The Baseball Ground. Once Autumn departed, it also took the grass with it! But I tell you what, you still got great games, great goals & great skill thrown in, espec if Alan Hinton was doing the throw in! Today's players would throw up looking at pitches back then. Respect to the players of that period who entertained us no matter what the conditions. Today's billiard like pitches & lightweight ping pong footballs the players today wouldn't have a scooby doo what to do in the sensational 70s.
Wow. What a shocking surface. But more amazing is players' ball control, passing and dribbling ability on that pitch. It required multiple sensory and cognitive abilities to allow for mud impact on ball trajectory. Try that dribble, touch & pass technique on todays pitches and the ball would disappear 40 yards up the pitch. Incredible.
My dad was amazed when Stoke paid £100,000 for him but Waddo a better judge of a player than my old man. In any team in any age these are 2 great goals.
What a game that was in the mud, can you see the players of today playing on a pitch like that lol. I and my old pal helped the window cleaner go all over the estate back in Stoke on the Friday night just to make up our pocket money so we could go to this game and I remember we worked for about 6 hours in freezing wet conditions so we could go. Could you see the kids of today doing that. No chance they could never go 6 hours without the play station lol. The sad thing is my old pal died last year of heart problems but this always makes me think of him.
I remember watching that game on TV, I was 9 years old an a big fan of Stoke. Must have made quite an impression, because I still remembered those 2 goals by Jimmy Greenhoff. So fun to watch this again after all these years. Tnanks for posting
thought you'd stopped us in our tracks that day.....but no, we won the title with 2 points to spare eventually with one of the lowest ever points total. Two very good teams and both Ipswich and Everton were in it until the last few games too.....
I wasn't there, but as a 9 year old Derby fan I remember the match. The quality of the football that both teams managed to play - but particularly Stoke on this evidence - is remarkable. It was said after this defeat that Derby could not with the league. But they did.
brilliant stuff, two great sides from the best era of the game, alan hudson was a genius, stoke were so unfortunate not to win the league that season but derby were a magnificent side
Back in the 70s, I watched highlights of such matches at home on a colour TV, and one could see that the pitches were bad. However, now that I can watch these games on a modern computer screen, they look even worse. Suffice as to say, I now realise just how much skill and effort was required to play on such a surface.
A mere 53 points won the title that season. I think it was the second lowest total ever. Derby 53 Liverpool 51 Ipswich 51 Everton 50 Stoke 49 Someone eventually fell over the line first. Hudson has blamed injuries to a small squad plus some crucial Shilton mistakes for Stoke not winning it.
It makes me sick when I hear idiots like Guardiola et al moaning that players have too many games. They play fewer games than ever, have massive squads and God knows how many substitutes in each match. They are playing less time than ever and on perfect pitches, which do not exert the sort of strain that Derby's in the 1970s did. Yes, it was a particularly bad pitch at Derby but everyone got on with it and sometimes, like in this match, the away team came away with the points.
It would be entertaining to see today's players play on those pitches ! I would love to.know why they were in such bad condition didnt clubs have groundsman then?
As a groundsman that has actually worked on that very pitch and also the new ones I can tell you that it's down to new technology in pitch maintenance and money. 💰 Lots of money! 💰
