100yearsofcoconuts --- And I would rather be anywhere else

In 1979, the political and cultural magazine the New Statesman published an article by journalist and broadcaster Russell Davies, a 1967 graduate of Cambridge, in which he exposed the U’s to the searching glare of the media spotlight. The article gives those who were never lucky enough to visit the Abbey Stadium in the late 1970s an accurate impression of the experience to be expected on a wet and windy March Saturday.
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Davies was reporting on the match that took place at the Abbey on Saturday, 10 March 1979. United lost the Second Division fixture 0-1 to Notts County in front of 5,157 spectators. The game’s lure had been irresistible, said the writer.

Mick Leach: joined Tom Finney and Derrick Christie in attack for a time

‘What! The oldest League club in the world against a home side boasting hot-shot £300,000 property Alan Biley, in whom Spurs are trying vainly to suppress an interest?’ It was a spectatorial must, said Davies.

‘Cambridge United is still a small club in resources and outlook, and on a day like Saturday it seems to get smaller. A Fenland wind, rotten with damped-off celery stalks, came bowling straight down the ground from the Allotments End, where there is no stand – just a shallow open terrace, caged off for visiting supporters (on this occasion no more than a couple of hundred or so).

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