It’s guest blog time again and, prompted by our recent run of MFW nostalgia (there’s precious little else to talk about), Dave Butcher – better known to most as DaveB 2 in the comments – takes us back to 1967 for a game that’s been recorded for posterity on the EA Archive.
Take it away, Dave…
The recent article by Malcolm Robertson started to bring back to life some memories of the Sixties. Specifically, the Sixties at Carrow Road.
A while ago, I stumbled across footage of an FA Cup 5th round tie against Sheffield Wednesday at Carrow Road on March 11th, 1967. What follows is a tribute to both the team and the East Anglian film archive at the UEA.
It wasn’t the first time we’d played Wednesday in the Cup. There’d been the second round tie at Newmarket Road in 1908 and in 1935 another fifth-round tie at The Nest.
The first game produced a 2-0 win and boasted Newmarket Road’s highest-ever turn-out of 10,366, the second a 1-0 defeat, with Wednesday going on to win the Cup that season.
There would have been much anticipation about this match in 1967 though, hot on the heels of a remarkable 2-1 away victory at Old Trafford in the previous round, featuring the likes of George Best, Bobby Charlton, and Denis Law.
Wednesday were also a First Division team, albeit a mid-table one. They were the biggest team I’d seen at the time and 40,999 other people were there to witness the event; not far short of the record attendance of 43,984 against Leicester.
I can only think that the extra 3,000 must have been sitting on the roof because we were standing like sardines.
I was 10 and had been to school that morning – an idiosyncratic arrangement that was designed to facilitate the playing of sports on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons – but, in truth, was bigoted at not having football on the curriculum in the first place.
Undeterred by this madness, I had proceeded to school with a yellow and green scarf concealed about my person. We were in the ground as soon as it opened and had taken up position in the front row of the South Stand. This was important as there were no seats in that stand and I was knee-high to a grasshopper.
I remember the sunshine and the resplendent Wednesday shirts, that, for some reason, I recall as being purple, rather than blue, with white sleeves.
In those days City wore black shorts, no doubt emblematic of the call to ‘do different’. In later years someone had the canny idea to change them to green so as to match the scarves.
As kick-off approached, younger fans were escorted around the ground to sit down in front of the fencing, barely ten years before they would be fenced into the terraces themselves.
There were class players in the Wednesday line up – Ron Springett, England forerunner of Gordon Banks, Eustace, McCalliog and Quinn – but they were surely no match for the likes of Kevin Keelan, Mal Lucas and Dave Stringer.
But we were two down before half-time. For the first, a cross from the right from Fantham found Ritchie towering over Laurie Brown with a nod down to John Quinn, who made no mistake with a drive from the edge of the penalty area.
The second came courtesy of a divot.
Back then goalkeepers used to bounce the ball around the penalty area before drop kicking up the field but, unfortunately, pitches were not of anything like the same quality then as they are now. And sure enough, Keelan bounces the ball, which subsequently hits a divot and a combination of Ritchie and Ford make capital of the calamity.
The practice is no longer fashionable in the modern game though it didn’t stop Ron Springett doing the same thing in the same penalty area in the second half. I bet he had a close eye on the divot though.
But City pull one back. A cross from Terry Anderson is met by a far-post header from Tommy Bryceland that goes in; probably a collector’s item in its own right, and had the Barclay youth chanting ‘We want two’.
But ten minutes later a cross from Eustace found Ritchie and Fantham rifled it home. 3-1 Wednesday.
Owls’ fans started singing: ‘Ee aye addio, we’re going to win the Cup’.
It was a harsh lesson and on another day it might have been different. City lost to a better team but were certainly not embarrassed. We left discreetly as we inched our way back to the car.
So what of the film itself? Well, it’s 20 minutes long and, for its time, is pretty good quality.
The Carrow Road stands have long since been replaced and the pitch no longer resembles a ploughed field.
If you look to the top left corner and you will see the letters of the alphabet just in front of the Barclay, next to what is now the Snakepit. At half-time numbers would appear next to the letters to indicate what the half time scores around the country were, but to decipher them you had to buy a programme first. Cunning eh?
In the bottom right-hand corner in front of the River End, there is a small vehicle, allowing access for a disabled fan. The pitchside fans seem to be impeccably behaved and contained by very few police constables; health and safety had yet to be invented.
You might wear a rosette or ‘wind’ a rattle without getting arrested for being in possession of a dangerous weapon.
Now, what did I do with my rose-tinted spectacles?
Here’s the link…
http://www.eafa.org.uk/catalogue/923 …. enjoy.
Thanks Dave, excellent article, but my memory of the half-time ABC etc scoreboard is that it advertised the Pink’un, and was diametrically opposite the Snakepit corner, between the South Stand and the open River End terrace. At least, that’s where it was in the late 50s, though I was away at sea and the living in Harlow through the 60s, so they may have moved it.
Hi Jim
The small world of MFW strikes again!
My first proper journo job was in Harlow – 1978-80 I think. The Gazette was based in the Shenval Press complex on the edge of the Old Town and we lived in the Marquis of Granby. It’s mildly eccentric landlord Vince [Dunn?] was an ace geezer who had one of the very first Space Invaders machine in Essex!
If I was with my girlfriend of the time we would use the Chequers opposite or sometimes venture into nearby Spelbrook to Bobby Moore’s pub, the Three Horseshoes.
I’ve not been back there in 40 years!
