OTD in 1968: QPR Play First-Ever Season in Top Flight

[Macmoish]

56 Yrs Ago: QPR Play First-ever game in top Flight

As posted on QPR Report blog almost 10 Years ago


Sunday, August 10, 2008
Flasback - 40 Years Ago Today: QPR's First-Ever Game in Division One
-
August 10, 1968, QPR played their first-ever game in the old Division One (and today would be the Premiership).
At a Loftus Road, where the new South African Road Stand was not complete, newly-promoted QPR took on Leicester City who had the English record-signing, Alan Clarke (150,000 pound signing from Fulham) making his debut. QPR -as often was the case - were the better team, but could only draw 1-1 with Les Allen coming on as sub to equalize. (Rodney Marsh was injured with a pre-season broken foot injury).
QPR's team for its opening game vs Leicester
Ron Springet
Finch Watson Hazell Harris
Morgan Keen Sibley Morgan
Leach Wilks -
Sub Les Allen

As noted on QPR Report a couple of months ago, 1968/1969 was perhaps the most humiliating season in QPR history (although over the years QPR of course, have their individual humiliating results: Vauxhall Motors, to cite but one). But the euphoria/sense of disbelief that was present at that Leicester game won't be forgotten by anyone who was at that game. The season started with just such euphoria. The feeling of just complete amazement and disbelief that "little QPR" were playing in the same Division as Manchester United and Leeds and Liverpool and Arsenal and Manchester City and Chelsea and Spurs and Everton. Just beyond belief for QPR fans. Something any QPR fan of that era will forever remember.

Having experienced the incredible euphoria of gaining promotion to the then-called First Division (see "Greatest Day in QPR History", QPR then experienced a season of humiliation and a then record-low number of Points (18) (subsequently and thankfully "bettered" by Stoke) and 4 wins all season (all at home);without a single away victory. And every QPR fan old enough to remember that year will recall the numerous occasions, in which QPR were unlucky to have lost.

PHOTOS and MEMORABILIA - Photo of the individualQPR Players from 1968-1969 --- QPR Team Photo from that Era --- QPR vs Manchester United Programme --- More QPR Programmes from that era --- Newcastle vs QPR Programme --- Manchester United vs QPR --- QPR Home programmes from that era

In 1968-1969, QPR had far and away, the worst defensive record in the Division (with 95 goals conceded. The two previous seasons, 36 in 1967/68 amd and 38 in 19666/67, they had the best defenses in their division.

1968-1968: A season that saw
- QPR axe Alec Stock without a single game in charge
- Manager, Tommy Docherty - "The Doc" come and go within one month to be replaed by Neophyte Les Allen as player-manager.
- The South Africa Road Stand built (not complete before the season began)
- Record transfer signing fee broken: 55,000 pounds for former England International, Barry Bridges
- Record transfer sale: The break up of the Morgan twins, with Roger Morgan joining Spurs for 110,000 pounds.
- The League debut of future England captain, Gerry Francis

QPR's pre-season Transfer Activity: Signing Dave Metchick from Peterborough for 5,000!
Rodney Marsh missed the start of the season due to a broken foot.
QPR's only ever-present, defender Ian Watson.
QPR's top goalscorers: Barry Bridges 8 goals from 28 games and Mick Leach 8 goals from 31 games.
Goalkeeping was divided beween Ron Springett, Mike Kelly and then Alan Spratley playing in QPR's final 11 games.

Among the lowlights of the season (and there were many): The 8-1 defeat at Manchester United at the top. The 5-0 defeat at Coventry. And the 0-4 home defeats to Cheslea and WBA. And a League Cup defeat to lowly Peterbrough.

