The Longest Winter: A Season with England's Worst Ever Football Team Hodkinson Mark
The Longest Winter: A Season with England's Worst Ever Football Team Hodkinson Mark In 1973-74, Britain was in meltdown. Petrol was scarce. The Arab-Israeli War had sent energy prices soaring. A…
Specifikacia The Longest Winter: A Season with England's Worst Ever Football Team Hodkinson Mark
The Longest Winter: A Season with England's Worst Ever Football Team Hodkinson Mark
In 1973-74, Britain was in meltdown. Petrol was scarce. The Arab-Israeli War had sent energy prices soaring.
A three-day working week came in as inflation took hold and miners and other workers went on strike. Offices were limited to a temperature of 17C and power cuts were frequent. The northern mill town of Rochdale suffered more than most.
Its cotton industry was on shut-down in the face of cheap imports, and the football team was a mirror image of the town - tired, defeated, clinging to life. The Rochdale team of 1973-74 are considered the worst to play in the Football League. They finished bottom of the third division, winning just twice in 46 league matches.
They closed the season with a 22-game winless run and played one home match in front of the lowest-ever post-war crowd. That season 32 players played for the team, many of them drafted in from amateur or Sunday league clubs.