This is the first paragraph of a piece I wrote when Tommy Smith left us for Cardiff. The clock showed that 30 minutes had been played. Q.P.R. were applying pressure with a series of attacks prompted intelligently by Alejandro Faurlin. Spotting that Akos Buzsaky was pulling into space, the young Argentinean threaded the ball through to him. Buzsaky capitalised on his momentary freedom and attacked the penalty area before slipping a slide rule pass through to Tommy Smith. Smithâs immaculate first touch allowed him to spin away from the defender, his second was a curling shot beyond the reach of Tim Howard and into the far corner of the net to score Rangersâ first goal in top flight football for 15 years. As the Q.P.R. contingent in the crowd at Goodison Park went berserk, Smith stole away like a naughty school boy before nonchalantly accepting the congratulations of his teammates. If I could have handpicked any of our players to score our first goal back it would have been Tommy Smith. It seems a lifetime ago. We've had some great matches against Everton in years gone by featuring a disproportionate number of hat trick heroes. I can remember Simon Stainrod and Van Den Hauwe having a punch up in the middle of the pitch and Graeme Sharp dancing through our defence on a very icy plastic pitch to score when no one else managed to keep their footing all game. Any good memories out there?
The past two seasons have been a disaster,depressing,full of dashed hopes and cost me a small fortune!
Sir Les hat-trick in a rampant Easter win at Goodison in 93 or 94? We were coasting at 5-1 before letting a couple in near the end, I think that was probably his best run of scoring for us in that period...
I think the last game at LR before seats were taken out of the lower loft was against everton. It was the only time I stood there with the old man. 1-1 I think.
Good quality too! [video=youtube;biNzeUMZbTQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biNzeUMZbTQ[/video] The substitute benches look like old fashion bus stops!
I remember the 0-4 at home at the beginning of 76-77, that certainly wasn't in the script and was the pre-cursor of a very disappointing season apart from our Euro campaign...