QPR Official Site History - On 1968-1969
"In 1967/68 QPR were promoted to the First Division for the first time by finished second in the table. In 1968/69 the South Africa Road Stand was completed. QPR were relegated after only one season in Division One with only 18 points. Alex Stock left the club, Tommy Docherty came and went in 28 days, and Les Allen took over. On 7th February 1969 Roger Morgan became the first QPR player to be sold for a six-figure fee." QPR

It's a fascinating, counter-factual, impossible-to-resolve question: If QPR hadn't won promotion in 1967/68, would another season in Division II have better prepared the team for Division One? Was 1968-1969 "A Bridge too Far?" - Or would QPR have just fallen away?...
Or if QPR had rather than spending on the South Africa Road stand, instead, strengthened the team: Say by buying Terry Venables a season earlier, etc; a goalkeeper, a forward, would that have made enough of a different?
If Rodney Marsh - Rodddd-neeeee had started the season, fit, would that have made a big enough difference?
Were QPR wrong to basically stick with their team which had got them out of the Third Division?

Final 1968/1969 English Division 1 (old) Table
P HW HD HL HGF HGA AW AD AL AGF AGA Points G Avg
Leeds 42 18 3 0 41 9 9 10 2 25 17 67 .5384
Liverpool 42 16 4 1 36 10 9 7 5 27 14 61 .625
Everton 42 14 5 2 43 10 7 10 4 34 26 57 .1388
Arsenal 42 12 6 3 31 12 10 6 5 25 15 56 .0740
Chelsea 42 11 7 3 40 24 9 3 9 33 29 50 .3773
Tottenham 42 10 8 3 39 22 4 9 8 22 29 45 .1960
Southampton 42 13 5 3 41 21 3 8 10 16 27 45 .1875
West Ham 42 10 8 3 47 22 3 10 8 19 28 44 .32
Newcastle 42 12 7 2 40 20 3 7 11 21 35 44 .1090
West Brom 42 11 7 3 43 26 5 4 12 21 41 43 .9552
Man Utd 42 13 5 3 38 18 2 7 12 19 35 42 .0754
Ipswich 42 10 4 7 32 26 5 7 9 27 34 41 .9833
Man City 42 13 6 2 49 20 2 4 15 15 35 40 .1636
Burnley 42 11 6 4 36 25 4 3 14 19 57 39 .6707
Sheff Wed 42 7 9 5 27 26 3 7 11 14 28 36 .7592
Wolves 42 7 10 4 26 22 3 5 13 15 36 35 .7068
Sunderland 42 10 6 5 28 18 1 6 14 15 49 34 .6417
Nottm Forest 42 6 6 9 17 22 4 7 10 28 35 33 .7894
Stoke 42 9 7 5 24 24 0 8 13 16 39 33 .6349
Coventry 42 8 6 7 32 22 2 5 14 14 42 31 .7187
Leicester 42 8 8 5 27 24 1 4 16 12 44 30 .5735
QPR 42 4 7 10 20 33 0 3 18 19 62 18 .4105
NB: In English Division 1 (old) 1968/1969 goal average applied instead of goal difference - 1968/1969 First Division Table

