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?

Match of the Day - Week 5

Match of the Day previews a fixture this weekend through 30-year eyes...

It's West Brom v West Ham from the Hawthorns in 1986.

A 5-goal thriller and classic Continental D's.

Enjoy.

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.

Wrexham FC

While goal nets aficionados and those with a bent for the spectacular would most readily associate Wrexham's Racecourse Ground with Mark Hughes goal and a pair of classic Continental D's…



A look further back at the Dragons history of goal nets shows A-frames like those at West Ham or QPR in place through the 1970's.






Then, when the Continental D's were finally introduced, rather confusingly they were tied back, box-net-style.




A glimpse of this set-up can be glimpsed in this haunting film from 1979.

Total Goalnets - ADO Den Haag

In the mid 1970's ADO Den Haag were FC Den Haag and they played West Ham off the park in the old European Cup Winners Cup, scoring four into the skinny Dutch A-frames at Zuiderpark.




20 years later the club renamed to ADO Den Haag, changed the on-field architecture but kept the faith with the A-frame.

Loftus Road - Keira Knightley

Sexy only if skinny and spindly float your boat though surprisingly popular, with similar stanchions at West Ham and Southampton. Nil points for ball retention.

QPR



West Ham



Southampton