If you also have a tendency to gauge the passing years in relation to football seasons gone by, this before rock records played a similar function, it is often disconcerting to realise how much time has already passed since the album or run of fixtures originally came about.
As time continues to run away with us all, with each new year comes realisation of the scarcely credible notion that a landmark LP is now fifty years old – and while not pre-empting posts that will be seen on SAMTIMONIOUS.com next year, 2023 marks such an anniversary for ‘The Dark Side of the Moon‘ and ‘Quadrophenia.’ Half a century will also have passed since Sunderland won the FA Cup and England were unable to overcome Poland at Wembley – thus failing to qualify for the 1974 World Cup.
Even more pertinent in regard to your genial host is Wolves’ 1973 FA Cup semi-final to Leeds, the sound of my Dad cursing the fickleness of football as we trudged away from the neutral venue of Maine Road never failing to be repeated whenever the fixture was mentioned.
Sadly he will not be around to voice his lingering disappointment when the fiftieth anniversary of the tie comes around on April 7, (in the 48 years that followed and from the hundreds of football matches he saw before and afterwards no other raised the hackles of this unfailingly amiable man in such a way). But the point is this – five decades will have gone by since a second half Billy Bremner goal separated the teams in taking Leeds through to Wembley.
At Christmas time 1972 many would have put the Elland Road side among the favourites to win the cup, this an exercise in retainment as they were holders having beaten Arsenal in the FA Cup Final seven month before.
Given they were in a rich vein of mid-season form, Arsenal, one place above third in the table Leeds, would also have been discussed as possible cup winners. In fact, another league and cup double to replicate their 1971 achievement was not beyond the realms of possibility, although to prosper on the title front meant quashing the name on many lips as 1972 drew to a close.
With Liverpool leading the Championship chasing pack, their moniker was also found at Number One on the pop charts, little Jimmy Osmond proclaiming to be a long haired lover from the city – although in climbing four places higher than ‘Happy Christmas‘ (War Is Over) by a fab son of Merseyside, it showed what a strange, unfathomable place the UK was on the cusp of 1973.
At least the Sambrook household offered a degree of certainty. On Christmas night a seemingly large gathering of Mum, Dad, siblings, cousins, aunts and nans – having festively feasted on my Mum’s efforts – would congregate in a small room, to watch the Morecombe and Wise Christmas Show.
My vantage point was closest to the corner lamp, in order to keep dipping into my new Shoot! annual – looking up every so often to note the exasperation on the face of Glenda Jackson, that everyone was finding so funny. This while looking forward to listening to ‘Sport on Two‘ the following afternoon, football reports heard for the first time on the radio Santa had delivered to me earlier in the day.
From that Waltham transistor set, on which later in the decade I would hear John Peel play The Clash and The Ramones, came forth news of the following Boxing Day football bonanza taking place up and down the country………….
DIVISION ONE – Boxing Day 1972:
Top of the table Liverpool took a six match unbeaten run of five wins and a draw across the Pennines to Bramall Lane – the home side not feeling particularly festive after recording just one win and a draw in their last nine league outings.
The form book prevailed with the reliability of a Christmas card from the neighbours, goals from Phil Boersma (27), Chris Lawler (50) and Steve Heighway (81), seeing Bill Shankly’s men to a comfortable victory, further endorsing league championship credentials that became a matter of fact come April.
At nearby Elland Road, the biggest crowd of the day, saw Leeds continue their title push with a hard fought victory over Newcastle – the visitors feeling neither calm or bright due to circumstances surrounding the decisive goal.
Not only did they fume at the award of a 47th minute penalty when full-back David Craig was adjudged to have fouled Eddie Gray, the took further Yuletide umbrage when a retake was ordered after Ian McFaul saved the initial effort from Johnny Giles – the second effort on rebounding off the crossbar headed home by Joe Jordan, who had made early entry to the fray as a first half substitute for Mick Bates.
At the end of the week Newcastle took out their frustration on Sheffield United who were beaten 4-1 on Tyneside – both clubs doing their share of hitting and missing before ending the campaign in comfortable mid-table berths.
Maintaining a twelve match unbeaten league run stretching back to the end of September enabled Leeds to keep in touch with Liverpool and second placed Arsenal – who following a 5-0 drubbing at Derby in November had barely missed a beat since.
Struggling Norwich were dealt with through second half goals from John Radford and Alan Ball, The Gunners already some way down the road that would see them lose another game until late February.