QPR 1968/1969 results and fixtures

English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-1 Leicester 10-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) Leeds 4-1 QPR 14-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) Wolves 3-1 QPR 17-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 2-2 Sunderland 20-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-1 Man City 24-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) Ipswich 3-0 QPR 27-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) Arsenal 2-1 QPR 31-08-1968
English Division 1 (old) Liverpool 2-0 QPR 07-09-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-4 Chelsea 14-09-1968
English Division 1 (old) Stoke 1-1 QPR 21-09-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-1 Southampton 28-09-1968
English Division 1 (old) West Brom 3-1 QPR 05-10-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 2-1 Ipswich 08-10-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 3-2 Sheff Wed 12-10-1968
English Division 1 (old) Newcastle 3-2 QPR 19-10-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 2-3 Man Utd 26-10-1968
English Division 1 (old) West Ham 4-3 QPR 02-11-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-2 Burnley 09-11-1968
English Division 1 (old) Everton 4-0 QPR 16-11-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 2-1 Nottm Forest 23-11-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-1 Coventry 07-12-1968
English Division 1 (old) Sheff Wed 4-0 QPR 14-12-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-1 Newcastle 21-12-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-4 West Brom 26-12-1968
English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-1 West Ham 11-01-1969
English Division 1 (old) Burnley 2-2 QPR 18-01-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-1 Leeds 24-01-1969
English Division 1 (old) Tottenham 3-2 QPR 29-01-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-1 Everton 01-02-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-1 Tottenham 15-02-1969
English Division 1 (old) Coventry 5-0 QPR 25-02-1969
English Division 1 (old) Nottm Forest 1-0 QPR 04-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-1 Wolves 08-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) Leicester 2-0 QPR 12-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) Man City 3-1 QPR 15-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) Man Utd 8-1 QPR 19-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 0-1 Arsenal 22-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 1-2 Liverpool 29-03-1969
English Division 1 (old) Southampton 3-2 QPR 05-04-1969
English Division 1 (old) Sunderland 0-0 QPR 07-04-1969
English Division 1 (old) QPR 2-1 Stoke 12-04-1969
English Division 1 (old) Chelsea 2-1 QPR 19-04-1969

CUP GAMES
English League Cup Peterborough 4-2 QPR --
English FA Cup Aston Villa 2-1 QPR --


More Video


qprreport.blogspot.com/2008/08/flasback-40-years-ago-today-qprs-first.html

[Macmoish]

From Bushman Photo Archives 1968-1969 Season

First Division 1968-69 Season

Promoted to the First Division for the first time, the club embarked on a two match pre - season tour of Scotland. They played Raith Rovers beating them 3-1. Scorers: R. Morgan, Clarke, Leach. They then went on to beat Dundee 2-0 Scorer: I. Morgan 2.

Pre-season. Ron Hunt, Mike Kelly & Rodney Marsh share a joke.

The club fail to get the South Africa Rd Stand ready for the first home game of the season against Leicester City.

Mick McGovern, Bobby Keetch and Frank Clarke help to get the South Africa Rd Stand built.

Rangers became the fiftieth club to participate in the First Division. (This is for harlow)

Ian Watson (left) challenges Allan Clarke. Leicester City manager Matt Gillies paid out a British record £150,000 fee for Clarke to Fulham.

Graham Cross & Les Allen

Frank Sibley No.8 & Roger Morgan No.11 attack from a corner.

Ron Springett watches as Len Glover & Bobby Finch (Q.P.R) meet a cross.

Q.P.R 1 - 1 Leicester City. Scorer: Les Allen.

Mike Summerbee (Man city) challenges Rangers goalkeeper Mike Kelly (right)

Barry Bridges scores his first goal on his debut against Manchester City. The South Africa Rd stand was still being built

Q.P.R 1 - 1 Man City. Scorer: Barry Bridges.

Mick Leach attacking the Chelsea goal. With Peter Osgood defending as Peter Bonetti looks on.

Rodney Marsh on the touchline against Chelsea.

Q.P.R 0 - 4 Chelsea.

Q.P.R 2 - 1 Ipswich Town. Scorers: Bridges, R. Morgan

Alan Wilks opens the scoring against Sheffield Wednesday. Peter Springett made captain for the day, lies beaten on the ground.

Mick Leach scores the third.

Q.P.R 3 - 2 Sheffield Wednesday. Scorers:Wilkes, Bridges, Leach.

As it appeared in the Rangers v Burnley, 9th November 1968 programme.

Tommy Docherty becomes Rangers new Manager.

Barry Bridges meets with Tommy Docherty

Rodney Marsh with the ball as Nottingham Forest players look on.

Nottingham Forest was to be Tommy Docherty's last game as manager 23rd November 1968.

QPR 2 - 1 Nottigham Forest. Scorers: Marsh, Hazell

Les Allen first game as caretaker manager following Tommy Docherty's departure 2 days before, ended in a 1-0 defeat against Coventry.

