Matches – 24 January 1970 – Sutton United 0 Leeds United 6
Matches – 24 January 1970 – Sutton United 0 Leeds United 6 FA Cup fourth round – Gander Green Lane – 14,000 Scorers: Clarke 4, Lorimer 2 Sutton United: Roffey, Brookes, Clarke, Powell, Faulkner, Gradi, Mellows, Bladon, Drabwell, Pritchard, Howard Leeds United: Harvey, Reaney, Cooper, Bremner, Charlton, Hunter, Lorimer, Clarke, Jones, Giles, Madeley The FA Cup has always been loved by football romantics, chiefly for the unique opportunity afforded for the most mundane of football teams to be pitched into the national spotlight after being drawn against one of the giants of the English game; rarely has there been a starker contrast between Davids and Goliaths than in January 1970, when Leeds United were drawn to meet tiny Sutton United. The Guardian of 23 January 1970 features the following day's Cup clash between Sutton and Leeds At the time, Leeds were reigning League champions and leading the First Division table, through to the last eight in the European Cup and hotly fancied to win the FA Cup; they were popularly acknowledged as the most professional and hard to beat team in the country, maybe even in the whole of Europe. In contrast, Sutton United were a bunch of amateurs operating in the Isthmian League, or as Albert Barham put it in the Guardian, “a collection which includes a schoolmaster, jig borer, cable jointer, engineers and a panel beater.” Describing the game as “the day of a lifetime” in his preview, Barham wrote: “Halfway between Cheam, of Hancock‟s Half Hour memory, and the suburbia of Sutton, a strip board sign leans back from the road.
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