In His Own Words by Peter Mendham & Edward Couzens-Lake

Author:Peter Mendham & Edward Couzens-Lake
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2019-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

We were back on the League Cup trail shortly afterwards with a home match against Notts County. We dealt with them at the first time of asking with a convincing 3-0 win with goals from Mick Channon, Dixie and Louie Donowa. That win meant that, without really being aware of it, we were now all of a sudden in the quarter-finals of the competition and, potentially, only three games, of which at least one would be at Carrow Road, from Wembley, a venue that Norwich hadn’t visited for ten years. That had also been a League Cup Final and had been a disappointing day all round as John Bond’s much admired side had lost 1-0 to Aston Villa. We now had a chance to go one better and were, at least initially, encouraged when the quarter-final draw matched us with Grimsby Town, the fourth consecutive time we’d been drawn against lower league opposition (the other six clubs in the competition at that point were all fellow Division One teams) meaning that we couldn’t help but start wondering about those famous Twin Towers and a coach trip up Wembley Way.

If any complacency was lurking in and around Trowse at that point, mind you, Ken Brown and Mel Machin would soon have let us know about it – and, as regards Mel, in no uncertain terms. They didn’t want our form in the league to be affected by any thoughts of cup glory and for the most part it wasn’t as, between the Notts County and Grimsby games, we had some good results, including a 4-2 win over Everton and 1-0 wins over West Ham, Arsenal, West Brom and Southampton, meaning that by the time the Grimsby game rolled around we were still sat in tenth place in the Division One table and looking as if we would be more likely to push onwards and upwards as our league form, buoyed by our cup run rather than distracted by it, kept our spirits high.

A trip up to Cleethorpes to play Grimsby Town in any match might, on the face of it, have seemed a fairly straightforward job. Granted, they had a few decent players in their ranks, one of whom was Kevin Drinkell, who would, of course, eventually sign for Norwich before going on to play for Glasgow Rangers, but on the whole, although we respected them, we also felt we had more than enough to come away from Blundell Park with a win and a place in the semi-finals, which would be played over two legs.

One thing we hadn’t allowed for was the weather on the night! It was absolutely freezing cold as the whole of the country was in the grip of an icy spell of weather that had, the night before, covered the Grimsby pitch with four inches of snow, more than enough, you would think, to get the game called off as, indeed, was every single other match that was due to be played in England that evening.

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