Rangers give debuts to 19 year-old goalkeeper Alan Spratley & 18 year-old forward Alan Glover (outside Villa Park) against Aston Villa in the FA Cup 3rd Round 4th January 1969. Tommy Docherty was the new manager at Villa.Ranger lost 2-1. Scorer: I . Morgan

Rodney Marsh has just seen his effort hit the post in the 1 - 1 home league game, 11th January 1969,
against West Ham Utd . Scorer: Clarke

On his debut for Spurs Roger Morgan shakes hands with his twin brother Ian before the match.

Rodney Marsh challenges Peter Collins (Spurs). Terry Venables & Mike England (both of Spurs) are seen in the background

Rangers drew with Spurs 1-1, 15th February 1969. Scorer: Clarke

The nightmare of Rangers first season in was soon to be over, but not before Manchester Utd inflicted this upon the R's.

Last home game of the season against Stoke ended in a 2 - 1 win for Rangers. Scorer: Leach 2.

Follwed by the last game of the season at Chelsea 19th April 1969. Chelsea won 2 - 1.
Bridges scored for Rangers against his old club.

qprreport.proboards.com/thread/22767/1st-division-1968-69-season

[Macmoish]

Bump: 46 Years ago today

[Macmoish]

Note the Season Ticket Prices!

[Macmoish]

Aug 10, 2014 8:24:20 GMT @57varieties said:

I remember it well!
First game against Leicester I stood with a couple of friends on the new lower terrace of the South Africa Road stand, level with the 18 yard line at the school end. Not a great view towards the Loft end but I was a bit shorter then than now. I worried that the half finished upper deck of the new stand would collapse at any time as the lower deck vibrated with the jumping of the crowd.

Then I missed our first ever First Division win - sick in bed listening to the roars of the crowd down the road.
Worse was the 8-1 defeat at United. It brought back the last day of the previous season when a Villa supporter turned to me after we had gone 2-1 up and his exact words that I remember to this day were "just wait to United get hold of you lot"

I often wonder what would have happened if Rodney had not broken his foot and been available from day one. Not dissimilar to today really -where will our goals come from?

Some good photo's above and I think I can make myself out in the background of the photo of Rodney against the school end wall against West Ham.

Reading some of the events of that year should make the newer or younger members of this board realise that the "madness" of football off the pitch has existed for a long time and is not a recent invention of Sky TV, Tony Fernandes, big business or Harry Redknapp - and Redknapp was not such a bad a player although I never liked his style.

I was with this guy from the St Johns Ambulance Brigade so got in free ("Free Ticket Mike!") and stood/sat on bench in front of the Ellersie Road Stand

Just an amazing, unbelievable feeling being in the same division as MU and Liverpool and Chelsea and Spurs and all the others.

I think if besides Rodney, we had had Terry Venables a year earlier - and a goalie still top class (and a couple of others) who knows...

[eusebio13]

Average earning in 1968 were £894.79 (decimalised equivalent) so a season ticket of £14.25 is 1.6% of gross annual income

Average income today is £24,734.50 and a Ellerslie Rd ST is about £800 or 3.2% of gross annual income

So relatively ST have doubled

[Macmoish]

And players' wages?

I don't remember exactly...I know Marsh the following season was reportedly earning the most in Division II at a hundred pounds a week - and presumably
was happy enough financially to stay with QPR (forget issue of playing in top flight)

Today's top players in England earning - just in wages - 100K, 150K, almost 200 K

[Macmoish]

That's a great, great memory 57 Varities..

Re Players in touch with the world, see article posted by Shark


From the guardian

Were the 70s Football's golden age?

