Fri 4th & Sat 5th April 1969 - a disappointing Easter

In the days before it became fashionable for top clubs to bleat about having too many games the Easter programme usually involved 3 games within 4 days for all teams, and the unthinkable situation of two home games on consecutive days arose with our fixtures at the Bridge at home to Newcastle on Good Friday and Burnley the following day. Sadly both results were disappointing for a Chelsea side that had 6 wins out of our last 7 league games, but still had nothing to play for in the last few weeks of an ultimately disappointing season.


Chelsea 1 Newcastle 1

For just two minutes the 42,000 holiday crowd were given something to shout about, half an hour went by without incident before Chelsea snatched the lead their territorial domination had earned. Alan Birchenall started the brief spell of excitement by forcing keeper Iam Mc Faul into a flying save and from John Boyle's resulting corner Ian Hutchinson forced a header over the line.

Straight from the restart , in their first raid of the match, Newcastle were presented with a penalty when Eddie McCreadie handled needlessly. England under-23 international Bryan Robson fired in his 16th goal of the season from the spot.

Pity Peter Bonetti, this was the sixth penalty he has faced since March 1st, and the third since March 15th that has finished in the net. Yet he only had to make one real save against Newcastle's forwards, who just didn't want to know. That came 20 minutes from the end when a John McNamee header hit McCreadie on the line and Bonetti swivelled in mid-air to catch the rebound.

Chelsea 2 Burnley 3

Bobby Tambling limped off the pitch at half time in this needling, foul-ridden clash with Burnley and there's not much chance of him lining up for Tuesday's match at Nottingham Forest.

This was a typical Chelsea performance, not playing well but still managing to lead 2-1 before Ralph Coates, later to play for the bitter enemy from North London (and famous for his Bobby Charlton style combover hairstyle) turned the game around and we lost 2-3 to extremely average opponents.

Chelsea earlier went ahead with a Tambling goal, equalised when Thomas scored with a corner than swirled past Bonetti's hand before Hollins gave Chelsea the lead with a typical rocket shot. Then it all went pear shaped..

In those days we used to hang around after games to get autographs from players as they left the East Stand dressing rooms after the game. Most players were brilliant, John Hollins always had time to chat, and it was quite common to catch Tommy Baldwin walking down the road towards the underground station. My abiding memory of the Burnley game was their winger, Dave Thomas, refusing to sign someone's programme and proclaiming "I'm not signing that!". When he later went to QPR he remained one of the players I disliked intensely, for this unnecessary spiteful response to that young lad.

FOOTNOTE:

In these days of squad rotation it is interesting to note that there were only two team changes between our line ups for the Friday and Saturday.