CITY 2 QUEENS PARK RANGERS 1
League Division 1
11th February 1978
Attendance 39,860
Scorers
City Channon(57), Bell(66)
QPR Abbott(88)
Ref Trelford Mills
City Corrigan, Clements, Donachie, Booth, Watson, Owen, Channon, Bell, Kidd, Hartford, Barnes – sub Power(unused)
QPR Parkes, Clement, Gillard, Hollins, Howe, Abbott, Shanks, Busby, James, Bowles, Givens – sub Cunningham
A match that could, and possibly should have been called off, ended up to be quite an entertaining if not overly skilful game Leslie Duxbury in The Observer wrote ‘The conditions were farcical, with the boot struggling to find sufficient purchase on almost every inch of frozen turf… With players taking 10 yards at least to break, or kicking lumps out of the Arctic air, Mr Mills must have been wondering how best to tell the 40,000 crowd he ought to call the whole thing off without being lynched.’
QPR dealt with the conditions far easily than City, and they should have won the game, however, Joe Corrigan, playing better than he ever has, made some amazing saves to keep Rangers down to just one goal, which turned out to be an 88th minute consolation, after Channon slipped the QPR offside trap just before the hour and neatly beat the onrushing Parkes to put City 1-0 up, and then less than 10 minutes later Colin Bell was a very popular goalscorer, smashing in a shot following a long ball from Dave Watson.
