The Big Match - Week 5

This week's Big Match is the 20/9/80 West Ham v Watford clash from the Boleyn Ground.

Five goals and a last minute diving header from Trevor Brooking!

Plus - the much loved stanchions at the old ground. Who at the soulless London Stadium wouldn't like to see the return of these?

A-list A-frames - Exeter City FC

As late as 2005, Exeter's St James Park hosted Manchester United between two fine sets of A-frames.



Some quarter of a century earlier, the hardware at St James Park rivalled anything at West Ham or QPR or Southampton.



The bygone St James Park features in the poignant clip below.

Hot Tub Time Machine - FC Halifax Town

The reformed and reconstituted FC Halifax Town play out their non-league promotion fairytale between an unworthy pair of box goal nets.


But jump in the old Hot Tub Time Machine and we see the Shaymen knocking Man City out the FA Cup in front of a set of A-frames modelled on - what do you think? - Manchester United's?



Then, jump 10 years further back we see the old Halifax beating Man United with what may be the same stanchions, just painted black?

A-list A-frames - Aberdeen FC

Peculiarly for a club whose crest is designed around an A-frame, Aberdeen's glory days are synonymous with the Pittodrie Continental D's of the time.




But if you go far enough back - and peer through the snow - you see the Dons' History of Goal Nets incorporates a fine set of A-frames.

UEFA European Championships - Italy 1980

The 1980 finals featured 8 teams in two groups of 4. The number of host stadia also increased, from two to four. There, the goal nets generally hung from curvy A-frames in a hybrid fashion:

Stadio Olimpico, Rome


Stadio Communale, Turin

  

San Siro, Milan


Stadio San Paolo, Naples