Two days ago was the 50th anniversary of us beating Ashford in the F A Cup first round. Played on a Wednesday afternoon because of the floodlights being either poor or non-existent.
And it led to a win at Newport in the next round and then drawing at OT and winning the replay, beating Newcastle in the fourth and sadly losing disappointingly at St. Andrews in the fifth.
My favourite, I think, of our various cup runs. It helped, I suppose, that I was only thirteen.
I was at all of those games, apart from Ashford.
Not at Newport or Ashford. I think that Wednesday the 8th of January 1975, and Monday the 27th of January 1975 might have been the only days that I actually looked forward to going to school.
That makes me feel old, I was there,was it really 41yrs ago?
Before global warming, many matches felt like the Arctic - would buy a cup of hot chocolate before and another at half time, then stand on the polystyrene cups believing they were insulating the feet😀
I remember that night Timiwhites and from your description of the evening I was one of the other two! I think we met at a Youth Centre on Littleton Street beforehand.
One of my all time Saddlers nights and that train journey afterwards is so vivid in my mind. I was only talking about it to an Arsenal mate of mine the other day (suffice it to say he has “forgotten” about this particular match).
Rees having a fist fight with several Sheffield fans, Imagine that now.
I don’t remember where we picked the two of you up from. What I do recall is dropping the two of you off somewhere in Pleck I think?
I still go to games with our “mutual friend” but he travels a lot now so doesn’t get to many. When I see him again, in January I will ask him what he remembers. Anyway all the best to you. Shame about yesterday but we really need a promotion rather than a cup run. Hope we can do it.
I’d forgotten that snippet about Godden being their keeper.
Only played a handful of games for us didn’t he?
19 games in 1983-4. Arrived on loan on the same day as Gary Childs.
Are you sure? I thought we signed Godden after we lost to Liverpool, Childs was already with us at that point.
I could be totally wrong, your knowledge is better than mine.
That’s how I remember it. Wasn’t that the season Mick Kearns came out of retirement? Would he have done if we already had Godden? But like you, I’ll take @Fellows1926 over my own fallible memory. Maybe Godden signed, then got injured, but wouldn’t he have just gone back to Albion?
He had two spells on loan, one in Oct/Nov iirc, and then later in the season.
I don’t think Albion wanted him to play in the cup, so Big Mick turned out against Barnsley and Salop and when Godden went back he (Kearns) played in a few League games and also against The Arse.
That would make sense. It’s easy to forget season long loans didn’t happen so much in those days- month long loans were way more common. It’s also easy to forget there was no transfer window then. Just a deadline day towards the end of March. It was open house before that deadline.
Remember being at that Rotherham game, Childs oozed class and Ally Brown scored the winner with a penalty with about 10 minutes to go, up at their end from memory. Just about 300 of us there in stark contrast to the Milk Cup game a couple of months later!
The return game at home we’d run out of steam and let in a sloppy last gasp equaliser from John Dungworth, which was for me, the moment I knew we wern’t going up.
The three Rotherham games were like a skeleton script to that season, fragile genuine hope, turned all conquering swagger, turned fatigued self-destruction - in a roller-coaster of 4 months. Great ride!