ON THIS DAY

Managers nowadays seem to moan if their team has to play twice in a week but back on this day Tottenham Hotspur played their last match of a busy season, an FA Cup final replay victory over QPR. Apart from retaining the FA Cup Spurs finished 4th in the League and were beaten in the final of the League Cup and semi-final of the European Cup Winners Cup. In all they played 66 competitive matches in 1981/82 - including 4 at Wembley - with 19 of those being played in the last two months of the season alone.

England’s Alan Ball wound up a 119,325 Hampden Park crowd by wiping his nose on a corner flag bearing the Cross of St Andrew. England beat Scotland 1-0 – Ball scored the goal.

May 27th has been a bit of a jinx day in the history of the Scotland international side. Back on 27th May 1951 Dundee's Billie Steel became the first player to be sent off while playing for Scotland. He got his marching orders for retaliation in the 82nd minute of a bad-tempered 4-0 defeat against Austria in Vienna. Exactly nine years later - on 27th May 1959 - came the second sending off. Bertie Auld - probably best known as one of the Celtic Lisbon Lions who won the European Cup in 1967 - was sent off in the third minute of added time against the Netherlands in Amsterdam, also for retaliation. It was his Scotland debut!