Match programme: York City v Blackburn Rovers (29 April 1972)

About this match programme

By Richard Snowball

Season 1971-72 was York City's first back in Division Three and despite reaching the third round of the F.L. Cup, beating higher League Middlesbrough and losing to League One leaders Sheffield United, York struggled in the League and avoided relegation on goal average.

York finished the season with three home matches in a week, but failed to score in any of these, losing to Bournemouth 0-2, picking up a valuable point in a 0-0 draw with Oldham and coming into the last game of the season against Blackburn Rover all was to play for.

Blackburn were lying just above halfway in the League with no chance of promotion, but City's lack of fire power proved vital losing the match by 0-1.

Despite York's lowly League position crowds held up well with these three matches attracting 6,846, 5,770 and 5,099 with the season's average being 5,597, the highest for six seasons. Paul Aimson again finished top goal scorer with 16 goals.

However York's goal scoring earlier in the season, and a fairly solid defence in which John Mackin, Barry Swallow, Chris Topping and Phil Burrows played every game, proved to be the difference with York having the better goal average of four clubs that ended up on 36 points with York finishing sixth from the bottom of the League.

Acknowledgement

This facsimile of the match programme was created by the publisher of There’s Only One Arthur Bottom, the daily email newsletter for fans of York City FC, and TOOAB contributors Richard Snowball, Terry Espiner and Paul Bowser.

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