ON THIS DAY

In their pre-Football League days Burton Albion certainly had a memorable season in the FA Cup in 1984/85. The Northern Premier League part-timers reached the Third Round where they were drawn at home to nearish neighbours Leicester City. Ok, their home for the match was switched to nearer neighbours Derby County with their Baseball Ground being able to accommodate a far larger attendance for their match against top flight Leicester. On Saturday 5th January 1985 the Brewers made a confident start in front of a 22,492 crowd but with the score at 1-1 Burton 'keeper Paul Evans was hit by a missile thrown from the crowd. Evans was badly dazed and the second half was delayed for several minutes to allow the goalkeeper additional time to recover. But he remained between the sticks - Burton's sub had already been used - but at the final whistle Leicester were 6-1 victors with Gary Lineker having scored a hat-trick. But because of the crowd problems the FA declared the match void and ordered the tie to be replayed behind closed doors at a neutral venue. It was a very cold winter so that match was played on January 16th at Coventry City's Highfield Road ground - it had undersoil heating - with Leicester winning with the only goal of the match.

Poland are regular opponents for England nowadays but back on this day in 1966 England played Poland at full international level for the first time. The match, played at Everton’s Goodison Park home, finished 1-1 with Bobby Moore scoring his first England goal – he only scored twice in 108 England appearances. It was also England’s first match in their World Cup winning year of 1966 and manager Alf Ramsey was well on the way to knowing the team that would become world beaters. Against Poland he fielded 8 of the players who would become World Cup winners in July. The three missing players were Bobby Charlton, Geoff Hurst and Martin Peters with the players taking their place against Poland being the Arsenal duo of George Eastham and Joe Baker (his last England match) and Burnley’s Gordon Harris (his only England cap).

The big freeze meant that only 3 of the scheduled 32 FA Cup 3rd Round ties were played, with the last tie in that round not being decided until March 11th. The Lincoln v Coventry tie was postponed a total of 15 times and 14 of the other ties suffered 10 or more postponements. Between December 8th and 16th February Bolton did not play a single competitive match.