, I decided that in order to take control of my collecting, I needed to specialise.

It was logical that Brighton should become the focus of my hobby and that has been the case ever since. My collection has endured house moves, storage and numerous ‘de-cluttering’ exercises. Various life milestones have meant that the pace of my collecting has changed through the years but here I am still searching for the bargains!

In 2009, I had this amazing* idea to digitise my collection. I bought a scanner and started scanning my programmes, page by page. At first, everything progressed well. The short 8-page programmes from the 1950s were scanned in no time and I thought “this is a piece of cake, why didn’t I think of this sooner”.

By the time I got to the 1990s I realised that scanning a seasons-worth of 84-page programmes wasn’t quite the breeze that I thought it was. But I was way too deep into the project by then and I blindly carried on.

I needed a website to showcase my labour of love and a chance conversation with Warren Dudley, Albion fan and owner of sixty6media, led to him helping me out. He’s been a massive help and inspiration ever since the site officially launched in 2012. You are currently looking at version 2 of the site and Warren has again been instrumental in the design. The site now has around 60,000 individual page scans.

Because of my crazy obsession, a number of doors have opened for me. First of all, the launch of the site was picked up by Albion and since August 2012, I have been writing an article in the matchday magazine all about old programmes. I also write a weekly ‘Nostalgia’ column for the Brighton Independent Newspaper and am lucky enough to go to games as a reporter with my Premier League Press accreditation. I’ve also been on TalkSport and contributed to many other publications.

There has been much talk recently about the potential demise of the programme. The takeover of our lives by the internet and social media, means that it’s a constant battle for clubs to produce a programme that delivers unique content that is informative and interesting. At the risk of sounding biased, I think Albion do a brilliant job of this!

Please keep buying them. Over the years, I’ve had so much enjoyment from them and lots of things have happened to me because of it. All because I’m just a random bloke who collects football programmes.

*ludicrously stupid