Today I'm going back 37 years to 1985 and York City's trip to the Priestfield Stadium in Kent to play Gillingham in a Third Division fixture. The attendance at the game was 3,509. This was my third of eight visits to the Priestfield including a Brighton & Hove Albion home game there in 1997. I've seen York there on six occasions now and the Priestfield has proven to be a relatively happy hunting ground for City with three victories from those six games.
The programme for the featured game contained a section on the average Third Division attendances for the season thus far. I suspect that the table of averages would have been rather skewed depending on whether you had played Derby County yet or not. Certainly Derby had the leading home average attendance with 12,109 and York came (a surprisingly high for the time) ninth with 3,994. Gillingham were in the bottom four average attendances with 3,051 and bottom of the table came Lincoln City with just 2,361. Leading goal scorers in Division Three were Craig Madden of Bury with nine (including his goals in the League Cup) closely followed by York's very own Keith Walwyn with eight. Gillingham's leading scorer at the time was Tony Cascarino with six goals to his name. The programme also contained a few action photos from Gillingham's recent game against Chesterfield showing Chesterfield (and future York City) keeper Chris Marples thwarting the ever-dangerous Cascarino. In the programme's "Looking Back" feature there was even a piece which didn't require the reader to look back very far. Just over ten months previously City had hammered Gillingham 7-1 at Bootham Crescent which the programme production team kindly reminded us of.
The programme's cover price is shown as 50 pence and I was interested to see how much it would cost to secure a copy today from eBay. Surprisingly there are several examples available on eBay with prices ranging from £1 to £3.50 each with postage to be added on top. Personally I wouldn't pay more than £1 for one because this issue isn't at all rare but, hey, I already have a copy! The white horses shown on the cover are part of the traditional flag of Kent also known as the Invicta Flag. Invicta, a Latin word, translates as "Unconquered" as is shown on the programme cover. After that 7-1 thrashing I think that a few York fans would have had cause to argue with Gillingham's claim. Unconquered? I don't think so!
Gillingham manager at the time, Keith Peacock, was a former stalwart of another Kentish side, Charlton Athletic and he has a unique claim to fame. Peacock was the first ever substitute to be used in the Football League when he came on after just 11 minutes on the opening day of the season in August 1965. In all, Peacock made 532 Football League appearances for Charlton Athletic, his only English club side as a player between 1962-1979. He is also the father of Gavin Peacock who had a fine career in his own right for a few clubs including Newcastle United, Chelsea and QPR.
York, managed by Denis Smith, won the featured game with goals from Dale Banton and David McAughtrie. Gillingham's Paul Collins got Gillingham's lone reply. York ended the season in 7th place (of 24) with Gillingham finishing two places higher in 5th. Champions of Division Three that season were Reading with Plymouth Argyle and Derby County also getting promoted. At the other end of the table, Lincoln City, Cardiff City, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Swansea City were all relegated into the fourth tier, Wolves for the first time ever.
CRB Match No. 396
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