As a new photography book celebrates the glory of 70s football, Ed Vulliamy charts his own relationship with the game, from bunking into an FA Cup final to the death of innocence at Heysel

Ed Vulliamy

The Observer, Sunday 10 August 2014

Seventies superstar: Liverpool striker Kevin Keegan and wife Jean. Photograph: Bob Thomas/Getty Images
The ivy up Wembley's outer wall held, as did the grip of my baseball boot on the pitted concrete. Precariously up and up towards the cavities that would, we presumed, lead into the bowels of the stadium, for the 1971 FA Cup final, Liverpool v Arsenal. There were scores of us scaling the edifice at the Liverpool end, ticketless but intent on watching John Toshack give the cockneys a hiding; it looked like one of those mountaineering cliffs at leisure centres.

I'd hooked up with a scally from Huyton and now, 100ft above the car parks, we crawled through a deep orifice in Wembley's wall, jumped and hit the ground; my savvy partner-in-crime disappeared into the crowds like a dart, but I tarried for disastrous moment of disbelieving self-congratulation. The heavy hand of a policeman plonked abruptly on my shoulder and I spent the 90 minutes of football (and community singing of Abide With Me) in a cell on the Harrow Road, a punitive arrest without charge, unable to follow the game or its result, which was just as well.

The Age of Innocence (Taschen's new photographic tribute to football in the 70s) seems a strange title for a book about football in a decade that had begun with the Ibrox disaster that killed 66 Glasgow Rangers fans in January that year (detonating jokes from Celtic fans about orange squash) and the Kop still sang about "only one air disaster", a reference to the air crash near Munich that killed eight members of the Manchester United team in 1958 (there were 23 deaths in all). But there was an innocence, not least in the presumption by thousands of teenagers from Merseyside that one could saunter down to London and watch a cup final by bunking in.

As the Premier League prepares to kick off, again sponsored by a bank caught trying to fiddle interest rates, although no one cares, it all feels bloated compared with football in those days. The images have especial cogency in the light of what we now call Germany's "retro" football, by which we mean just sensible: fans' ownership of clubs, cheap tickets on the day, community-centred clubs and open training. This culture produces World Cup winners, while our turbo-commercial game nurtures probably the worst, albeit lavishly overpaid, national team to play in Brazil this summer.

But still we insist, a bit like Ukip or the managers of our appalling railway companies: it's England, so it must best. Thanks to the money and thanks to the foreign players that money buys for the Premier League.

And yet the innocence of the 70s was one that began with the players themselves. On one level, they were distant when it was appropriate to be so. Take this summer's World Cup hosts: in the days of stars rather than celebrities (very different concepts), the Brazilian teams at the World Cups were an assembly of beatific artists from some far-off planet of the beautiful game with names such as Jairzinho, Tostão and Socrates, who played for clubs called Botafogo and Vasco da Gama. This year, they were a bunch of familiar and mediocre millionaires from Chelsea plus a Manchester City midfielder granted licence by a referee to kick and assault the tournament's most wonderful player – James Rodriguez of Colombia – as he pleased, with impunity.

England footballers including Alan Ball, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore and Peter Osgood in Mexico for the World Cup tournament in May 1970. Photograph: Taschen
On another level, the players of the 1970s were familiar when they should have been be familiar. I remember going to watch a First Division game between West Ham and QPR, then returning on the Central Line with the QPR captain, Mike Keen, and two other players, Dave Clement and Roger Morgan. They signed my programme and talked about my O-levels. I doubt they earned more than a good builder for their Saturday's work – and how different now, with the Lamborghinis, agents, endorsements and sponsors. You kicked off at 3pm on Saturdays, not when Rupert Murdoch told you to.

There was a pub in Shepherd's Bush called the Crown & Sceptre (always known as the June & Jim after its landlady and landlord) at which fans would lubricate before a game, and to which Stan Bowles, the QPR superstar, would come regularly of a Sunday – and always on Christmas Eve – to spend whatever he may have had left over from the dog track. He was every bit as good as Beckham, but… call it a different approach, different time.

