A Look Into Histories

A LOOK INTO HISTORY TWO HUNDRED AND SEVENTY EIGHT

NORTHAMPTON TOWN REACH THE TOP DIVISION.

Although formed in 1897 then members of the Southern League in 1901, “The Cobblers” did not join the Football League until 1920 and spent over forty years in the lower divisions until joining Division Two in 1963.
A golden time then befell our club resulting in runners up to Newcastle United by one point in 1965 and promotion to the old Division One, the peak of English football.

With manager David Bowen, their first game was at Everton, a 2-5 loss on August 21st with 48,479 watching on, the highest away gate all season. The first home game was v Arsenal four days later, a 1-1 draw. Another 1-1 draw came v Manchester United but the first win didn’t come until October 23rd 2 1 against West Ham United. The pressure of this higher grade of football was telling and very few wins came their way so, on April 23rd 1966 fellow relegation side Fulham in front of a record crowd of 24,523 came to the County Ground, shared with Cricket to see the home side take a half time 2 1 lead, Bobby Robson scoring for Fulham. Sadly the second half was all one way traffic and Fulham won 4-2 thus meaning Northampton Town after just one season were doomed to relegation as second bottom to Blackburn Rovers.
Our match programme in claret and white is for their final home match on Monday April 25th 1966 v Sunderland and the League Table showed second bottom on 31 points along with Sheffield Wednesday who had three games in hand.
Even though they carved out a 2 1 win giving them 33 points they would then lose their final game at Blackpool 0-3 thus returning to Division Two. The very neat A5 Programme priced 6d “Cobblers Chatter” were actually hoping that their late season form would mean a reprieve. A History of Sunderland followed by the League table, Supporters notes, team line-ups in the centre with Jim Baxter, six more Scots and keeper Jim Montgomery in the Sunderland side. All results plus those for the Football Combination side were given and all appearences which made it a very worthwhile read for the money.