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SOUR SWEDISH GRAPES WITH A HINT OF NOSTALGIA
Sven-Goran Eriksson felt it did nothing for the game’s image, whilst Roy Keane naturally held a different view after Ipswich blew Leicester apart in a Portman Road blizzard last weekend. An entertaining game redolent of times past, played with an orange ball and blue lines took me back to football in the early sixties.
I can recall being present at Highbury when a half-time snowstorm halted a match between Arsenal and Sheffield Wednesday. Once coloured lines had been painted over the lying snow, the game resumed. This pales into insignificance compared to the efforts required to get any football at all to be played during the winter of 1962-3.
At about this time, my local side, Letchworth Town, stalwarts of the Corinthian and Athenian Leagues, but now sadly defunct, had been drawn to play Harlow Town in the FA Amateur Cup. Those ancient enough to remember this season will realise that the chance of this fixture, or almost any other, taking place as per schedule were very slim as the weather tightened its grip over the country for an extraordinary two months. However, Dad and I, together with a handful of other lunatics, spent the entire morning clearing the playing area of deep snow, and the referee arrived for a lunchtime inspection. Our chairman, “Nick”, at his own expense, then arranged for a lorry-load of salt to be delivered- I knew already that he was rich, as he drove a Jag and smoked cigars. In a triumph of pity over common sense, the ref agreed that the match could start. Ninety minutes of huffing and puffing on ice culminated in the inevitable draw, and Dad and I piled into his Ford Anglia two weeks later for the replay (another stalemate, of course).
This is written on a day when Hereford’s FA Cup Third round replay at Lincoln City has been postponed for the third time. Prospects of a resumption seem bleak. However, there remains some way to go before the inevitable fixture congestion comes even close to the chaos of 62/63. I stand to be corrected, of course, but I think that the record number of postponements of any professional game in England still stands at FIFTEEN. This is the number of times that Coventry City were prevented from playing their third round tie at…………..you guessed it, LINCOLN CITY.
A merry Christmas to you all.
