With the season heading nicely towards what Alex Ferguson would christen "squeaky bum time" (9 league games left before kick off), Hereford played Darlington on a Monday night at a packed Edgar Street. A crowd of 10,150 were rewarded with a 1-0 victory over their rock bottom opponents courtesy of a 60th minute Tucker header; his sixth goal of the season. The win keeps Hereford in 3rd place, with the programme confident enough to consider the possibility of 3rd division football next season.
Unusually, Hereford had also played at Darlington the previous Monday (a 2-2 draw in front of 2,074).
On the Pitch: Bits and Pieces reveals that Kidderminster born Billy Tucker has been voted Kidderminster's Sportsman of the Year by local sports writers, before taking the opportunity to publicise that second division Aston Villa will be the visitors on 19th March. That would be Hereford's third Monday game on the trot, surely a record? The game was a friendly to mark the official opening of the Len Weston stand, with the aptly named and relatively short lived Len Weston Cup at stake. A healthy gate of 6,688 would be present to see Hereford lose 4-3 on penalties following a 2-2 draw.
Not on Hereford's pitch, nor on the Windsor Park pitch due to the troubles, Bits and Pieces are advertising that Coventry City are hosting Northern Ireland's World Cup Qualifier against Portugal on 28th March 1973. Tickets are available by post, and require the old staple of getting stuff done: a stamped addressed envelope. They are priced at £2, £1.50, and £1 (Roughly £30, £22.50, £15 today). For the record, anyone who went would have been treated to seeing Eusebio; he scored a late penalty, replying to a Martin O'Neill first half goal to secure a 1-1 draw. 11,238 made the effort. Other familiar names in the home team were manager Terry Neill, Pat Jennings, Allan Hunter, Sammy Nelson and Bryan Hamilton. I appreciate that nostalgia plays tricks with your mind, but the home nations teams of old always seemed to have much better players at their disposal.
Off the Pitch: A proposed project that has been touched upon in recent programmes, Supporters' Club Jottings is devoted to the planned Block D/Social Club works; it is revealed that Whitbread Flowers Ltd. are providing funding for the project, and that the words leases, planning and council were as commonly used in 1973 as they are in 2024. March 1973 would have been an interesting time to be a local councillor as the club are urging supporters to do a bit of leaning on them to get the stand approved so it can be built. The club are very mindful that with inflation being a little bit on the lively side, delays will prove costly.
In the Opposition: Alan Sproates played the majority of his football at Darlington, his 300+ games as a midfielder bagging him a place in a 2003 "Dream Team" fan poll to mark the end of their Feethams era. A then 28 year old Sproates would spend the summer of 1973 playing in the US for Miami Soros. He would finish his career in English football at Scunthorpe in 1975 before heading to the US via Australia. The latter days of his career would involve spells at USC Lion (Adelaide), Los Angeles Skyhawks, and San Francisco Fog. Sproates would settle in the US, seeing out his days in California.
Hereford fan Lee from Kent has kindly spotted that forward Colin Sinclair would go on to play 22 times for Hereford in 76-77. Not only that but he made it into the same Dream Team as Alan Sproates. Not only, not only that, he had bagged the two Darlington goals in the 2-2 draw a week previously at their place.
In the Charts: Slade are remarkably still at No.1 a full 48 hours after the previous home game with Cum On Feel the Noize.
In the News: 17th March - The Queen opens the new London Bridge, rounding off the famous story of a rich American who bought the old one that needed replacing. Robert McCulloch of McCulloch Oil would go on to deny that he thought he was buying Tower Bridge when the City of London put it up for sale. Many a football fan has realised that their club has bought a player that turns out to be London Bridge when they thought they were getting Tower Bridge. Luckily the occasional Tower Bridge keeps us coming back for more.
Click on photos to enlarge.
