Chesterfield v Torquay United.09/11/63.

Were the Clay Cross Defenders formed to protect the village against the evil powers of Russia in the Cold War of the sixties, or the even more evil power of the Bastard Thatcher as she laid waste to he local industry and economy in the eighties?

I note the name "Henshall" in the list of Chesterfield FC directorate...........................ah Mrs Henshall and her love of "young men", remember?

I wonder if Ana Paula had lived in her day she might have volunteered to lend a spot of glamour to the clearance of mines around the little pit village?

What a fantastic nostalgia fest. The 2-2 draw with Workington on a Monday evening was my very first match (must have been later in bed than usual since I was only 6 years old) and my dad had to build a wooden bench and pass it over the turnstile for me to stand on so that I could see over the perimeter wall. That was my one match of the season so I never saw the game against Torquay United and in fact never saw Torquay play at Saltergate till after the Spireites' promotion to Division 3 in 1970.

As you can see from the picture on the front of the programme there were no floodlights yet. CFC have the dubious honour of being the last team in the League to be floodlit, the lights being opened with a friendly against our glamorous neighbours Sheffield Wednesday in 1967. Memory tells me it was a race between Chesterfield and Hartlepools to avoid being the last lit club and we lost after buying a second hand set from Bramall Lane and then never getting round to putting them up.

The Clay Cross militia would certainly run Thatcher out of town; Clay Cross is Skinner territory, although North East Derbyshire Council was run in the late 1970s/early1980s under council leader Cliff Fox, who was supposed to be a firebrand socialist himself and ran the red flag up on the council HQ on silver jubilee day 1977. Huh! When Chesterfield Labour Party declined to make him their parliamentary candidate in 1984, and went for Tony Benn instead, Fox aligned himself with the scabs' Democratic Labour Party instead, and sank without trace shortly afterwards.

Very few of the companies in the adverts are still with us but Allen & Orr, Station Hotel (now Chesterfield Hotel), Hotel Portland (now Portland Hotel and a Weatherspoon's) and Elliott's opticians have made it. Wm Britt's ironmongers (since 1818) almost survived into the 21st century but their shop is now a bar and steakhouse. I expect the young moderns catered for at Swale's were the type known to seaside resort residents as mods. Maybe some of them bought their togs there and headed down to Torquay to scrap with the rockers.

As for Hadfield's Pies, I don't remember them but I doubt that they were suitable for vegetarians.

It all makes me wonder how many of the companies advertising in current programmes will still be with us in 50 years time (I suspect none, and I shan't be around to check in any case). Since those matches took place, in the 1960s, Chesterfield has lost pretty much all its industry and all the pits have closed as well, and the future does not look promising, it must be said.

As far as the team was concerned, Duncan and Meredith were flying wingers and Clarke a local hero from Barrow Hill who later became club trainer. He moved to Mansfield after being made redundant at Saltergate and then was headhunted by Brian Clough and given a job at Brighton, where Clough never spoke to him, so he came back to town and got a job at Bryan Donkins.

Goalkeeper John Osborne went on to be a Cup winner with West Brom and a star of Quiz Ball on the BBC. Other than that the only name of note is J Beresford at left half, and that is because his son John went on to play for Newcastle under Kevin Keegan.

Off to smoke a Park Drive now.