ON THIS DAY

On this day in 1992 Leeds United became the first English club to play in the Champions League but in their first match were hammered 3-0 by Stuttgart in Germany. They went on to win the return leg 4-1 to go out on away goals but the Germans had broken the rules and Leeds were re-instated and won a play-off match. But in the next round they were beaten in both legs by Rangers.

Jimmy Hill seemed to be football's been there, done that sort of guy. On Saturday September 16th 1972 at the Arsenal v Liverpool fixture the football personality stepped in, superman-like, to prevent the match being abandoned when he took over as a substitute linesman. The original linesman, Dennis Drewitt, suffered torn knee ligaments in the first half and was unable to continue. Those were the days before we had extra officials at each game and an announcement was made to the crowd appealing for a qualified referee to take over on the line. Up stepped Jimmy Hill who had been at the match as a spectator and the day was saved.

It seems obvious but if you score a lot of goals you win prizes! Wolves found that out when they enjoyed their greatest period of success during the period when they became the only Football League side to score a century of League in each of four consecutive seasons. In a four season period starting in 1957/58 Wolves scored 422 League goals (103, 110, 106 and 103) - that's an average of 5 goals in every two matches. During that period they won the League championship twice and finished 2nd and 3rd in the other two seasons - and they won the FA Cup. Their best victory in those four seasons was 9-0 over Fulham at Molineux on 16th September 1959 - just a week after they had lost 1-3 at Craven Cottage in the first League meeting of the clubs that season! And the depth of that goalscoring talent was shown by the fact that six Wolves players scored that day - Norman Deeley (4) plus one apiece from Peter Broadbent, Eddie Clamp, Ron Flowers, Bobby Mason and Jimmy Murray.

There only a few thousand TV sets in the country in those days but on this day in 1937 Highbury hosted the first live TV broadcast of a football match to test the technology of the time – Arsenal playing Arsenal Reserves in a match arranged for the cameras.