Margate v Spurs - 35 years on

London, UK

It seems like only yesterday that my father took me to watch Margate play Spurs in front of over 14,000 spectators at Hartsdown Park. The occasion on January 13th, 1973 was Margate's second only venture into the 3rd round proper of the FA Cup.

Dennis Signy's Sunday Express report shows two errors. One was the crowd figure, in the other Margate manager Les Riggs has an extra "B" at the front of his surname! There are more photos and reports of this match at Jeff Trice's excellent Margate FC history site here

Later in 1973, yours truly escaped to north-west London and eventually met up with author, journalist and broadcaster Dennis Signy. At that time, Dennis was editor at the Hendon Times. Nowadays, he's the PR spokesman for Barnet FC and has held a similar position at the Football League

About 6 years ago, I took Dennis to see Margate take on Barnet in the Conference at Hartsdown Park. It was his first time back there since that day in early 1973.










10p for a programme!!

Margate v Tottenham Hotspur 13.1.1973

And on this day in 1973, we played Spurs in the 3rd round of the Cup. We should have scored after 10 minutes but went on to lose 6-0. It was the first time since 1936 that Margate FC had reached the 3rd Round. God knows when that will be repeated again.

The crowd that day was 14,169. Even if we had a decent ground nowadays, the Health & Safety Nazi's would stop us from having half that figure. For the Fulham game in 1997, "only" 5100 were allowed in.

Today, Margate FC is playing Worthing. The crowd is around 600.

For the football buffs amongst you, there's an excellent description of the Spurs match, with photographs, at Jeff Trice's excellent MFC history site.