TOMMY ALMOST CUT DRAMA SHORT

ALVECHURCH and Oxford City might never have entered the record books had a particular City player been a trifle more precise with his headers.

Tommy Eales hit the underside of the bar in the last minute of the fourth game after nodding against the bar earlier in the match and having had a goal ruled offside in the previous replay. Now 80, Eales was an old-fashioned centre forward who wore a number nine on his back although he is listed as number eight in the one penny programme for the sixth game at Villa Park.

“I played every minute of every single game,” he recalled. “In the first replay at Oxford City, I put us one up.” That goal was one of 32 Eales got that season in 64 games. “And you’ve got to remember that the cup saga wasn’t only six games in 17 days. We had to play an Isthmian League game at home to Walthamstow Avenue as well during that time.” The players also had to work. Eales at the time was a rally race mechanic for the MG car company at Abingdon.

In 1970, he was involved in the London to Mexico World Cup Rally that began at Wembley and ended in Mexico City just before the World Cup. “We were away seven weeks and they flew us from Portugal to Rio. On one flight we had to put down on a little airstrip somewhere in the Andes for a refill from a milk churn! If we weren’t driving, we were flying.”

He also played for the MG football team, Abingdon Town and Witney Town, three clubs which have all sadly folded. Happily, Thame United where Eales ended his playing career, aged 39 are still going strong or he would believe he was something of a jinx.