Really good thread. Thanks, Walthamstow.
Some random comments:
Posts 9 and 47. Isn't it Frank Lampard being confronted by Eddie Colquhoun rather than Billy Bonds?
Post 24. Bobby Smith can't have been involved. He left Spurs in 1964. Bizarrely, he dropped three divisions in one go, moving to Fourth Division club, Brighton. Just the previous season he'd been in the Tottenham side which won the Cup- Winners' Cup and had played for England!
Posts 43 and 60. I didn't think Jim Bone did too badly for us. When he first arrived he formed an effective partnership with Bill Dearden and scored 6 in his first 13 games. He also scored one of the goals in the legendary 5-0 thrashing of Arsenal early the following season. It's been suggested to me relatively recently that he was a bit fond of the booze but I never heard anything to that effect at the time. He was a Scot, of course.
Post 60. John Flynn was never one of the "engines of the team" alongside Hockey. He was a straightforward - and effective - central defender alongside Colquhoun.
Post 84 (WW1 recruitment drive, September 1914). If you look closely, top of the picture, three steps down, seventeen people in from the right, there's a bloke without a cap on.
Post 93. Harry Latham was the trainer when I started going. It used to cause great amusement among the little kids at the front of the Kop when he and the opposition trainer came on at the same time and they'd have a "race" to see who got there first. You did have to be there. I never saw Harry do anything other than administer the legendary "magic sponge" although every other trainer was exactly the same.
Post 94. A shot of the area to the right of the covered part of the Kop. You'd make your way up there towards the end of the game if you wanted a quick getaway and I watched many a last few minutes from that vantage point. I vividly remember seeing a last-minute header by Bobby Campbell against Oldham in November,1977, the only goal of one of the worst games I think I ever saw.
Post 111. There used to be appeals in the Star and also on local radio for fans to go down to the ground on a Saturday morning to help clear the straw off the pitch when it had been used in cold weather. I never went, though.
Post 137. The photo of Mick Jones calls to mind a similar one taken in September, 1964, from exactly the same place (from behind and through the nets at the Bramall Lane end) of Mick scoring against Birmingham. Significant for me because it was the first game I ever attended. The photo was on a website called Devoted To Sport which had a random selection of old images that you could have printed on paperweights and mugs and things but the site has disappeared now. I had the photo as my screensaver on an old computer but I somehow lost it. If anyone has the image in question, I'd pay good money for a copy.
Post 138. I was at the Villa game, aged 6, with my brother, aged 7. We stood at the front on the Kop, directly behind the goal. We were aware of Churchill's death the previous Sunday - it was a very big thing - but the minute's silence caught us totally unaware. After about twenty seconds of silence a kid next to us started giggling and it was just like being in assembly when something like that happens and inevitably several other kids in the vicinity joined in, including (I regret to say) the two of us. A bloke standing just behind us didn't half tell us off. Mind you, it was nothing compared to the situation at Swansea's home game the same afternoon when the silence was interrupted by someone shouting "Murderer! Remember Tonypandy." This was a reference to the belief that Churchill as Home Secretary had ordered troops to fire on striking Welsh miners during the General Strike and an illustration that the Welsh know how to hold a grudge.
Post 141. The game against Blackpool was in the Fourth Round of the Cup. They were a league below us and it was a comfortable afternoon until the last two minutes. We were 2-0 up and coasting. They pulled one back with a couple of minutes to go at the Bramall Lane end and they almost immediately got the ball in our net again. I can vividly recall the thud of my heart as it happened followed by an enormous sense of relief when it was ruled out, presumably for offside.
Post 142. I never knew that Gil Reece's goal in the 2-1 win at Anfield on Good Friday was a header but it figures. For a small, slight man, he was absolutely magnificent in the air. The return fixture against Liverpool was four days later, a night match on Easter Tuesday. I remember my surprise on arriving on the Kop to find it was full of Liverpool supporters who had, in the parlance of the time, clearly "taken" it. That game featured one of my favourite Currie goals, a volley from about fifteen yards past Tommy Lawrence at the Kop end which nearly broke the back of the net.
Post 143 features Dave Powell, my all-time favourite United defender, in the middle of the picture. Unless I've missed something, he never seems to have featured in any of the anniversary/reunion events. Does anyone know if he's still in touch with the club or any of his old colleagues?
Post 149. The home game against Stoke in 1971 was the week after our defeat at Old Trafford, the end of our long unbeaten run, and we were really out of sorts. Woody scored an early penalty but the writing was on the wall throughout. The second half was memorable, however, for a magnificent display by Tony Currie who appeared, to my eyes at least, to be playing Stoke on his own. He smashed an equaliser past Gordon Banks from the edge of the box and a minute or two later he won the ball near the corner flag, dribbled in along the goal line and squeezed a shot past Banks at his near post - a rare thing, indeed - only for the ref to disallow it on the basis the ball had gone out of play. We lost 3-2 but I'll always remember that game for TC's heroic performance.
