Match programme: York City v Port Vale (30 March 1968)

About this match programme

By Richard Snowball

For the second season in succession, York City had to apply for re-election to the Football League having finished 4th from the bottom of Division Four with 36 points from their 46 matches.

The season started badly not winning any of their opening 13 games, picking up middle, but then dropping away again at the end of the season, only drawing three of their last nine matches.

This week's featured match played on March 30, 1968 against Port Vale and was the last game they won that season. The previous Monday they had beaten Bradford Park Avenue 6-2 at home and this purple patch continued when they won this match 5-1.

Ted MacDougall,who had been a ÂŁ5,000 close season signing from Liverpool scored at hat-trick and finish the season top goalscorer with 15 goals.

In addition to their poor League form York were also knocked out of the F.A. Cup and F.L. Cup at the first stage, the first time this had happened.

Though it had been another bad season on the pitch crowds held up quite well with an average gate of 4,578.

At the beginning of the season York had changed from the normal red shirts and white shorts to an all white strip, but this did not seem to bring them much luck.

Because of the poor start to the season Tom Lockie became the first City manager to sacked and was replaced by Joe Shaw the Sheffield United stalwart centre-half.

Tom Lockie had been the coach of the 1954-55 F.A. Cup semi-final team and had served the club faithfully for over 30 years as a trainer, coach, physiotherapist and eventually manager.

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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