In going on to reach the FA Cup semi-finals (where they would lose in surprise fashion to Sunderland) and finish runners-up, 1972 would still be the last merry Christmas at Highbury for some time. In contrast Norwich, despite reaching the League Cup Final, where they would subsequently lose to Spurs, found their league form becoming progressively worse – but even though twenty league matches came and went between a November victory over West Brom and April triumph against Chelsea, the Canaries, up from Division Two last term, still managed to avoid relegation.
Heading from North to East London, at Upton Park West Ham and Spurs shared the spoils and four goals when playing out an entertaining draw.
Bryan ‘Pop’ Robson netted twice for a home side on course for a sixth placed finish, (their highest during the reign of Ron Greenwood), while the visitors responded through winger Jimmy Pearce and former Hammer Martin Peters – Spurs taking a point from what was already, due to League and UEFA Cup commitments, their ninth fixture of the month.
Four days later they would secure a League Cup Final berth following a 2-2 draw White Hart Lane draw with Wolves, advancing from the second leg having won 2-1 at Molineux on December 20. Victory over Norwich at Wembley in March would again secure UEFA Cup qualification (Spurs at Christmas 1972 the cup holders) and ultimately deny old rivals Arsenal entry into the same competition – The Gunners, despite finishing second in the league, prohibited due to the Football League still enforcing their one club/one city UEFA Cup rule.
Down in South London, Crystal Palace recorded back to back home wins for the first time since early September – overcoming Southampton ten days after a headline grabbing 5-0 demolition of Manchester United.
In between Palace had gone down 2-1 at Leicester in emphasising their inconsistency, but goals from John Craven and Don Rogers (2) put the Saints to flight – history almost repeated two weeks later when they knocked visiting Southampton out of the FA Cup by a 2-0 margin.
But between now and the end of the season only four league wins would result in them being relegated with still three games to play, the arrival of Malcolm Allison in late March following his resignation as Manchester City boss not able to stop the tailspin.
As for Southampton they floated through the remainder of 1972-73 keeping their heads above water, only to be pulled down by relegation currents twelve months later.
Champions Derby, while failing to find the consistency required to have a dart at retaining the title, were still capable of random excellence, underlined by progress to the European Cup quarter-finals and the recent annihilation of Arsenal.
Two goals from captain Roy McFarland and one by winger Alan Hinton accounted for Manchester United who had reached their darkest hour (so far) of the 1970s. On being slaughtered at Selhurst Park on December 16 they had parted company with manager Frank O’Farrell and having recorded only five league wins to date, appointed Scot Tommy Docherty who resigned his post as Scotland team boss to take charge at Old Trafford.
After a creditable draw against Leeds on December 23, any Christmas cheer quickly evaporated. Ian Storey-Moore netted their consolation goal at the Baseball Ground, the task ahead of Docherty in lifting the spirits of club seemingly intent on tearing itself apart from the inside made evident in a Highbury reversal four days later and early January FA Cup exit at Wolves.
That all-time great Bobby Charlton in his final Old Trafford season should finish joint top scorer with six spoke volumes of an outfit who finally docked in eighteenth, but had completely lost their way.
Another side on a downward gradient were Chelsea, whose European Cup Winners’ Cup triumph of eighteen months before was starting to feel a long time ago. They arrived at Portman Road attempting to shake off a miserable run that had brought just one win in their last ten games – a sequence including a 2-0 first leg League Cup semi-final defeat at home to Norwich.
Trips to East Anglia at this time would prove utterly joyless, efforts from Kevin Beattie, Trevor Whymark and a John Hollins own goal consigning them to defeat at Ipswich, while the League Cup fait accompli was sealed with a 1-0 reversal at Carrow Road three days into the new year.
Chelsea would see their season effectively end with an FA Cup quarter-final defeat against Arsenal in March, but Ipswich in contrast were on the up and steady progress through the spring of 1973 saw Bobby Robson’s side to commendable fourth place finish, the only real blemish being an FA Cup fourth round defeat at the hands of the side they dispatched so comfortably on Boxing Day.
If seasonal cheer was scarce in SW6 it was absent altogether in the land of Evertonia. Inflicting a 3-1 defeat on visiting Spurs as December reached its midway point allowed Everton to end a run of sixth successive defeats, but a Boxing Day draw against Birmingham was hardly the basis for festive joy.
The steady decline in evidence on the blue half of Stanley Park was emphasised by a final placing of seventeenth, a fourth round FA Cup home defeat to visiting Millwall and only fourteen goals on their travels all season marked the nadir of some grim 70s days at Goodison. The better times when they arrived came on the goal scoring prowess of Bob Latchford – who on Boxing Day 1972 netted for visiting Birmingham as they responded to a Joe Harper goal in taking a point from Merseyside.
