whilst listening to Robert Elms the other week he was talking about strikes and power cuts in the seventies and he mentioned that we played Chelsea in a midweek match but the game took place during the day So I was curious to know if anyone on this board knew about or better still went to the game
Yep sydsider it happened.....1972ish 3rd Round cup replay....drew at Stamford Bridge and replay kicked off at 1:30, close to 30000 crowd and Stan scored in 1-0 win think it was our first ever win over them.....
I didn't go as I was in school but it made the News because Chelsea fans rioted when we scored the winner. It was 1-0. I remember it because in those days you did not know about games in midweek until much later in the day. The only reason it made the News was because of the surge when we scored which broke the wall - the Loft was a terrace in those days with a wall at the front and the standing room in it was reserved for younger kids. This was of course the era when the sole aim of going to away games was to 'take the home end' preferably beating up some home supporters while doing so as they valiantly defended their patch. Al the other London clubs kept on doing so during those years even though nobody on the Loft could be bothered to waste time with all that. We'd come to watch the football and watch the Rs spank their London rival which we did very regularly and often quite spectacularly in those days. It was the year we went out at home to Leicester in the quarter final because of bloody Joe Waters Couldn't tell you who scored though. I seem to remember it was Stan Bowles but as I never saw an action replay it does not stand out in my memory.
This was in January 1974 & followed the replay being postponed due to a waterlogged ground. I left work with an "upset stomach" & was mightily p****d off when it was postponed. I didn't think I could get away with that again on the day we did play!
It was during winter of discontent so there were no midweek evening games due to power strikes and flood lights couldn't be used...... As I was at the wren then they shut the school just before kick off as we would have been finishing just as the game ended so they were rather worried about us getting mixed up in anything......just about managed to leg it from school in time for kick off.... From memory we also played Norwich in a midweek game at a similar time kick off......
