Season’s opener at St James’ Park promises to be the stuff of legends
THEY will be sitting together at a round table just inside the door of the Moncur Suite brought together again to witness a special opener to a new season.
Forty-eight years ago this trio of ex-magpies took part in the most famous match between Newcastle United and Nottingham Forest ever staged at St James Park.
It went down in history as The Game That Never Was because the Football Association decreed it should be wiped from the record books and played again.
Bob Moncur and Frank Clark were in United’s defence that epic afternoon en route to Wembley and the 1974 FA Cup final while Malcolm Macdonald led the attack.
Come Saturday afternoon they will be together again, interested spectators on the sidelines of the frantic action.
United incredibly ‘won’ their sixthround tie 4-3 after being 3-1 down and reduced to 10 men but a pitch invasion resulting in an eight-minute hold-up saw the FA rule it must be replayed on a neutral ground.
Moncur, David Craig, Terry Mcdermott and John Tudor all had their goals erased from their Newcastle record – Moncs complained that while he notched high-profile goals (like the Fairs Cup final) he hardly had enough to afford to give up genuine strikes!
A 0-0 draw followed at Goodison and when the teams met for an exhausting third time at the same venue Supermac decided the bragging rights.
Clark went on to forge a privileged place in Forest’s history of course not just as a member of their first European Cup-winning ensemble but also as a manager and chairman.
However, he is not the oldest living footballer to wear the colours of both clubs.
Dave Hilley (inset), now a fit 83year-old and living in Gosforth, was a team-mate of Clark and Moncur when United won promotion as Second Division champions in 1965.
Hilley, who worked both as a schoolteacher and a journo on Tyneside, played 209 games for United before signing for Forest where he roomed with Jim Baxter and totted up nearly another century of appearances.
If The Game That Never Was has gone down in history as a unique occasion then another six years before in October 1968 also stands alone because it too produced a not-to-be-repeated situation. How? Well, it was a top-flight match actually played on a neutral ground.
Fire had destroyed Forest’s City Ground so it was switched to Notts County’s Meadow Lane.
If that was not enough to make it different, it also marked the tragic end to the career of Geoff Allen Elliot Anderson’s grandad when he was only 24.
United triumphed 4-2 with teenagers Keith Dyson and Alan Foggon dramatically announcing their arrival by both scoring after Allen had been fatally crocked inside the first quarter of an hour. It was just 27 days after Allen had pulverised Feyenood in Newcastle’s first European match.
I saw both games against Forest which were unique in differing ways and Newcastle scored four each time. Should they wish to do so again before these old eyes on Saturday I will be more than happy!