I was contacted by City fan Mark Lovick last week enquiring about a friendly with Portsmouth in the 1950s. The game was the first trip to Highfield Road for his cousin Robert Satchwell whose dad took him on the Kop that day as he said he would be able to see with it not being a league game and too busy.
I was able to provide Mark with the details of the game, which took place 70 years ago next week, on the 27th January 1951. Pompey were the reigning League champions at the time and the friendly game was hastily arranged when both teams were knocked out of the FA Cup in the third round. A lower than usual crowd of 10,897 ( 25,000 were at the Chesterfield league game the previous week) watched a 2-2 draw. Pompey had had a flu epidemic hit the club the previous week and their highly rated half-back line of Scoular, Flewin and Dickinson, were all ruled out but they still put out a strong team. Ken Chisholm and Norman Lockhart gave City a 2-0 half-time lead but the visitors came back strongly and goals from Micky Reid and Ralph Hunt pulled them level. City were lying second in Division Two at the time and it gave fans the chance to assess the team's performance against a top flight club.
City's team was: Alf Wood: Charlie Timmins, Joe Bell, Harry Barratt, Martin McDonnell, Jim Alderton, Les Warner, Bryn Allen, Ted Roberts, Ken Chisholm, Norman Lockhart.
Mark tells me that Robert has been a season ticket holder for many years in the West Stand at Highfield Road, and then at Ricoh and St Andrews.
This month marks the 50th anniversary of a dreadful Sky Blues FA Cup exit at the hands of Third Division Rochdale. Mike Hoban asked why the game at Rochdale's Spotland was played on a Monday afternoon.
The game was originally scheduled for Saturday 2nd January 1971 but snow caused it to be postponed. Another postponement occurred on the following Monday and in the meantime City manager Noel Cantwell made condescending comments about the Spotland floodlights saying 'they must be the worst in the league'. After announcing that City would not play under the lights, the game was rearranged for the afternoon of Monday 11th January.
It is believed that the Rochdale schools were given a half day off to attend the game and 13,011 watched a workman-like home team inflict an embarrassing 2-1 defeat on a team that two months earlier were playing Bayern Munich in European football. Rochdale's first goal was scored by David Cross who would later join the Sky Blues.
Ian Croston has been in touch regarding the recent death of Gordon Pettifer. Gordon was the groundsman at Highfield Road and the Ryton training ground around 20 years ago and lived in Allesley Village. Ian says that 'Gordon was proud of the fact that he was involved with the club and that he taught John Ledwidge, who is now at Leicester City as groundsman, everything he knew. Andy Turner remembers Gordon as a 'lovely, quiet and unassuming chap who always said hello and obviously worked in all weathers, toiling away from early in the morning to make sure the pitches at Ryton were in pristine condition before the players rolled in for training at 10'.
Last week I wrote about 1930s winger Fred Liddle in response to a question from Alastair Laurie. Ian Greaves has been in touch with some information gleaned from Noel Rogers, a family history buff friend of his. According to Noel's research Fred was born on 29th November 1910 not in December 1909 as I stated. There were two JF Liddle's born around that time in the North East and our man was born in Mickley, near Prudhoe in Northumberland rather than in Great Lumley in Durham. The information comes from the 1939 UK National Register census at which time Fred was living in Tynemouth with his wife Elizabeth. Noel advised that Fred was still living in Tynemouth at the time of his death in 1975.
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