ON THIS DAY

At their final home match of the season Liverpool welcomed back onto the Anfield pitch former players including Billy Liddell, Kenny Dalglish, Tommy Smith, Ian Callaghan and Steve Heighway to mark a sad occasion….the last match in front of a standing Kop. First used in 1906 in its heyday the Kop accommodated around 30,000 standing supporters but capacity had been reduced to around half that for the final match against Norwich City. The Taylor report, which followed the Hillsborough disaster, brought an end to standing terraces in the top divisions with all-seater stadiums being the future. Norwich won 1-0. Did You Know..... ...Forest spelt Forrest, Halifax spelt Hailfax, Millwall became Millwall Athletic, Gillingham became Gillingham United, wrong dates...... just some of the mistakes on the front of programmes Read more about this and other programme facts and figures ... Click on The Football Programme Miscellany Web footballsite.co.uk

Derby County goalkeeper Peter Shilton broke Terry Paine's Football League appearance record when playing in his 825th League match in the 1-1 First Division draw against Watford at Vicarage Road. He went on to increase the record to 1005 League appearances.

Bristol City sacked Roy Hodgson from his first managerial job in England. With six matches remaining they were doomed to relegation from Division 3 being 13 points from safety with just 6 matches left.

Top grounds nowadays hardly have a blade of grass out of place but there was a time when that was far from true. One of the worst puddings of a pitch was at Derby County's former home, the Baseball Ground, were the pitch was several feet below street level, the drainage was non-existent and the stands stopped any drying winds. Even then Cloughie often ordered that the pitch be watered before a match if a 'sticky' surface would give the Rams an advantage. Things went very wrong though on this day in 1977 when Derby played Manchester City in a First Division match at the Baseball Ground. With minutes remaining and Derby 3-0 up they were awarded a penalty. But the pitch was in such a poor state that the penalty spot had disappeared into the mud. Before the pen could be taken the groundsman, Bob Smith, helped by the referee, had to measure out the distance from the goal line and then paint the mud to mark the new penalty spot from which Gerry Daly scored.

A 29,781 crowd at Deepdale saw Tom Finney play his last game for Preston North End, a 2-0 First Division defeat of Luton Town. Every one of his 433 League appearances was for Preston although 3 years later - in September 1963 - he was coaxed out of retirement for a one-off appearance in Belfast for Distillery in a European Cup match against Eusebio's Benfica.

To give the northern hordes something to do the night before attending the FA Cup Final the Football Association arranged the first of what would become a regular eve of Cup Final fixture until 1969 - England v Young England.

A tragedy at Bramall Lane. Bury full back Sam Wynne collapsed when about to take a free shortly before the interval at the First Division match between Sheffield United and Bury. He was stretchered off but died in the dressing room, the cause of death being found to be pneumonia. The match was abandoned at half time and when replayed the following Thursday (May 5th) the £680 gate receipts from the 15,000 crowd was donated to Sam Wynne's family. In October 1923 he had become the first player to score 2 goals for each side in a League match when playing for Oldham against Manchester United at Boundary Park.