Leamington Saturday

[bga]

No, give me falling over when accidentally breathed on, rolling around at every tackle, every foul resulting in wild appeals for a booking/sending off, bear hugs at every corner, any day.

You do realise players in the 70s did all these things? Cheating to gain an advantage has been part of football since the year dot. Diving, players intimidating referees, exaggerated reactions at challenges etc all happened years ago. Genuinely, watch some of the re-runs of older games online or when they occasionally show them on ITV 4.

There’s been a revisionism from older generations that in the 70s men were men and played “proper, honest football” and it’s a nonsense when you do any sort of looking into it. There was all sorts of cheating went on.

And surely an uneven, bone dry pitch is as dangerous as a muddy, wet pitch. I know which I preferred to play on.

Does it have to be one or the other? Pitches like Leamington (or ours) are the exception. Generally speaking pitch quality even down to non-league level has improved massively and is continuing to improve. Look at Curzon Ashton. Even in non-league you get some beautiful pitches.

I watched a fair few games in the late 60's and all the way through the 70's. You are correct about the football pitches being so much better. However, I can't agree with you about the play acting, players couldn't get away with it then.. Ask anyone who watched their team get kicked off the park by Leeds United in the 70's. They got away with dirty play continually, (I suppose you could call that cheating) fouling meant nothing to the referees and I don't remember any pretending to get injured to stop play. Again, go back to the late 50's when it was OK to barge a goalkeeper over the goal line when they were comfortably holding the ball. No play acting was done then either and anyone trying it would have been ignored by the referee and the game would just carried on.

We’ll agree to disagree. As I say, when watching the games back, there is diving and intimidation of the referees and so on. I do think a lot of people who are nostalgic for that era can forget that.

One name springs to mind. Franny Lee. Which reminds me of the punch up between him and Norman Hunter.

One of them got stitches in their lip. Somebody suggested they should have stitched them between upper and lower to shut them up!

Mo Salah no where near as good as Franny Lee when it comes to diving...I mean cheating!

[Wiseacre]

Whatever the quality of Leamington's playing surface I thought Mondal's goal was outstanding; worked from the back with pace completely opening up their defence. By the way, the Derby v Leeds game is a good watch on Youtube, the gentleman's disagreement between Hunter and Lee is interesting to see how it builds from Lee's obvious dive for a penalty when Norman went near him but the real gem for me is Derby's winner from Roger Davies who turned out for us later on (?)

[jjljks]

Perhaps we should stop sharing with a herd of egg chasers who churn up the surface with scrums etc. Bet their goalkickers don't have tees & still build their own pile so no wonder it is in a state. At least Curzon & Southport play to the same rules as Burnley U23 & Everton.