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Saints V Palace League Cup 1977 Style
Saints V Palace League Cup 1977 Style
Tuesday, 25th Oct 2011 09:43

A look at when the clubs were drawn together in this competition 34 years ago.

Saints were one of the promotion favourites when they drew Palace at Selhurst Park in the second round of the league cup, with the Eagles now in the second division alongside Saints having been promoted the previous season and still smarting from their defeat in the FA Cup semi final at Stamfors Bridge only 16 months earlier.

A crowd of 19,639 turned up including 500 or so Saints supporters who stood on the old two tiered open terrace, the bulk of which would be turned into a supermarket a few years later.

It would be a tense niggly nasty game that sparked into life when Jin Cannon of the home side and Phil Boyer were sent off for a bout of fisticuffs, remember in those days it took a lot to get sent off, a few pushes alongwith some dramatic throwing yourself to the ground was not enough back then.

Saints almost lost it in the final stages when Palace got a penalty, but this was saved by Ian Turner and so it was a replay back at the Dell.

The second game saw a slightly bigger turnout of 19,836 and the game followed the pattern of the first and was tense and goaless for much of it until on 66 minutes Palace opened the scoring through Perrin, this was how it remaines and it looked like Palace would sneak through, however on 86 minutes substitute Tony Funnell fired in an equaliser to take the game into extra time.

For most of the additional period, neither side gave an inch and it looked like this would also be stalemate and go to a second replay at a venue to be decided with a toss of the coin, but with two minutes left Alan Ball took a free kick and there was Phil Boyer to head home and win the tie.

Or had he, the drama was not over yet, with the home fans whistling for the end and the clock already past the 120 minute mark Palace had one last push and to the horror of mmost of the crowd they were awarded a penalty.

Up stepped Bourne but Ian Turner was there to save his second penalty of the round and as Palace held their heads the final whistle went and Saints were through to the next round and a trip to Highbury.      

Photo: Action Images



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Wints76 added 10:36 - Oct 25
Didn't know any of that, and also didn't know there was a two tier terrace at Selhurst (though knew they used to get mammoth crowds now & then). All the time I have been going there is has been the supermarket end.
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SaintNick added 12:11 - Oct 25
It was a little bit like the old archers road end (west stand side) circa 1980- 1993, it had a wall running through the centre of it horizontally thus raising the back half higher than the front half
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SaintNick50 added 13:46 - Oct 25
Happy memories the replay was my first visit to The Dell. Correct me if I am wrong but I seem to remember that after Ian Turner saved the penalty Palace put the ball in the net but by then the ref had blown for full time. Very dramatic.
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ThereIn76 added 19:55 - Oct 25
That's correct, George Graham followed up for Palace and put the ball in the net but the ref had already told Bourne and Turner that the penalty would be the last kick of the match. Where did those 34 years go?
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zonehead added 20:02 - Oct 28
Blimey 34 years! I was there too and remember the confusion at the end when nobody knew if we had won
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