The 80/81 season was a pretty good year to be a Hammers fan, on the back of the FA Cup win we had the bonus of a European Cup Winners Cup run and a third attempt of getting back into the top league.
The season didn't start that well with a trip to Wembley to play league champs Liverpool in the Charity Shield.
The game itself finished 1-0 to Liverpool, an early goal by McDermott.
I don't remember much else happening the only thing that sticks in my mind was our substitute Nicky Morgan coming on and brilliantly taking out serial bad tackler Graeme Souness with a lunging tackle, which left the so called hardman on the floor whining to the ref ... justice :)
The league season started badly with a home defeat by Luton then 2 away draws :(
Then things took off, new signing Paul Goddard fitted in well and by the end of the season we had run away with the league finishing well clear of second place Notts County!! the final tally was 28 wins 10 draws and just 4 defeats (including 2 by Luton). We did the double over Chelsea 1-0 away and 4-0 at home and didn't lose a league game after a boxing day defeat by QPR.
The European run was interesting we had drawn Castilla from Spain who were basically Real Madrid's reserve team? the first leg in Spain saw us lose 3-1 and after crowd trouble we nearly got thrown out, considering one of our fans died it seems harsh that we got the blame but a mate who went told me that we were far from blameless and that a load of our fans pissing on the Spaniards from an upper tier of the Bernabeau hadn't helped. The second leg was played behind closed doors and we ran out 5-1 winners, the only home game I missed that season.
The next round we beat Politechnia Timisoara of Rumania 4-0 after losing the away leg 1-0, then we had to play Russian team Dynamo Tbilisi who included some of Russia's best players, we started well with Alan Devonshire playing brilliantly but the Russians solved that with several really heavy tackles and he had to go off injured. By the end we had lost 4-1 and it was probably the only time I have ever clapped the opposition at the end as they were brilliant and would probably have beaten anyone at that time, amazingly we won the second leg 1-0 but the tie was over.
Tbilisi went on to win the competition and one odd piece of trivia from this competition was that the English league had 2 quarter finalists that year - us and 3rd division Newport County!!
Although we failed to defend the FA cup losing after 2 replays to Wrexham, we had a really good season in the League cup, we beat Tottenham 1-0 in the 5th round to get a Semi Final against Coventry, in the away leg we had gone 2-0 up but lost 3-2 in the home leg we were 1-0 up with seconds left expecting extra time when our other new signing Jimmy Neighbour scored an amazing winner to put us through to the final against Liverpool.
The final, excellent game as we matched Liverpool who were probably the best team in Europe at the time and after 90 minutes we were level at 0-0.
It all kicked off right at the end when Liverpool scored, Kennedy's shot went over the clearly offside Sammy Lee who ducked underneath it to decieve Phil Parkes, the linesman flagged the offside but welsh twat Clive Thomas gave the goal? even mild mannered Hammers manager John Lyall ran on to call him a cheat.
With seconds left of extra time Alvin Martin's goalbound shot was handled off the line by cheating bastard McDermott and Thomas finally got a decision right and gave us a penalty which super Jock Ray Stewart banged home to earn us a replay.
The replay was at Villa Park, I was in the Holt end which had been split into two with only a net between us and the scouses.
Liverpool had a young reserve in the team due to injuries called Ian Rush (whatever happened to him?) and cry baby Souness was also missing.
We took the lead early on after Jimmy Neighbour went flying down the right and crossed perfectly for Goddard, sadly Liverpool came back to win 2-1 after a scrappy own goal by Billy Bonds and Dalglish getting the winner.
Personally I only have bad memories of this game as during the second half I was hit on the head by a can of some liquid? thrown over the netting by the scouses which cut my head open, not too serious but it did bleed a bit, but I wasn't going to miss the rest of the game and a blood stained shirt wasn't that uncommon in those days.
After the game some nutty scouse decided to drive his car into our crowd outside the ground and me and many others ended up on the bonnet, he regretted that.
(Reposted from NBTF)
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