I have fallen well behind with these shows due to other commitments but yesterday I was able to sit down and catch up on the FA Cup third round action from early January 1980.
The featured game was the big clash between Spurs and Manchester United at White Hart Lane. Brian Moore informed us before kick off that, as you would expect, there was a sell-out crowd and in fact people had been turning up since shortly after dawn to ensure they would get in and watch the game. It almost made you weep to think about what we have lost, the FA Cup was such a massive competition back then.
Both sides of course picked their strongest possible line-ups, for Spurs this meant a debut for 17 year old Terry Gibson due to an injury crisis up front. Young Terry sported a crew cut back then and not the flowing gypsy locks he would adopt as he grew older. He had obviously been well schooled in the dark arts, happy to leave his foot in a few times much to the annoyance of the United defenders. Unfortunately for him his partner upfront was our old friend Chris 'shit' Jones, although to be fair Jones had a reasonably lively game and was unlucky to see Gary Bailey claw away a snapshot from 20 yards. The game ended 1-1, Ardiles turning from hero to villain in a few second half minutes. First opening the scoring with a low left footed strike and then conceding a very soft penalty when Gordon McQueen made the most of some contact from a cross. Spurs went on to win the replay at Old Trafford, I believe from memory Ardiles scored a great goal in that game in which Glenn Hoddle ended up playing in goal!
We then had very brief highlights from second division Birmingham's 2-1 win over first division high fliers Southampton. Noteworthy from the Palace perspective for a young Mark Dennis in the Blues line up, in fact his long throw led to their early opening goal. The St Andrews pitch was in a remarkable state, so many massive divots on it that it looked like it might have been imported from one of the fairways at The Belfry down the road.
Finally we went to fourth division Halifax versus first division Manchester City. This was most interesting for me as I recall watching it on the original Big Match all those years ago (I have no memory of the two games which preceded it). It must have been an early kick off as the whole game was played in broad daylight albeit grey skies, with not a floodlight in sight. If Birmingham's pitch was bad then The Shay was a whole other level - think allotments which had been used for practice by the local quad biking formation team. Typical cup tie fayre of the era, Halifax lobbed balls forward and City struggled to cope on the quagmire of a pitch. Eventually they wilted and Halifax got the goal they deserved for a famous 1-0 win. City manager Malcolm Allison sitting passively in the dugout looking forlorn and resigned to his fate.
Again this was a cracking 50 minutes or so of viewing after fast-forwarding through the adverts. They did a really good job of putting together the highlights packages in those days. You didn't have endless replays of every incident and of course there was none of the tedious studio analysis from the Alan Shearer of the day to waste time in between matches, it was all centred on the action.
|