This Week in County History 1982

 

 

 

 

 

What would a long time County fan think when the first game of the season saw his team ahead by one goal, with the visitors down to 10 men?

 Probably looking forward to finishing off the game in the last 25 minutes!

Ah well, this was County of course, and as the players appeared to be confused by the extra space they had on the Edgeley Park pitch that was not to be.

 

Over the three previous weeks the club had played a number of friendly games. At Bangor City they suffered a 3-5 defeat with Tony Coyle, Trevor Phillips and new striker Mike Quinn scoring our goals.

 

This was followed by a match against a side brought over by twice former boss Jimmy Meadows from Qatar. A comfortable 4-1 win on the training ground was the result with Phillips notching a hat-trick.

 

A Saturday trip to the coast at Morecambe saw Phillips continue his vein of form as we won 2-1. Then two days later he got our late equaliser as we were held at Macclesfield Town.

 

We then finished with two training ground games, Al-Sadd were beaten again with the Mighty Quinn getting three goals this time, and finally we beat the reserve side of neighbours Manchester City at their training ground 3-0.

 

Pre-season therefore would go down as very successful - so let us get back to the visit of Peterborough United on Saturday 28 August 1982 In Football League : Division Four (the last season before the competition was sponsored).

Jabez Foulkes.

 

 

County took the field having switched back to their old dressing room ( they had swapped with the one further from the Railway End a couple of years earlier for
some reason) to applause from the crowd of just over 2,000 and before the kick-off goalkeeper Brian Lloyd was presented with a clock to commemorate his 500^th game in football. Former players Eddie Critchley and Jabez Foulkes joined in the applause as they were in attendance as the club's honoured guests today.

 

The friendly form looked to be continuing as we took the lead after just 6 minutes with Terry Park scoring

Terry Park.

 

 

Still ahead, things looked even better when on 56 minutes Neil Firm got his marching orders for a second yellow card whilst Trevor Slack joined him for an early bath three minutes later for an off-the-ball incident with Mike Quinn. But it was not to be as the nine men managed to claim a share of the points through Ian Benjamin's 78^th minute goal.

 

The teams that day were:

County: Brian Lloyd, Andy Thorpe, Steve Sherlock, Dean Emerson, Paul Bowles, Nigel Smith, Oshor Williams, Trevor Phillips, Mike Quinn, Terry Park and Tony Coyle (John Rutter)

Posh: David Seaman, John Winters, Steve Collins, Micky Gynn, Neil Firm, Billy Rodaway, Trevor Slack, Ian Benjamin, Robbie Cooke, Ivor Linton and Phil Chard. Unused Sub: Mike Imlach

 

 

County Debutants were as mentioned Mike Quinn (SCAN 867) plus defender Paul Bowles (866) whilst Phillips was making his first appearance not as a loan player. It`s probably also worth mentioning that the Posh keeper was making his debut; the first of his many career senior appearances.

 

 

 

 

On the same day a reserve side crossed to Runcorn to face the second string of the town team. A team that included a handful of future first teamers plus Derek Loadwick - on trial several years after his EP departure, lost heavily. At least two of the team that day are still regulars in the crowd at home games, namely Dave Booth and Joe Connor

 

 

 

This week from the following season features in Saturday's Wycombe programme and we will be back with another blog article next week. As always thanks to the County collectors who have allowed us use of images from their collections to illustrate this article.

Ian Watts