Match of the Day - Week 36

An early Match of the Day, previewing the West Ham v Tottenham derby this forthcoming weekend.

This season West ham have sucked almost as badly as their new lifeless new stadium and it's reported that manager Slaven Bilic will struggle to retain his job should things go awry against high-flying Spurs on Saturday.

How Bilic could do with a Tony Cottee! Cottee scored 92 goals in 212 games for the Hammers, the first coming in the New Year's derby of 1983, below.

Goal nets aficionados can marvel at how the old Boleyn Ground's nets retain the ball, despite their notorious shallowness.

The Big Match - Week 10

The Big Match comes from the afternoon of Halloween, 1981.

It's West Ham v Middlesbrough at the Boleyn Ground.

Though the Boleyn nets are famously shallow, ball retention is helped by the stanchions planted just off the grass, which creates a narrow trench that slows or stops the ball.


Given the box nets of 2016 - pulled tight as smiles at Brad Pitt's house and made of trampoline - would Ray Stewart's penalty for 3-0 have rebounded to the half way line?

The Big Match - Week 9

This week's Big Match comes from the corresponding weekend in season 1980/81.

It's West Ham United v Bolton Wanderers and the wonderfully eccentric hardware at the old Boleyn Ground.


West Ham played out between these marvellously distinctive goal frames foe decades and any time you saw them playing on TV you KNEW the game was at the Boleyn because of the stanchions.

Where now any similar totems of distinctive identity at West Ham?

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?

West Ham Utd

The hardware at the Boleyn Ground wasn't always synonymous with poor ball retention.

In the 1930's, a pair of Sunderland-style square-o's stood at either end of the field.


You get a better, albeit brief, glimpse of them here, in 1935.


By the 1960's, the Hammers had installed a classic set of A-frames.



The skinny curved stanchions of yore were installed in the 1967/68 season.


And so commenced the glory years of spectacular rebounds out of the Boleyn goal nets, till the appearance of box nets in the aftermath of the Spain 1982 World Cup.