Here's a Christmas treat for you. In 1968 the itv regons started broadcasting local football highlights for the first time. In the Yorkshire Televison region Leeds Sheffield United were the main teams but every now and then the regons other sides were featured. On the the 29th of March 1969 the cameras came to Oakwell for the very first time to record this division three clash. These are the full higlights broadcast. The goals have been on youtube a while but this is the first time I'm aware full higlights have been available. Merry Christmas To All
Wonderful, wonderful. As much as anything it's great to see the old ground, the people and their "fashion", and most striking to me is the amazing amount of scarf waving. Whatever happened to the old red and white barred scarf ?
Thanks for sharing these @kendraytyke Will try and watch this one later on. Before my time watching. (Started in '74). Merry Christmas!
It was, I remember that. For the life of me I couldn't figure out what the "Come on you Reds" song was about????
Thanks for that, brings back memories of the old ground which has improved no end since three sides were demolished although I did like to walk round from the Ponty onto the Kop at half time. Imagine if we could do that nowadays kicking into home fans at both ends. Also, Roy Ironside - how poor was he? Makes Adam Davies look like Gordon Banks.
The wonderful Barry Davies commentating! Didn’t even know he worked for ITV. Love these clips. Not for the football, which (sorry) is much worse than I remember it, but seeing the old ground and the fans. Fantastic. And what’s with al, those shirts and ties!! Thank god the hoolies came along to ‘improve’ the fashion.
I must admit, the quality of the football looked, er, questionable. Most of them, on both sides, looked like they couldn't trap a bag of cement. 2nd touch was invariably a tackle.
A few observations on that. I must have seen the recording before but I didn't remember anything about it. What's marvellous though is the picture quality, and it's hard to imagine that this was over FORTY NINE years ago. Takes your breath away when you say that out loud. It's a lifetime ago (two for most on here). I was still at school, in my final year at Broadway, so it's very likely that I was at this match. It's so rare to see this quality of coverage from that time when we had players like Norman Dean and Eddie Loyden up front, and Eric Winstanley in his final days as a player with us. His partnership with Pat Howard was brilliant, broken up by the latter's transfer to Newcastle. Dean had been playing for Cardiff only a year before in the European Cup Winners Cup. Loyden was the archetypal big centre forward, transferred to us from Shrewsbury, with the likes of Trevor Aylott and Kieffer Moore to follow in a similar vein. It's still weird looking at a team running out with numbers 1 to 11 on their shirts with, in our case, two wingers in George Hamstead and Bob Earnshaw. Both had their moments with us, Bob being famous for charging down the wing and straight into touch without getting the ball over. George was an expert corner taker, often planting it on Big Winnie's head. Barry Murphy showed one or two very deft touches with, as ever, his fair share of back passes to the keeper. Roy Ironside was better than we saw there, but I suppose he was coming to the end of his career having spent most of it at Rotherham in a higher league than us. I had forgotten that Eric Brookes was moved from full back to centre half and it was a pity that not much was seen of him in this game. As others have said, it was great seeing the crowd moving around the three sides of the ground visible from the camera side. It was quite common for the Ponty End to be almost empty in the second half because we traditionally kicked towards the Kop for the final 45 and, of course, most wanted to be behind the "right" goal. How sad that football fans can't mix at half times now - there was always an exodus in both directions. Of course there were the odd arguments as people met on the Paddock path while crossing but, mostly, this exercise passed peacefully. Finally, look at that great big mountain on show between the Kop and Paddock!. Barnsley Main muck stack was enormous at that time and it's hard to imagine the physical effort involved in shifting it. Where did it all go? Somebody must know. I stupidly used to climb up it now and then and it was almost like climbing a volcano with the hot vapour escaping from the cracks. I was lucky I never fell down a big hole, but who thought about such things in those days . Great to see this team on video anyway - there wasn't much TV coverage of us at that time.
My recollection is of Roy conceding a number of goals due to back passes going straight through his legs during his time with us. Perhaps I'm doing him a disservice though. Also, was his nickname 'Brassneck' ?