Was it like this in 69?

LGFOX

LGFOX

Roofer
I was only 10 when we went down that year. I vaguely remember having to play loads of games between the SF & Final. My folks went to pretty much every match and remember my mum fainting at Ipswich as it was so warm.
Myself I do remember though the 2-1 vs Sunderland with Ally Brown scoring both goals. His debut? The final home game vs Everton was in front of a heaving FS, the type of crowd I only remember at cup matches not league. Think we drew. My final memory was my folks coming through the front door, my mum in tears after being at OT to see us lose 3-2.

My old man told me much later that we should never have gone down that season and basically our cup run did us.

Is this the same as then? What are your memories.
 
I remember it as that. The crowd was massive v Sunderland
. Front page of the Mercury said 'Bump, we're down'
 
I find this far less stressful than the tail-end of 2015/16 season.
Been here before, and likely will again. But the Premier League win was clearly going to be a one-off, so all our points (and those dropped by others) felt so vital to me. I was all over the shop those last couple of months.
 
It was a pretty poor season all round in the League winning just 30 points. Bit of a revival when O'Farrell took over from Gillies but not that different except in the FA Cup. Between the semi and the final we got 3 points from 6 games with one painful loss at Cov. After the Final we had another 5 League games and got just 3 points. That includes the loss at Ipswich which I also attended. The season was extended because of the number of postponements in winter.
 
Sorry - after the Final on 26th April - we beat Spuds, and beat Sunderland, and we drew with Everton (when my windows in Lower Hastings St got smashed in).
So that was 5 points from 5 games.
We needed 7 points from those 5 games.
A win at Man Utd last game would have done it. But we lost 2-3.
PS - it was only 2 points for a win then.
 
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A bit like this season, we had runs when we were picking up points (like in League games alongside the early Cup rounds) and then others where we couldn’t buy a win (that dismal sequence before Matt Gillies finally quit at half time at Goodison). There were games where I couldn’t understand how we even snatched a point (like when I watched Clarke slap the ball into the net past Springett with his hand). Back then, I was too young to have been aware of us being relegated in the late fifties, so 1969 was my first taste of that. That final afternoon, when my older brother took a beating at OT, I expected us to bounce back quickly without much damage to the club. This time round, relegation comes over as a much, much scarier prospect.
 
CityFox said:
I find this far less stressful than the tail-end of 2015/16 season.
Been here before, and likely will again. But the Premier League win was clearly going to be a one-off, so all our points (and those dropped by others) felt so vital to me. I was all over the shop those last couple of months.
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Agreed
 
What was the scandal involving Cantwell and Cov ?? I know they stayed up and he was manager, remember being told about some underhand going’s on
 
In 1969 we had been in the First division forever. We had broken the transfer record to buy Clarke. Promising players had broken through; Nish, Fern, Ally Brown. We had beaten the Scouse away and the cup holders to reach the Cup Final which we narrowly lost.
We went into the last five games needing seven points. But the killer game was before that away at Cov. We scored what looked like the winner near the end but it was ruled out, the SBS went up the other end and scored.
At OT in the last game we were a goal up in the first minute and a goal down in the fifth. The ground was full of C*v. Their manager that bastard Cantwell was a Yanited old boy.

An interesting footnote was that many years later, in the context of a match fixing article, is that it was claimed that the final home game v Everton was fixed. I could never work out how or why.
I do not see any link between then and now except the sheer stress of it all. If we win on Monday I think we will be OK. If we don't, we are down.
 
Blue City said:
What was the scandal involving Cantwell and Cov ?? I know they stayed up and he was manager, remember being told about some underhand going’s on
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Being ex manure it was thought they tried their hardest to defeat us in that final match. What also didn’t help was it was the last match with Busby in charge and the players wanted to win it for him.
 
Blue City said:
What was the scandal involving Cantwell and Cov ?? I know they stayed up and he was manager, remember being told about some underhand going’s on
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Cov played United at Highfield Road that April. Stepney managed to gift them two goals, the first early on punching into his own net, the second fumbling the ball for Cov to score. Within days, every kid at school was talking about it.
 
Add to that 8th April 1969 when Alex Stepney fumbled a very,very,very soft shot past him into the net as Coventry beat Man Utd 2-1 at Highfield Road.
 
ElmetFox said:
An interesting footnote was that many years later, in the context of a match fixing article, is that it was claimed that the final home game v Everton was fixed. I could never work out how or why.
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I’ve never heard that story. Why would the Everton game be fixed. Who would have benefited? Genuine question
 
Another comparison would be with the Great Escape of 14/15.

Then there was sense of excitement and optimism rather than the foreboding and dread of now.
 
Actually we were poor in attack despite having sniffer leading us but the picture told the whole sorry story l give up on any ideas of escape in January and our exploits in the Cup didn't balance what we did in the league
This is where my hatred of that inane stupid phrase "Too good to go down" stems from, if you are good then you would not be in a position to be relegated.
 
kendalfox said:
Actually we were poor in attack despite having sniffer leading us but the picture told the whole sorry story l give up on any ideas of escape in January and our exploits in the Cup didn't balance what we did in the league
This is where my hatred of that inane stupid phrase "Too good to go down" stems from, if you are good then you would not be in a position to be relegated.
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I can’t agree more with what you say about the attack, we had a classic target man and poacher working in tandem, but that combination rarely seemed to click as well as it should have. In fact, overall, that whole season was a weird one, wasn’t it? For a while, doing well in the FA Cup seemed to come to the rescue of us in the League, we had a good run of form in both competitions in the first months of 1969 that gave me hope of both survival and silverware. But in what later felt like a repeat of what had happened in 1963, us getting into the Final made the team start to behave like rabbits in the headlights again in the League. It was only after we’d lost at Wembley that we finally started to show a bit of fight, at least at home, but by then we were always likely to be overwhelmed by an overcrowded fixture list, as we had been in 1963.
 
I thought having what you say poacher and targetman was a damn good set-up Lochhead brilliant in the air and a good target man on the ground would pave the way for Clarke and we would have a decent Season but Sniffer didn't get too many for us
But went on to better things at Leeds
 
LGFOX said:
I’ve never heard that story. Why would the Everton game be fixed. Who would have benefited? Genuine question
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I didn't understand it either. But the game was mentioned in a Sunday newspaper article based on an interview with Ernie Hunt, who claimed there was widespread match fixing at the time he played.
 
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