My sister won, in 1976, a Draw Stan Bowles competition, the prize for which was to meet Stan the Man, which she did while he was hospitalised with a leg injury; lies were written to school, hair washed and she arrived with a bunch of flowers. But even in those days, stars had an entourage: she was disappointed to find herself one of a crowd around Stan's leg in traction, mostly female, plus the bookie.

Liverpool were the team of my grandfather and mother's home town, the charismatic ancestral club, and I was always eager to catch the Kop whenever it came to London to take a stand, separated by lines of police and a no-man's-land of flying sharpened coins, from home fans in Chelsea's Shed or on Arsenal's North Bank.

But QPR were our local team in Notting Hill, and it was to watch them every other Saturday that I used to find 3s (15p) for a perch in the boys' enclosure, graduating to a 6s tariff to stand in the "Loft" as the 1970s began.

So I was a bigamist, which worked so long as Liverpool and Rangers played in different divisions, but in 1976 they were head to head for the title, settled only by Liverpool coming from behind with three goals in the last 15 minutes of a final game they needed to win, at Wolves. It was hard to take, having spent most of my university years supposedly at Oxford but in fact hitch-hiking or riding a Morris Minor around England to watch QPR, staying over in – or driving back overnight from – places such as Carlisle and Leicester, with a girlfriend in Liverpool to boot.

Straight on to the dole in the summer of 76, I was turned down by every newspaper I applied to despite a first break in journalism thanks to The Superhoop, monthly magazine of the QPR supporters' club, with a piece entitled "Light and Bitter Memories of that Final Run-in". But then I moved in not only with the girlfriend in Liverpool but the glamorous football team too, upon obtaining employment in the north-west; Granada TV from Monday to Friday, then Saturdays swaying and crushing on the Kop, watching Hughes, Dalglish and my favourite, Stevie Heighway, who also played for my national team, though not with the commitment of Johnny Giles or the great Don Givens of QPR.

Actually, it wasn't bigamy, it was polygamy: visiting and living in Italy, I'd fall carelessly in love with any team I could get to see – various phases: Juve, Napoli, Roma – even if they hated each other. Dino Zoff, Giuseppe Savoldi, Bruno Conti – it was all so goddamn GLAMOROUS and the defensive, chess-like catenaccio mattered not a fig if the game was played beneath blue sky and umbrella pines, with flares in the crowd and pitches smothered in coloured smoke.

Politics in football played both ways. Innocent it may have been, but English and Scottish football was very white compared with today's game and change to that was unwelcome to many fans. The chant "Leeds Are White!" began in the 1970s after black players began to appear in the First Division and a long time passed before they felt anything like comfortable. The decade ended in 1979 with the bizarrest of testimonials, for Len Cantello's West Bromwich Albion against an "All Blacks" team of those abused and discriminated against, corralled by Cantello's team-mate Cyrille Regis. It was a great gesture: these were days of National Front leaflets at the turnstiles, and WBA's positioning of the club on the other, anti-Nazi, side.

That was black and white; what about orange and green? It was not until 1989 that sectarian-Protestant Glasgow Rangers would sign a high-profile Catholic player, and the decade in question here between Bloody Sunday in 1972 and the H-block hunger strikes in 1981 saw the rivalry between Celtic and Rangers develop from traditional posturing into terrace and street warfare. (Even now, modern Celtic fumble and mumble, uncertain what to do with the ebullient politics of their most loyal, hardest-core fans, the Green Brigade, its Palestinian flags banned from Celtic Park.)

For football was then a valve and stage for political protest on a scale unimaginable now. The Argentinian junta's determination to turn the 1978 World Cup into its own version of the 1936 Berlin Olympics backfired entirely when the crowd at the final against Holland sang on and on in defiant mockery of General "Big Ears" Galtieri, the commentators left awkwardly speechless.

