CITY 1 BLACKPOOL 1
League Cup 3rd Round
11th October 1967
attendance 27,633
Scorers
City Summerbee(21)
Blackpool Craven(19)
Ref Jack Taylor
City Corrigan, Book, Pardoe, Horne, Heslop, Oakes, Hince, Bell, Summerbee, Young, Coleman – sub Connor
Blackpool Taylor, Armfield, Mowbray, Milne, James, McPhee, Skirton, Craven, Charnley, Green, Oates – sub Brown
I was told the day before the first team were due to face 2nd Division leaders Blackpool in a League Cup tie that I would be playing. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t even thought about 
playing for the senior side because I was the third choice keeper and little more than a novice. I was 18 and all of a sudden I was being thrown in at the deep end. The club had to order an extra-large keeper’s jersey, because neither Harry Dowd’s or Ken Mulearn’s were big enough. On The plus side, with only 24 hours to go, I didn’t have time to get nervous.
I remember travelling down to Maine Road to join up with the rest of the squad… I was running on pure adrenalin, never more so than when I ran out at Maine Road for the very first time in front of a sizeable crowd of 28,000.
I was confident, and when I looked at the calibre of the players around me I had to pinch myself that this was really happening.
… With 5 minutes gone, Blackpool managed to get their first shot on target, a tame effort that gave me the perfect chance to collect without much fuss, only I didn’t and instead watched the ball somehow squeeze through my legs and into the net. It was a disaster; my first touch in senior football on our own ground had resulted in a howler… if a hole had opened up in the penalty area at that moment I’d happily have jumped in. Tony Book ran over, gave me a pat on the back and said “Come on lad just get on with it”. That was typical of Skip, who would have done the same even if he hadn’t been captain.
… Any thoughts of me being the next Frank Swift or the new Bert Trautmann had instantly evaporated, and it would take a long time before the crowd trusted me to keep goal for their team.
… I was thankful that I played reasonably well after my mistake and Mike Summerbee said to me at half-time that if we were still losing 1-0 with 10 minutes to go, I should launch the ball forward at every opportunity and one of the forwards would get a goal. That’s what I did and, sure enough, Summerbee scored to take the tie to a replay
AN EXTRACT FROM BIG JOE THE JOE CORRIGAN STORY BY JOE CORRIGAN AND DAVID CLAYTON