Our charges take on the might of Notts County and their vampire-like manager, Jimmy Sirrell. Brian Kilcline marshalls their defence and coach is Howard Wilkinson.

Notts County (h) Wed Aug 20th 1980

Mick Martin and Nigel Walker beam at us, wearing toon tops and sky-blue slacks from the back of a S&N horse-drawn dray. The driver of said dray is suitably moustached and sporting a rather fetching brown bowler hat. His demeanour is one of an old music hall commissaire and I'm certain once the photograph was taken he launched into, "I say, I say, I say".

Programme covers like this just don't happen anymore.

Arthur Appleton reminisces about "tall West Indian Tristan Benjamin" grabbing a last minute equaliser for County last year. He also recalls Peter Withe knocking out Raddy Avramovic "but only for a minute or two".

Highlight of the matchday magazine is Commercial Manager, David Hogg, and his diatribe on sponsorship (these were the days when the logo was banned if the game was televised). It includes this phantasmagoric paragraph:

"If we can sit at home and watch Yorkshireman riding four-legged Japanese tape recorders (in a certain clearing Bank's Championship); if we can see four-wheeled contraptions flying around corners emblazoned with (hush, hush) cigarette advertising - and that's just a morsel of the tele-plug pie - then surely, there has to be a compromise whereby we can watch two legged Liverpudlians endorsing goods from the Orient. Or, indeed, Novocastrians sporting the Star of infinitely better goodies from across the road."

David now happily bounces around his single-celled apartment with heavily embossed wallpaper, wearing a sleeveless jacket with lots of lovely buckles on it....

As for the game? Drab affair by all accounts but we got our first point of the season.

Diary entry

(Saturday):
"Then went to match. They scored in second half. Then Shoulder scored 1-1. Then on way home this car hit us. Nowt wrong."

Journal Merit Marks: Carr 7, Kelly 7, Davies 6, Shoulder 6, Boam 5, Barton 5, Rafferty 6, Shinton 6, Clarke 6, Wharton 6, Koenen 6.

Kenny and Kevin (sounds familiar) at the top, David Barton makes an inauspicious start to his campaign.

Next week - A trip to Bolton's Burnden Park and a visit from Jim Iley's lowly Bury.

Niall MacKenzie

Halcyon Days