Barnsley v Portsmouth 1985

I’ve just posted this on YouTube.
It’s the full 18 minutes highlights from Match Of The Day.

By the way put yer big coit on!

 

Thank you for posting that. mate, I really enjoyed it. It felt like a defeat, rather than a draw that day and it took ages to thaw out afterwards! Also, I think it's a racing certainty those conditions would result in a postponement nowadays.

 

Not a pair of gloves or a snood in sight proper footballers unlike todays big girls blouses

 

The only current link to those days is Cameron McGeehan's hair.

 

I was there that day, bloody cold..... We had a great chance to finish it at 3-1 when Gordon Owen shot from a tight angle instead of squaring it to an unmarked Futcher. You just knew they'd equalise after that.

 

Me too. Weren't we only on TV that day because so many games were postponed?

 

Yes. Same thing happened a couple of years earlier at QPR on their plastic pitch, the football league program was decimated. I think I was colder at the QPR game though.

 

Can anyone remember really bad winter around 1980 ish? Snow seemed to hang around for months.

We went to Oakwell one Saturday morning and the pitch was covered in thick snow and dozens of reds fans were trying to clear it to get the game on, without success.

Seems a long time since we had a game postponed because of weather.

 

I know the 81/82 season was affected from early December. We played Palace at home on the first weekend of the month (I think having beaten Man City in midweek) and didn't have another home game in the league until late January, though somehow got the cup games v Blackpool and Liverpool played!

 

Yeah that sounds about right. Spent many a Saturday morning in front of cosy coal fire waiting to see if the game was on or off.

Not much technology back then. Even sometimes watched final scores through telly shop window!

 

Lol, in can remember a few Saturday's stood outside Wigfalls watching the classified check.

 

Great to see that again - seen it several times but it's good to see such quality coverage of a game from that era. Still amazes me that the game went ahead with so much snow on the ground but, incredibly, it didn't seem to affect the play all that much. They slip and slide about a lot more these days - must be the boots.

A few points about this match. We played a clear 4-4-2 and it worked very well with that squad:

Two decent full backs - Joe Joyce (Mr Dependable for so many years) and Wayne Goodison, nowadays heard as a co-commentator on our games now and then.
Two good centre halves - Nicky Law hard as nails and generally reliable and Paul Futcher just cruised through games making it look easy
Two good wingers - Winston Campbell who Jimmy Greaves jokingly suggested (before we played Liverpool in the cup) "might not be white" and Gordon Owen who came from Cardiff and scored plenty for us.
Two terriers in the middle - Billy Ronson, five foot nothing but look how he squared up to that Pompey player and Gwyn Thomas who would run all day and go in to the tackle incredibly hard without often injuring anybody, or himself.
Good front pairing: strong man Ron Futcher, but unfortunately was quite good at kicking dressing room doors down (Charlton away) and the 1980s Ashley Ward - Rodger Wylde. Ex-Wednesday but loved by the Oakwell crowd (women especially I suspect). Good player as well.

Marvellous to see three sides of the ground all standing and a decent following from Pompey on a freezing cold day. Also nice that Barry Davies did a little feature on the new enclosed disabled stand in the corner of the Kop end. It was the first of its kind in the country so well done BFC for doing that.

 

The year we went up out of the old 4th Division, 78/79 was a terrible winter. We lost loads of games to the weather and had to play catch up. We played 4 games between jan 9th and feb 24th, the latter one being the infamous 4-4 against Stockport in the snow.

 

That sounds about right. I hadn't been going long.

 

I was at Uni in Norwich that winter so I saw more of Norwich and Ipswich than the Reds for a few months. That was the Ipswich team that went on to win the UEFA cup a couple of years later.
I remember coming home one weekend for Derek Bell's home debut against Wimbledon and him galloping on goal and smacking one into the roof of the net from 20 yards. Won 3-1 I think.
Happy days.

 

I'm just coming up to the anniversary of my first game. Worksop in the fa cup. November I think?

Didn't Derek Bell practice volleys on his wife?

 

I’ve got that QPR game we lost 1-0 I’ll be putting it up amongst others over the next few weeks.

 

Sadly I never got to see that team play as I only started watching the Reds in 1987.
Thanks for sharing that clip with us KT. Nice to see players I have only heard mates
who support Barnsley talk about playing in an actual game.

 

Futcher would have put it over bar

 

Great idea, thanks!