Halifax Town(H).22/03/72.

We've no doubt said before that, whenever programmes from 1971/72 are presented, we would have been entirely unprepared then for just how little third-tier football would be witnessed at Plainmoor thereafter. The clock is ticking. Jack Edwards reckons we need nineteen points from thirteen games to reach the forty point safety target. Two points for a win. He's right. Promotion form. It surely wasn't going to happen.

In fact we ended with thirty-two points and - with ten wins - that equates to forty-two points under the current system. You could say the 1960s just about lasted until 1972 at Plainmoor but were then gone in a flash.

Edwards talks of sixty-one direct and forty-one positional changes during the season to date. That sounds awfully high; I know it was the reasoning behind our struggles at the time. But there's no comparative figures easily available so you can't be sure just how "remarkable" a figure this was. Nor, in a game which these days is more tactically complex, would it be easy to place this data in a modern context. Yet it seems that, with Edwards taking the trouble to make the calculation, he was a manager under pressure.

And, as Edwards says, it wasn't going to help with Skirton, Stubbs and Welsh not scoring. Including the Halifax game there were to be another twelve goals that season: Tearse five (an enormous bonus you suspect); Skirton, Twitchin, Welsh, Jackson, Stuckey, Edwards and Stocks one each.

In the programme's small print there's news of two forthcoming events: the Easter bonnet parade and the ex-pros tour to Cologne. Does anybody have memories of either? Those of the German trip will probably be rather more interesting. But, if you paraded in a bonnet forty-two years ago, we'd still like to hear.