Bristol Rovers(H).21/08/71.

This programme is over forty years ago. And do you know something? Only yesterday I saw Bristol Rovers’ number six sheltering from the rain on the corner of Reddenhill Road and Babbacombe Road.



And I wonder if Frankie was one of the hundred or so players booked in the opening weeks of that season? I wouldn’t have been surprised because he was a rather competitive little bugger.

I think I remember the great clean-up that Allan Brown didn’t consider a clean-up. It caused a tremendous furore and the papers had a field day as they published league tables for both referees and for club indiscipline.

It made a impact because bookings were incredibly rare in those days. Nowadays, taking that one hundred figure as a yardstick just on a weekly basis, that works out at little more than two bookings a match which we'd consider rather paltry.

And what about Brown’s observation that we’re “in danger of turning our game into that insipid brand of soccer so often seen on the Continent”. Indeed, he reckons “they’re trying to turn football into a game for pansies.”

Different times.

And possibly rather less enlightened.