Summerdeep

^ No doubt you would like to imagine me having a Vesta curry or Smash mashed potatoes....

Any news on Norwood's injury from last night's match? He looked to be struggling when attempting to run towards Hallam Hope to congratulate him on scoring our fourth goal.

Yes, I know! Just making the point that he could play both as defender and attacker. Wood in fact played at centre-forward in the Latics tour of Greece in the early summer of 1973, and finished as our leading scorer with 3 of the 4 goals we got on that tour.

Edwards was mainly a reserve team player at Man Utd, but he did have a decent run for a few months in the first team at the end of the Busby era and during the brief reign of Wilf McGuinness circa 1969-70. And yes, Ian Ure was at United 1969-71, so he would have been partnered by Edwards for a fair bit of that period. If you watch some of those games closely, you can see why Edwards never quite made the grade in the top flight - he was good in the air and a decent tackler, but his positional play wasn't great and his distribution could be dreadful. He dropped out of contention when O'Farrell became manager in 1971, and clearly had no place in Tommy Docherty's plans either, being sold to Latics soon after The Doc arrived at Old Trafford in 1972-73. As mentioned earlier, he had an excellent goalscoring record initially for us, and I have the feeling that he could have been converted into a serviceable centre-forward, as was also the case with Ian Wood.

Another fun fact: Edwards scored 4 goals in his first 5 games for us in 1972 (playing at centre-back), then only managed 3 more in the other 103 appearances he made.

^ Yes, got to be able to put games like this out of reach. Not all teams are as toothless as Woking.

Not a great day for the top sides at the moment. Chesterfield, Barnet and Solihull all losing.

I gave up the TV licence more than three years ago. Don't miss it at all. YouTube's fine.

BBC commentary is back!

EDIT 6-1 actually, but yes, FA Cup 1st Round, Nov 1970. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1970–71_FA_Cup

I think Newport once lost 6-0 to a non-league side (Barnet?) when they were in the old 4th Division. Circa 1970, perhaps.

Game over!

Is the Swindon manager Mike Flynn the former Latics player from the late 1980s?

Reid on for Nuttall.

My impression was that we took a bit of a pasting for much of the half. Had two half-decent chances, one early on when Norwood picked up a loose back pass but put his shot wide, then their keeper made an excellent save a few minutes before the break, not sure who from.

According to the commentator, Dickinson's still on the field....

We're stringing precious little together, constantly giving the ball away. Sounds like a pretty rubbish display so far. Hogan on for Dickenson.

No, one for Newport. We seem to be giving away a lot of silly fouls, pushing in the back, etc.

3 bookings so far, just over 20 mins gone. What odds a red before the end?

1-0 down. Ball given away by us, County score within seconds....

There was a time when penalties for handball were only given when they were blatant offences, such as defenders diving to push the ball round the post or over the bar like a second goalkeeper, sticking out an arm to punch away a cross, or whatever. Then sometime around a couple of decades ago, referees suddenly started awarding penalties for handballs that were clearly involuntary or accidental, including when the ball was blasted against a player's arm from virtually point-blank range. The introduction of VAR at higher levels made this even worse, such as with the ludicrous penalty awarded against Croatia in the 2018 World Cup Final. It's one of countless features of the modern game that I find so alienating and made me lose all interest in watching matches, even on TV. The comment in the above post about the ridiculous power-games and posing of modern referees is also a good one. Before I stopped watching football completely, I saw numerous examples of referees and linesmen who gave a goal by ruling that the ball was a couple of inches over the line, despite the fact that they were 30-40 yards away from the action and couldn't possibly know that this was the case. As you say, it's essentially a 'Look at me, aren't I clever?' kind of thing.

The last game I went to at Boundary Park was an FA Cup tie against Tranmere in, I think, 1993. We were in the Premier League and they were in the next division down (League 1? Championship?). Anyway, they outplayed us, with John Aldridge scoring twice from the penalty spot and later being sent off, though we rather luckily came back to get a draw. I couldn't get over just how bloody awful the experience of being in an all-seated area was though (the Chaddy End, of all places), not to mention having had to pay about five times the entry fee compared to my previous visit in the late 1980s. I've never been back since, and will never do so if required to sit down to watch a football match. Last attended a Latics fixture at Brentford in 2005. That was bloody awful as well, but only because of the abysmal performance of the team (lost 0-2). At least it was possible to stand on the terracing behind the goal....

Penalties being awarded for accidental handballs have been a feature of the game for at least the last two decades. A very regrettable phenomenon.

Probably just a few years too young to have been a teammate of Graham Bell, who left Chadderton to join Latics in 1972. Must at any rate have played alongside John Regan, who was a Chadderton FC legend in the 1970s and 1980s. Sorry to hear of his passing.

His face and voice are very reminiscent of Tommy Docherty, though character-wise he seems a good deal more dour.