The Big Match Revisited (ITV)

[napoleon dynamite]

Seems a world away from the days of Pat Jennings catching the ball with one hand.

frank swift copyrighted that

 

[BertTrautmann'sParachute]

frank swift copyrighted that

And occasionally he would bounce the ball off the head of a centre forward as he was making his way out of the box.

 

[dansyb]

As someone who played in goal when the change from cotton gloves to these huge sponge things they wear now I personally couldn’t get on with the new gloves as you had no feel for catching the ball. Never wore gloves when the ground was dry as you got a better grip on the ball.

 

[discopop]

I always remember reading shoot/goal as a nipper and Phil Parkes was one of the first to endorse fancy Dan keepers gloves and fucking Cossack hairspray. He’s to blame for everything wrong with the game today.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Been watching these recently, some great & some not so great memories but the thing that I had sort of forgotten was how bad were some of the pitches, watched west ham at upton park the other night & there were only about 3 blades of grass on the whole pitch, the rest of it was thick wet mud!

the beaches - sorry pitches - were god awful weren't they?

 

[bluethrunthru]

I think most goalies wore basic green gloves back in the day and from memory caught loads more crosses and shots than goalies do today. If you are of a certain FOC age, then you will know that goalies were always told to get their body behind the ball and draw it into your body to make a controlled save from any angle.

Today goalies have gloves bigger than most welders and I thought it was so there was space for their name, squad number and logo to make money from them in addition to shirts. No kid of 10 years old is going to be happy with a pair of knitted gloves his gran could have knocked up. The downside to the design is that when wearing this massive clove you haven't got as much 'feel' as the old design to get hold of the ball which is why saves are rarely seen and punches are more of the norm

There was always a big thing made in international match commentaries about how "foreign" keepers tended to punch everything and ours were always a safe pair of hands and caught it - I remember Clough saying Jan Tomaszewski was a clown at half time in that infamous match but it was Shilton that dived over the ball.......

 

[mscenterh750]

I had a pair of goal keeping gloves, endorsed by bob wilson, when I was a kid and I couldn’t catch shit.

 

[eastmanc]

And occasionally he would bounce the ball off the head of a centre forward as he was making his way out of the box.

My old dad used to tell me that he would throw the ball like a tennis ball three quarters the length of Maine Road.

 

[eastmanc]

I had a pair of goal keeping gloves, endorsed by bob wilson, when I was a kid and I couldn’t catch shit.

Bob couldn’t either.

 

[Keeper!]

the beaches - sorry pitches - were god awful weren't they?

Sand on a pitch was for the rich and privileged, mud for the rest.