Derby v Fulham - 14th May, 1983

[SW6]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ki441Dvhw

[res]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=09ki441Dvhw

A game which, by any rationale, should have been replayed

[westcliff white]

Agree should have been replayed but the league bottle dit

[GorgeousGus]

Before the game started there was still a chance Derby could go down - as the day progressed they would have stayed up regardless of the result of our game - therefore the League's rationale was that the circumstances of the original game could not be re-created so they didn't order a replay. They figured that with Derby now being safe they wouldn't have been trying as hard against us as they were for the original match - I think!

[Burt]

Before the game started there was still a chance Derby could go down - as the day progressed they would have stayed up regardless of the result of our game - therefore the League's rationale was that the circumstances of the original game could not be re-created so they didn't order a replay. They figured that with Derby now being safe they wouldn't have been trying as hard against us as they were for the original match - I think!

Correct...

I was so incensed by this that I wrote to the FA chairman of the time (Graham Kelly) to ask how it was that this would be the only match in league history not to have been replayed following it being officially abandoned and the rationale was that the pre-match conditions (we could have gone up, Derby could have gone down) could not be repeated.

The FA bottled it, basically. There was plenty of precedent around matches being replayed due to crowd issues, floodlight failures, etc.

Still my worst moment as a Fulham supporter. Awful day. Wrong result. Violence on and off the pitch, before during and after.

[Tonywa]

We'd thrown away promotion long before that dreadful afternoon which is still so clear in my memory.  Quite frankly the way we were playing we wouldn't have scored had we been out there for another hour. Some of those final away games that season were real nightmares.  I remember playing at Oldham and we must have had seventy per cent of the possession and missed innumerable chances without scoring only for their left back John Ryan to set up a late winner in the last couple of minutes with their only shot of the afternoon.

[HillingdonFFC]

Derby v Fulham 1983, as if things aint depressing enough now.lol

[nose]

Before the game started there was still a chance Derby could go down - as the day progressed they would have stayed up regardless of the result of our game - therefore the League's rationale was that the circumstances of the original game could not be re-created so they didn't order a replay. They figured that with Derby now being safe they wouldn't have been trying as hard against us as they were for the original match - I think!

Correct...

I was so incensed by this that I wrote to the FA chairman of the time (Graham Kelly) to ask how it was that this would be the only match in league history not to have been replayed following it being officially abandoned and the rationale was that the pre-match conditions (we could have gone up, Derby could have gone down) could not be repeated.

The FA bottled it, basically. There was plenty of precedent around matches being replayed due to crowd issues, floodlight failures, etc.

Still my worst moment as a Fulham supporter. Awful day. Wrong result. Violence on and off the pitch, before during and after.

i spoke to graham kelly on the radio and explained the illogicality of the FAs descision. He stuck by his guns and continued to spout the part line. I lost all respect for him, not that he cared and he went on to massively line his own pockets so we knew for sure he had no interest in any but the top clubs.

it wasn't the game was abandoned iot was that the ref kept playing when the team were being intimuidated and if I recal robert wilsonm kicked

[fulhamtom]

Tongue in cheek I refer to this as the worst day in my life as I also got married that day! Spent some of my wedding reception in my mate's Cortina estate getting afternoon updates and watched MOT in my hotel room in Dover before going to Paris for the weekend. Whilst in Paris I spent a fortune on daily papers to see how our "appeal" was going. Then the bloody French didn't have the FA CUP final on their TV. For those a bit younger we didn't have the Internet or the like in those days!

[Lighthouse]

I had to work a 15 hour shift that day. Listened on the radio and after the shift remember catching the train and having the worst migraine. But surely with players assaulted during the game and afterwards as they came off by the Derby thugs. The game would have to be replayed whatever the other results. You simply can't do that and expect the result to stand.

I wonder what would have happened if Man Utd were at Derby that day. Can you imagine the FA just shrugging and saying it was just one of those things. Sickens me to this day. I remember seeing the team weeks before and telling a Watford fan we would not gain promotion and somehow sod it up. As usual I was right to be morbidly depressed.

[Arthur]

We'd thrown away promotion long before that dreadful afternoon which is still so clear in my memory.  Quite frankly the way we were playing we wouldn't have scored had we been out there for another hour. Some of those final away games that season were real nightmares.  I remember playing at Oldham and we must have had seventy per cent of the possession and missed innumerable chances without scoring only for their left back John Ryan to set up a late winner in the last couple of minutes with their only shot of the afternoon.

How right you are.

There were also carbon-copy 1-0 defeats against Burnley and Cambridge to that at Oldham. I remember, too, late on in the season, Robert Wilson scoring in the 88th minute at Hillsborough - a goal that looked to have salvaged us a useful 1-1 draw - only for us to concede again in the 90th minute.

With regard to the disruption at, and eventual abandonment of, the Derby game, the fair solution, as I saw it at the time, would have been to sanction both ourselves and Leicester to replay our final fixtures.

For those who may not know, Leicester were at home to Burnley, who occupied one of the relegation places. A win for Burnley coupled with a defeat for Derby would have seen the Clarets beat the drop at the expense of the Rams. For us to be promoted, we needed to do better on the day than Leicester, owing to the Foxes' vastly superior goal difference. Burnley and Leicester played out a 0-0 draw, which meant that, had we won at the Baseball Ground, we would have gone up.

Clearly, however, Leicester had a bona fide case that its team reacted differently to hearing that we had fallen behind to the reaction that would have occurred had news come through that we had taken the lead. To have replayed only our fixture, therefore, would not have been fair on Leicester: it would have meant that Derby would know that relegation was no longer a possibility and, as a consequence, the likelihood of our winning would have been greater. Basically, had both games been replayed, the odds for promotion would have been in Leicester's favour.

As Tonywa says, however, promotion wasn't taken away from us on that day: we blew it with our failure to pick up more than a lone draw in the six away games prior to the fateful match at Derby, alongside the fact that our solitary loss at home after New Year's Day was in the oh-so-vital match with Leicester.

I do wonder whether supporters' ire was partly a means of deflecting our frustration away from the team's painfully long and yet, seemingly, inexorable slide out of the promotion places.