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[quote="The Dentist Wilf":20db18nm]A busy old Christmas in 1967!!
The festive season was always a busy time for players and fans alike and Christmas 1967 was no exception. I was 17 and living the 60’s dream. Whilst the Beatles were in the middle of a seven-week run at number one in the charts with ‘Hello Goodbye’ and ‘Spirograph’ and ‘Action Man’ were the top toys on most kids Christmas lists, it was, without doubt, a great time to be living close to the Stadium. However, we’d just moved from Airlie Street to Sutton so there was a lot of travelling backwards and forwards involved in any busy yuletide fixture list. However, looking back there is little doubt that particular festive period certainly emphasised how much different the present game is to what took place in the late sixties.
Players worked full time and a couple were even on shift work so they only trained when they could and because many of them needed the money they played whatever the circumstances, often despite suffering bad injuries and sometimes playing several games in quick succession. These situations driven by the need to earn as much money as possible may have led to the health problems some of them experience later in their lives. Chris Davidson once told me that if they were injured and could not work the Club’s insurance only paid out £2-10s a week. He played on injured on many occasions and suffered with his legs for the rest of his life. So, they were tough times for the players and that festive season was no exception with the FC playing a staggering three games in four days and all of them at the Boulevard. Can you imagine that happening now? OK some folks will say that its more physical and intense these days but it’s all relative because modern professional players are fine-tuned sporting machines, whilst back then I would describe them as ‘hard as nails’ part time heroes, who gave their all every time they pulled on the black and white shirt.
Thankfully at least the festive period was milder than the previous three had been but the Boulevard pitch was a real mess before we even started and of course that frequency of games did little to improve it but it was just the way the fixtures fell, because that year Christmas Day was on a Monday. The previous Saturday the 23rd, we played an ‘awkward’ looking game against Castleford and a good gate of 6,500 gave the Christmas shopping a miss and despite the East Yorkshire Buses being on strike, it was a healthy crowd and there was a great festive atmosphere in the Boulevard that afternoon.
The game started at 3-00pm and the new floodlights were on but if I remember rightly, the new additions to our stadium were on all the time back then, whatever time the kick-off. It was something, that was probably down to the novelty value of the new equipment. Still, this was to be our best performance over the holidays, Jim Neale won the man of the match accolade after a masterful display in the second row and Arthur Keegan put in a great stint at full back joining the line in fine style whilst at scrum half Chris Davidson scored a great try. He was put through the Castleford defence by Nobby Oliver who cut in from the wing to feed a perfect ball inside to our scrum half and touched down in the corner. John Maloney could not get the day off work and so Davidson took on the goal kicking duties as well and landed four beauties from wide out. Willett the Castleford stand-off half kicked three goals in the first half, but tries from Terry Devonshire, Nick Trotter and Arthur Keegan saw us home and despite one of the floodlight pylons at the back of the threepenny stand giving up the ghost in the second half (to shouts of, put another shilling in the meter) we came out winners 22-6.
Two days later, on Christmas Day, despite a skeleton bus service that stopped at 4-00pm and no trains at all, 11,800 attended the local Derby against the old enemy which kicked off at 11-00am. So cramped were the fixtures that year, that on arrival Fred Daddy one of the Groundsman was still walking down the touchline in front of the Best Stand with his line marking machine. It turned out to be a ferocious game in which there were no fewer than 7 fights as a few old scores were settled. A brilliant first seventeen minutes by the Rovers in which Flash Flanagan scored and Holliday kicked 4 goals saw the Robins put themselves in an unassailable position on what was a really heavy ground. Dick Gemmell our game breaking centre was mysteriously unavailable and we really missed him and as the cigars were smoked and the brandy passed round on the ‘Threepennies’ we finished on the wrong end of a 15-9 scorelines. Still the smell of that Christmas day crowd saturated as it always was in cigar smoke and the aroma of Brandy will be something anyone who experienced it will never forget.
As it became obvious that we were to lose the game, Chris Davidson had three skirmishes with Bill Holliday the last of which saw him land a ‘pearler’ of a right hook on the Rover’s second rowers jaw for which he was immediately ordered off the pitch. Not to be outdone, Alan McGlone then ‘planted’ a brilliant right hook, on Barry Cooper who was carried from the field in the last minute and in spirit of Peace and Goodwill the final whistle saw skirmishes break out right across the field. The referee no doubt anticipating his Christmas lunch blew the final whistle and immediately marched off the field and left them to it!!
Joe Oliver had pulled back a try for us and John Maloney who replaced Gemmell kicked three goals, but in the end we lost. The game had promised so much but as the Sports Mail stated after the game, ‘For the home team, it had promised so much but ended up a damp squib’
Next day, Boxing Day, there was no let up as we played our third home game but by now family distractions, another 2/9d admission fee or maybe even Cool Hand Luke and Dr Doolittle premiering at the Cecil and ABC Regal meant that just 3100 turned up to see what should have been an easy game against lowly Doncaster. In the end it was anything but easy. Two really hard games had taken their toll and as we made just two changes, it was certainly hard going. The men from Tattersfield ‘stuck it to’ us in the first half and it was 30 minutes before John Maloney got a penalty to open the scoring. Gemmell (who was greeted onto the field by a wag on the Threepennies shouting “…were you vexed yesterday Dick?”, was back in the team and broke several times, but tired legs meant that there was little or no backing up and several chances were lost.
Otherwise, the only other player to do his reputation any good at all was Arthur Keegan who had another fine game at full back, pulling off several of his classic last-ditch tackles to keep our line intact. But then again, he always did us proud did Arthur. Devonshire and Davidson got tries for us and we were cruising toward victory, when in the last quarter of an hour the unfancied visitors roared back inspired by the try of the game, a brilliant 75 yarder by winger James which led to a ‘jittery’, last few minutes. However, in the end we came out winners by 10-3. So, it was 4 points out of 6 but the one we lost was, as always, the only one we the fans were most desperate to win. We played at Bramley four days later and lost again but 4 games in 8 days and 3 in 4 was what the game was like back then and you have to wonder just how the players managed to keep going.
Great times, great players and a wonderful experience never forgotten; but most of all despite being a run-down mud patch of a ground back then but the Boulevard at Christmas and in fact any other time of the year was simply a fantastic place to be and an experience I’ll cherish forever.
Happy Christmas everyone![/quote:20db18nm]
I remember going but the highlight for me that day was Christmas dinner afterwards. We well well ready for it by home time.
I was 13 and just at the stage of getting socks and such for Christmas so to lose put a damper on the day.
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