City’s last game before Christmas is against a team I’ve seen us beat stacks of times and seen them beat us stacks of times – as I’ve said before, I think I’ve seen us play Preston more than any other team.
Six questions on Preston going back to the sixties, I’ll post the answers on here on Saturday morning.
60s. A winger with a surname which marked him out as a key weapon in Preston’s attacking planning for a while, this local boy played all of his football for them in the old First Division. When he left Deepdale early in this decade, he changed his shirt colour to blue and helped his new, somewhat isolated, club into the Third Division. His last transfer saw him move closer to home to a club where there are plenty of opportunities to play another sport close by, that embarrassed us in the FA Cup during this decade, but he had retired by then. A talented sportsman, he represented Preston at cricket and table tennis and was a low handicap golfer, but who is he?
70s. A Scot who played more times for his first side then you may have thought, he won his only international cap some three years before he signed for a team some forty hundred and twenty odd miles from his birthplace. Having suffered badly with injuries, he never was able to get an extended run at his new club and so was snapped up by an old team mate to play for Preston who he gave sterling service to for eight years, being nominated as Player of the Season in one of them. His last move saw him playing for a team City faced in the Cup Winners Cup, can you name him?
80s. Sounds like an essential winter clothing item for a City striker who played against Preston for us during this decade!
90s. Straw hanger hit by office leader might produce sought after manager?
00s. Which City player made his last home appearance for the club before being forced to retire from injury in a win over Preston during this decade?
10s. He played for City in their last match against Preston, but has not featured for his current club due to an injury picked up in early September after he had scored three times in the first seven games of the season, do you know who he is?
Answers.
60s. Les Dagger made his debut for Preston in a 6-0 win over Sunderland in 1956 and made his final appearance for them just before their relegation from the top flight in 1961. He played sixty one times in the league for Preston, scoring eight times. Moving on to Carlisle, he was an ever present in their promotion team of 1962, but was not as successful in his second year with them and moved on to Southport for the 63/64 season having scored nine times in seventy four games for them. He also scored nine time for Southport in the eighty one matches he played for them over two seasons before bowing out of the game in 1965.
70s. Francis Burns played six games for Manchester United on their way to winning the European Cup in 1968, but missed out on selection for the Final. He played over one hundred and twenty times for the Old Trafford, winning his only Scottish cap, against Austria in 1969. In 1972, Southampton paid £50,000 for him, but his time there was disrupted by injuries and he returned to Lancashire when Preston manager Bobby Charlton signed him a year later. Burns played over three hundred times for Preston and was thirty three when he signed for Shamrock Rovers for his final season in the game.
80s. Bob Hatton (sorry!).
90s. Current Wycombe manager Gareth Ainsworth who played nearly one hundred times for Preston in two spells with them and who had a loan spell with City in 2003.
00s. Ricky Scimeca was in the City team which beat Preston 1-0 on 5 December 2009 and started in the side which won 2-0 at West Brom, one of his former clubs, three days later, but, after suffering a recurrence of a groin injury in that game, announced his retirement on 17 December.
10s. Rhys Healey came on as a sub in City’s 1-0 home defeat by Preston in December 2017 and has not played for MK Dons since picking up a thigh injury in their win over AFC Wimbledon on 7 September.