Promoted to the top flight the previous May, the St Andrew’s side needed time to adjust but on finding their feet ended the campaign with seven wins and a draw to land in the lofty perch of tenth.
In finishing so strongly they climbed above Everton, Manchester United and City – the Maine Road unit slipping from fourth and two points off the title in 1971-72 to mid-table mediocrity in what felt the wink of an eye.
Their five match unbeaten run through November showed what City were capable of yet only one win in five since hinted at the problems bubbling just beneath the surface, something a Boxing Day draw at home to Stoke did little to alleviate.
The new year was to bring nothing but confusion – a fourth round FA Cup success against Liverpool was followed by City crashing out in the next round against Sunderland, while all the time they could not plug a leaky defence (only relegated pair Crystal Palace and West Brom conceded more), the tumult at Maine Road reaching a peak on March 30 when manager Malcolm Allison resigned, soon deciding Selhurst Park was a more preferable place to be.
In the great scheme of things the drawn encounter with Stoke was small potatoes, a Peter Mellor goal cancelled out by one from visitors through Welsh midfield man John Mahoney – things at Victoria Ground overshadowed by the retirement of goalkeeping great Gordon Banks, whose career came to a sad and abrupt end due to an eye injury he sustained in October 1972 when involved in a car crash.
The Potters still had their moments, testified by impressive wins over Derby and Manchester United in recent weeks, although a final standing of fifteenth was something of nothing – their FA Cup interest ironically starting and ending at Maine Road just two weeks after coming away with a Boxing Day point.
The other Division One draw on December 26 1972 occurred at Highfield Road, where the hosts and West Brom provided little in the way of comfort and joy.
After progressing unbeaten through October and November Coventry had stuttered since and would continue to do so, although involvement in the FA Cup continued until a quarter-final defeat against Wolves in March – by which time the game was pretty much up for Albion, only two league wins post-Christmas making relegation a racing certainty before it became a matter of mathematics.
If Morecombe and Wise were the best known double act on British television, then John Richards and Derek Dougan were fast becoming their football equivalent – bringing sunshine aplenty to Molineux during the past eighteen months.
On Boxing Day they were both on target as Wolves recorded a home win over Leicester as Bill McGarry’s side registered a fourth win in their last six league games.
The glad tidings of two more points slightly offset the League Cup semi-final defeat against Spurs of the previous week – Tottenham completing the job of reaching Wembley by virtue of a North London second leg draw four days later.
For Wolves it was the first in a double helping of semi-final disappointment – their FA Cup hopes, as earlier lamented, ending at the same stage four months later. While Leicester had nothing to show for their Molineux visit they had fared better in prior December Midlands derbies, beating West Brom and drawing with Birmingham, this before ending 1972 with a 2-0 win over West Ham on December 30.
Not that anybody would have known it – least of all the twelve year-old boy listening intently to all the football news his new Waltham wireless had to offer – the most talked about team as the 1972-73 season drew to a close barely received a mention in the broadcasts of Boxing Day.
Inclement Wearside weather put paid to Sunderland staging their second division home game against Huddersfield Town – and by the time of its Roker Park rearrangement on Tuesday 10 April, the home side were through to the FA Cup Final after a semi-final victory over Arsenal three days earlier.
Jimmy Osmond, Sunderland winning the FA Cup, David Bowie – there was just no legislating for the things heard coming from that radio.
Division One – Tuesday 26 December 1972:
Leeds United 1 Newcastle United 0 (45,486); Wolves 2 Leicester City 0 (22, 487); West Ham United 2 Spurs 2 (37,397); Sheffield United 0 Liverpool 3 (34,040); Manchester City 1 Stoke City 1 (36,334); Ipswich Town 3 Chelsea 0 (26,243); Derby County 3 Manchester United 1 (35,098); Crystal Palace 3 Southampton 0 (30,935); Coventry City 0 West Bromwich Albion 0 (31,498); Arsenal 2 Norwich City 0 (39,038); Everton 1 Birmingham City 1 (39,363);
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NEIL SAMBROOK is the author of ‘MONTY’S DOUBLE‘ – an acclaimed thriller now available in paperback and as an Amazon Kindle book.
Cracking read. Thoroughly enjoy these trips down memory lane. Your writing is an absolute joy!👍👌
Hello Troy – glad to hear you enjoyed the article and thank you for saying so. Much appreciated.
Given my wife says I live in a permanent mid-70s state, expect many more footballing trips down memory lane of this nature!
Thanks again for the endorsement and taking the time to comment.
Best wishes
Neil/SAMTIMONIOUS.com