With the Yom Kippur War affecting oil supplies to Britain, from the Middle East and the Miners' Strike in February, the UK was subjected to a 3 day working week, to save energy. There was a floodlight ban at the nation's stadia, with earlier kick offs appropriate and even a proposal to suspend the league was suggested or to postpone matches and extend the competition to June. These ideas were rejected.
On January 6th 1974, four Third Round FA Cup ties, were played on a Sunday. There was the Sunday Observance Act 1780, in place, which meant there would be no entrance fee charged! The clubs got round this by selling programmes.
Match 1: At Bolton, where they took on Stoke, for a Sunday 2pm ko, the 40,000 crowd was far too large for the number of programmes printed- Bolton won 3-2. Some fans saw this for "free". Bit like 2020-1!
Match 2: On the same day, Cambridge United played Oldham at 11.15am drew 2-2 and 8,000, a huge crowd relatively, saw it. On the 8th the two met again in the replay at Oldham 3-3! Then for the third time, on the 14th at Cambridge, Oldham won 1-2. Burnley stopped Oldham's run, reaching the semi-final, losing to Newcastle.
Match 3: Nottingham Forest beat Bristol Rovers at 2pm 4-3 (23,000 watched);
Match 4:Bradford City beat non-league Alvechurch 4-2 in front of 15,000. Plenty of goals.
Bob Wall the Arsenal Chairman stated that "Playing football and making profits on a Sunday is wrong." "We will not disturb the peace and quiet of the neighbourhood of Highbury on that day."
Despite this plea, the next week, on January 27th 1974, a First Division match, between Stoke and Chelsea ended 0-1 with Geoff Hurst scoring the only goal, a penalty. Nearly 32,000 saw this.
Over that weekend Darlington hosted Stockport County on the Saturday (26th) in Division 4 1-1. The next day, Sunday, Darlo hosted Torquay Utd in Div 4 0-0: 3,054 suffered this.
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