19th March - Spurs in History

19th March, 1966

Conceding the advantage in games and grabbing defeat fom the jaws of victory is nothing new to Spurs. The season's epidemic of conceding critical late goals, affecting the outcome of the games against West Ham, Fulham, Sunderland, Chelsea and in the Cups at Grimsby and Leicester is a new twist to supporting Spurs. The problem of a couple of seasons ago, was the fear of being three up at half-time, against the clubs of Manchester.

However, it's all happened before:

Spurs 5 Aston Villa 5

1966 was a transitional season with little of note. It had started well enough but following defeat in the Cup at Preston in early March the team was to win only two of their final thirteen League games. New young players were introduced to try to stem the flow of goals, while, this game apart, goals were had to find.

Initially in this game, things looked bright enough, Spurs were three ahead after fifteen minutes, 4-1 ahead at half-time and 5-1 up after five minutes of the second half. The scorers were Gilzean, Greaves, Saul, L.Brown and Robertson.

Then came the Villa fight back. They scored three goals in four minutes, equalised with 11 minutes to go and should have won when with three minutes remaining they were clean through, took the ball around Pat Jennings but hesitated and allowed Alan Mullery to recover to clear the danger.

On a brighter note:

On this day - 19th March, 1921, Spurs played Preston North End in the semi-final of the FA Cup at Hillsborough. A close contest was expected but Spurs who had been promoted the previous season had the better of the game and could have won more comfortably than the score suggests. Spurs had beaten Bristol Rovers, Bradford City, Southend and Aston Villa to reach this stage of the competition.

It was two goals from Bert Bliss which put Spurs two ahead and took them into the Final but they could have had two penalties and had a goal disallowed when the referee brought play back for a foul on Jimmy Seed, the Spurs inside forward. Preston's goal was no more than a late comsolation.

The Final against Wolverhampton Wanderers was to be played at Stamford Bridge in late April.