by Mikhail Chigorin » Thu Feb 10, 2011 10:37 am
Just read, this morning, the epic post by John68; what an utterly fantastic offering. Shades of Henry V at Agincourt, so Shakespear would have us believe.
All this week I've been thinking of how the days were dragging by so slowly and that Saturday felt as though it was never going to come round. The nerves were jangling full time in overdrive and the tensionometer had gone through the ceiling.
Then, along comes John's post and warm memories (especially the Heslop goal) come flooding in like a Tsunami, to completely remove all the butterflies from the old tummy.
In 1968, City played without any fear and attacked teams from all over the park. The win at the Swamp was particularly gratifying in that (if the old memory serves me correctly) the Scum had beaten us 1-0 at Maine Road in the early part of the season.
In that season, we started a bit slowly and then a pattern seemed to emerge that City would put a few wins together and then have one or two defeats, before starting another small winning run. We didn't seem to have many draws as it was an 'all or nothing' approach, fired by Big Mal, which was remarkable when you consider that, in those days, it was only 2 points for a win and 1 for a draw (Leeds United supporters used to sing, to the tune of "Ilkley Moor b'aht 'at", "Two points at home and one away", as this typified their own approach to football).
If, today, City could lose all fear of being defeated and play with the same spirit and attacking flair of the 67/68 season, with the players we have now there would be no-one to touch us and any concerns over going to the Swamp on Saturday would be replaced with a quiet confidence that we were going to turn them over, on their own patch. The football world would love us for our style of play and, to paraphrase Big Mal, 'we'd terrify Europe'.
Anyway John, thanks again for the rousing post; it certainly brought back great memories of an unbelievable night and an unbelievable season, a long time ago.
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