Hi Martin. I remember you telling me before that you lived in Harlow. You obviously frequented the pubs in the Old Town, all the pubs in the New Town being named after butterflies, such as the Essex Skipper, the Painted Lady, and so on. I lived over towards the Staple Tye area off Southern Way, but for the first three years I worked at AEI on Edinburgh Way testing electron microscopes, before leaving to work for ICL as a service engineer around Harlow and north-east London and Essex.
Got lucky getting a service manager’s job in Norwich in 1978, so the company paid for my move back to God’s own county, and I’ve been here ever since, even resisting a promotion that would have seen me having to move to Stevenage.
I didn’t actually ever live there as such – the Marquis pub line was a bit of a joke, although it felt like we were in residence during old skool opening hours.
The lady Caroline lived in, I think, Spencers Croft and two of my best mates in those days were Alan Howick [an estate agent who was a director of Harlow Town FC] and Graham Hesketh who was Mr Harlow Cricket Club.
I used to turn out for Harlow II a few times and keeping wicket to Errol Green was not an easy task. He was of the Devon Malcolm mould and also a DS in the Essex Constabulary.
Errol only broke one of my fingers:-)
There were two half time score boards, the biggest one which was above the crowd was in the corner of the river end and South Stand.
I must pay tribute to the mighty memory of Dave Butcher for a fantastic clip and the detailed recollections that accompany it.
That’s mainly because my first City match was in ’67 as well. We beat Plymouth 2-1 and I can barely recall anything of the occasion whatsoever. The crowd was nothing like the heaving sea of humanity in David’s video though.
Black shorts, no replica shirts on offer and the peanut vendor having coins passed down to him through the crowd and lobbing paper bags into the crowd I do remember.
As David said, no health and safety in those days. And, although it was only a bag of unsalted monkey nuts, there was obviously a lot more trust between everybody back in the day.
Well Jim i’ll take your word for the alphabet being at the River end during the fifties. By the sixties they were also in the Barclay.
Yes, they probably moved it, Dave, but it was definitely at the River End in 1959. I stood under it when we played Cardiff City in the cup. I had to keep whacking my mate Bones because he kept shouting “come on City” – we had to keep reminding him that could be applied to Cardiff too!
Never bought a programme, just relied on people round us to tell us who was who.
Brilliant memory Dave, thanks for that. I too had been to school that morning (I’m about 3 years older than you it seems). I believe the reason for Saturday lessons was that the school had boarders, and it helped keep them occupied. But we also got much longer holidays to compensate.
When I first went to games from about 1965 my grandfather used to meet me after school – my father hated the game – but I think that might have been one of the first games I went to on my own. I lived too far away to get home and back so I was at the front of the River End with a duffle bag, some sandwiches, probably a Turkish delight and that weekend’s French homework.
In the duffle bag was a scarf knitted for me the previous Christmas by my granny in Birmingham. At that time it went round me twice. She’d clearly made it with the future in mind. Good thinking – it is the only scarf I have ever needed, and was last seen at Burnley in round 4. It still goes round me, but only once.
I don’t remember much about the match really except three weeks of eager anticipation and then crushing disappointment.
Frank Bough was not a great commentator was he? Kenning’s dropped the ball…. Has Anderson got a right foot? Lol, he’d been taking corners with it not long previously.
I love the way the captions are set up at the start which seems to be based on:
1) England won the World Cup playing 4-3-3, so obviously all teams play that way and
2) Just put the players in numerical order. Mal Lucas at left centre back? I don’t think so! Mind you he was absolutely everywhere else, And on that pitch too. Awesome stamina.
I wonder what Daniel Farke would make of some of our distribution from the back?
Interesting how even back then Ritchie threw himself to the ground just before their second goal, trying to win a penalty. So it wasn’t just Helmut Haller and the Italians who dived. (It was of course also the era of “Lee 1 pen…”) There’s nothing new under the sun after all.
Thanks for the memory.
Wonderful memories. As I recall the wind played a major part. The old River End was uncovered and a gale was blowing.
The 4th round had been at Old Trafford where City won 2-1. Been playing rugby for the school that afternoon, got home and waited for what seemed an age for the score to come through on the BBC teleprinter. To get tickets for SW had to attend a home game. Can’t remember who it was against but got in just before half time.
Manure won the title that season for 1967/68 we were able to chant “we beat the champions.”
Thanks Dave, I was also at that game in the Barclay being lifted off my feet at times and moved some distance from where I started. The biggest crowd I ever saw at Carrow Road. Brilliant atmosphere.
I can remember the disappointment at half time as I was thirteen at the time and certain City were going to win.
Tommy Bryceland was a brilliant player, the Wes of the 60s.
Oh come on Bald Patch , Sheffield Wednesday are one of the biggest teams most people see. I mean you need 19 letters in the name to be bigger.
Nice piece David, you’ve got a better memory than me, I can remember snatches of games, incidents that for some reason have stuck in my mind. Can’t recall the letters cum score thingy, but do remember at half time two men carrying a pole on their shoulders with a board showing a winning raffle ticket number. And of course the Pinkun being delivered on Saturday night.
I used to get my Pink Un from the Blofield United Clubhouse.
Fond memories of Paddy and his lads listening to the Combo results – and their reactions to a few of them!
Happy days – must be over 30 years ago now.
Just seen this post, unfortunately the film clip appears to be unavailable. As a young lad I went to that game with school friends on the train, all the way from Sheffield, brings back very happy memories.
We had lost in the Cup Final the year before and we were convinced this would be our year, sadly not to be! Returned to Norwich many times over the years, great city.