cornwall canary

It has been a long time since I last posted but I always enjoy reading the message board. I first went to Carrow Road when I was 7 years old in 1960. It was against Accrington Stanley and City won 4-0 not that I remember much about it! I used to go regularly until 1977 when I moved away. It got me thinking since that first time in the 1959/60 season of how many seasons have Norwich spent in each of the top 3 divisions. You can probably tell that the lockdown is getting to me! Anyway, so far Div 1 26 seasons, Div 2 34 and Div 3 2 seasons. I then did the same for Ipswich which remarkably is identical, Div 1 26, Div 2 34 and Div 3 2 seasons! Of course hopefully come next season the records will no longer match!

When city lost at Chelsea I thought we needed a miracle to stay up. If someone had told me then that 20 games later we would be 8pts from third from bottom and in 12th place I would have told them they are living in cloud cuckoo land. Of those 20 games, 11 were at home including the top 6 teams in the country the fact that our record against those 6 teams was W3 D1 L2 F8 A7 shows just how much we have improved. The other 5 home games produced W3 D2 L0 F5 A2 so combined P11 W6 D3 L2 F13 A9 Pts 21. a very impressive record especially compared to Lamberts record against the same teams W2 D5 L4 F15 A20 Pts 11. The same games last season were more exciting and produced 13 more goals  but unfortunately 11 of those were against us. I think this show just how much difference Hughton has made the defence has improved significantly and we have become difficult to beat. The home form has been crucial to our improvement I for one think Hughton is doing an excellent job and long may it continue.

I was looking through some old city programmes and came across an away game at WBA in Dec 1977. In the write up on Norwich it  began with the following paragraph: At the beginning of August, Norwich City had already been written off as a good bet for relegation by bookmakers and crystal ball gazers alike: come December, with almost half of the season gone, the Canaries are perched prettily in 8th place and manager John Bond can afford a wry smile. Their 20 pts haul include home victories over Arsenal, Newcastle, Wolves, Leicester,Bristol City and Birmingham, whilst away two points at West Ham and creditable draws at Leeds , Derby and Forest. Our record before the WBA game was P17  W7  D6  L4  F19  A21  Pts 20   ( 2Pts for a win in those days ) The WBA game finished 0-0 For those interested the team that day was: Keelan, Bond, Sullivan, Ryan, Jones, Powell, Neighbour, Reeves, Gibbons, Paddon and Peters. The end of that season saw us finish in 13th place I would definately accept that this season. Bye the way WBA were in 3rd place at the time and Forest went on to win the league.

Have just been looking through my old footie programmes. Nov 1972/73 Birmingham v city after 18 games Birmingham avg 35,620, Norwich 29,439.

Thought I would look at the attendances from the last time we played in the 3rd division when city finished 2nd. Average attendance was 26,406 but there was a wide variation the lowest being 13,740 and the highest 36,479. Oddly the lowest was against Southampton who won the league that year! The only reason I can see for this is that the game was played on the last Saturday before xmas. There was no Sunday or late night opening in those days. The highest gates tended to be the midweek games I assume because more people were free to attend.

  cornwall canary wrote: Thought this might be of interest. I am in the process of moving house and in the clear out I came across and old newspaper, not knowing why I had kept it I turned to the back page where there was a full page picture of Jeremy Goss scoring his goal against Bayern Munich. I thought I would share part of the report with you. "Maybe the cynics will sit up now, take notice and recognise Norwich for what they are - the best side the premeirship has, with the exception of Man Utd". I probably knew it would not get any better than that, that''s why I kept the newspaper. Hope I haven''t depressed everyone too much. Cornwall, I did a similar thing and kept a few of the European papers because I had a gut feeling that it would all come to an end soon (even got Gossy to sign the pics of him).  Likewise, I kept loads of stuff from the Championship winning season.  Papers, tickets, photos, etc, because you never know when things will turn quickly, as it sadly did.   JJ, That was the only newspaper I ever kept. I used to have Pinkun''s from the 1960''s but unfortunately they were lost over the years. All I have now is about 40 - 50 Norwich programmes from the 1960''s and 70''s.

Sorry with my one finger typing skills it would take too long to type out the whole report.

Thought this might be of interest. I am in the process of moving house and in the clear out I came across and old newspaper, not knowing why I had kept it I turned to the back page where there was a full page picture of Jeremy Goss scoring his goal against Bayern Munich. I thought I would share part of the report with you. "Maybe the cynics will sit up now, take notice and recognise Norwich for what they are - the best side the premeirship has, with the exception of Man Utd". I probably knew it would not get any better than that, that''s why I kept the newspaper. Hope I haven''t depressed everyone too much.