No fan of the Club but what a fantastic strip for today’s game against Forest. Yes, I must be getting on a bit.
It was worn to commemorate their Cup win fifty years ago. I was once invited to a game at Leeds against Chelsea and they wore a similar strip that day. Seeing that kit lead to the Club side I played for adopting it as our away strip. Always loved playing in it.
I was watching the Old Trafford reply yesterday. Two things struck me. Football skills were pretty pants in the 70s (and I say that as a Glavin worshipper) and there should have been 18 sendings off.
Bonetti, Harris, Webb, Houseman, Cooke, Hudson, Hutchinson, Tambling, Osgood. Ahhh those were the days! I've got a Subbuteo team in the loft somewhere with all the names written beneath the player slots. Yellow numbers on their backs by virtue of airfix paint and an old ink pen nib.
The likes of Chopper Harris and Norman Hunter played the game very hard. They certainly would be a target for most refs in today's game. One of the hardest defenders the game has probably ever seen was Maurice Setters. A fearsome tackler, he would use foul or fair means to win any game. After he retired, he coached Tickhill Institute in the Doncaster Sunday League. My team Greenfield United knocked them out of the Cup to reach the final one season and I got chatting to him on the touchline. Turned out to be a really nice bloke.
I think the two things are completely interlinked. Skills weren't pants in the 70s, some of the most gifted players to have graced the game played back then but the balls were much heavier, the pitches were cr@p by comparison and good players got little or no protection. The skills were definitely there but the game was very different.
