Posted by ChrisB on September 7, 2007, 7:26 pm NOW League action returns to Court Place Farm today with the first-time visit of Gosport Borough for a league encounter, and they may wish to draw a veil over the last time they were here, in 1999, when as members of the Wessex League they were on the wrong end of a 5-1 scoreline in the F.A. Cup as City started on the trail that eventually led to those three matches with Wycombe Wanderers. Nigel Emsden, Matt Hayward, Matty Whitehead, Andy Smith and Jason Davy scored for us that day. As far as I can tell the only other occasion on which the teams have met was back in 1985 at the White House, also in the F.A. Cup, when Gosport were in their first spell in the Southern League and City edged the match 2-1 thanks to goals from Kevin Durham and Dale Thorne. On September 8th 1962 City were involved in an F.A. Cup First Qualifying Round match at Banbury in the days before Spencer became United and they were still members of the West Midlands League. In those days when the early rounds of the Cup were highly regionalised the two clubs regularly met in the competition with honours fairly even. This game was, apparently, not a great one and the local paper reported that “...City deserved victory if only because they had the more balanced attack which moved well together, and this was in contrast to Spencer’s ragged attack which never moved as a force and lacked both guile and thrust”. Anyway, over 1700 saw the visitors win thanks to goals from Peter Slade and John Woodley at the start of a good cup run that eventually took them through to the final Qualifying Round where, unfortunately, they came up against a very powerful Wimbledon side and went down 6-1 at Plough Lane.
September 8th
THEN
In the Amateur Cup that year City had to start at the Preliminary Round – unusual for a ‘senior’ side – and generally made short work of some weak sides. In fact in reaching the last Qualifying Round they scored 39 goals and conceded just six, including a record 15-1 defeat of Alcan Industries in which Peter Slade scored nine (another club record.) (By the end of the season both Slade and Woodley had scored more than fifty goals apiece!)
The league campaign was not one of the strongest, however, with only eight victories and a final position of twelfth (out of sixteen). With so many matches being played in cup competitions, and the terrible weather in early 1963 a huge backlog of matches built up and the 1st XI’s final match didn’t take place until May 24th: a welcome 3-2 victory over Bromley. The Reserves faced an even greater logjam of matches as postponements piled up, and twice they resorted to playing two matches, one after the other on the same afternoon, against the same opposition. These matches were reduced to 30-minute halves and the make-up of the sides could be changed between games. So, at the end of February, the Reserves beat Corinthian-Casuals 3-2 then drew 1-1; and then, two weeks later, lost to St Albans 1-2 and then beat them 2-0. Good value for the paying customers!
Despite the dire weather the Senior Cup competition continued and City equalled Cowley’s record when they won it for the fourth successive year, comfortably beating Thame United 6-0 at The Manor.
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