This was planet football in its age not so much of innocence as authenticity. Veritable football, trustworthy in a way that it is no longer. I think football, and the inimitable side-splitting humour that accompanies it, is often a matter of self-parody, a little healthy self-mockery, the knowledge that everything's daft really. Now top-flight football has lost not only its roots in community but also that gentle art of not taking oneself too seriously. The Glazers, Abramovichs, Qataris and John Henrys have robbed football of the twinkle in the eye.

Roy Keane's jibe about Manchester United fans who "have a few drinks and probably the prawn sandwiches, but don't realise what's going on out on the pitch" is an estimable description of today's outrageously well-heeled Premier League crowds. On the other hand, I went to watch a United reserve game recently and there were the spotty teenagers, old men in dirty suits, black kids from Moss Side. They'd have been at a first-team game in the 70s, but now that's just a theatre of in your dreams.

Even so, they may have been having a better time than the shaven-headed upper-middle-managers with the contacts and money to watch Van Gaal's team. The most fun I had at an English game recently was at Havant & Waterlooville, to find out how they had fared months after a breathtaking display at Anfield in the 2008 FA Cup – what happened to Havant? I know no fans who enjoy their football more recklessly and dottily than the rebels of FC United of Manchester (I wish Liverpool had one), Sheffield United during their out-of-character cup run last season and insurgent St Pauli of Hamburg. Very few big clubs retain that authenticity: Napoli, Celtic, plus Borussia Dortmund and Bayern for reasons we know about.

The age of innocence, such as it was, ended not really with the close of the decade but in 1985, when three of us made a trip to Brussels for what was to be a glorious night watching the two superlative teams of the 1980s, Liverpool and Juventus, square off for the European Cup. We didn't have to climb the wall of Heysel stadium: we had tickets with a grandstand view and terracing shared by Liverpool fans and "neutrals", who had actually travelled from southern Italy and were not neutral at all. A grandstand view of "our" fans charging, crushing and killing 39 innocent people, then making insidious and evasive excuses for having done so. After the horror of Hillsborough in 1989, which convulsed Liverpool fans in a deadly nightmare of their own, with all the savage irony of that, for the game as it was in these pages, any notion of an age of innocence felt as dead as the 39 plus the 96.

The English and Scottish games have since mutated, in their post-Heysel-Hillsborough after-life at top level, bloated and awash with money. Redeemed for most of us only by the experience of watching on television teams like those that graced the Brazil World Cup: gallant Chileans, Colombians, Mexicans and Algerians, whose thrilling, still-innocent, committed and attacking team football reminded us how – and how good and how much fun – it once was.

The Age of Innocence: Football in the 1970s is published by Taschen (£34.99). To buy it for £27.99 with free UK p&p call 0330 333 6846 or go to guardianbookshop.co.uk

www.theguardian.com/football/2014/aug/10/were-seventies-footballs-golden-age-of-innocence-book

[Macmoish]

Bump 47 Years

[Macmoish]

BUmp 48 years

[Macmoish]

Bump 49 Years

[Macmoish]

Final Home Game

Last home game of the season against Stoke ended in a 2 - 1 win for Rangers. Scorer: Leach 2.

[Macmoish]

50 Years. I have the old programme next to me as I type !

[londonranger]

Thanks for the memories Mac!

[Macmoish]

53 years ago: An amazing moment

[Macmoish]

On This Day in 1968...

[robindubois]

I remember this game especially, as clearly as if were yesterday, standing on the lower tier of the half constructed South Africa Road stand in a full house well before kick off time. First division football at Loftus Road was a dream and the unknown of how well we might have done if Rodney had not been injured.

I may be dreaming but while it took 13 games before our first win and the worst season of results ever majority of fans including me took it all in good heart and were just pleased to have seen the top clubs in the land after years in the third division. I wonder if social media had existed back then what would have been posted - I think nothing like the vile abuse that some "fans" put out these days.

Still lets hope we do not take 13 games for our first win this season or the internet will be in meltdown.