Rich Report

At the beginning of the season we had great feeling on the terraces that this was going to be Exeter City's season. Promotion seemed no more than a formality after we had got so close to Third Division football the season before. Unfortunately, as a glance at the League table will reveal, our dreams were shattered.

You have all heard of Shakespeare's 'A Tale of Two Cities', well that title just about summed up our start to the season. Away from home we got off to a magnifi- cent start; but our opening three home fixtures were less appreciable. That basically sums up the season as a whole as well. To date we have recorded six victories on foreign soil and only top teams Colchester and Gillingham (who both lost here at the Park) can better that with eight and nine wins respective- ly. It is at home that we have dug our own grave, dropping no fewer than sixteen points to date. No one expects to go through a season of course without dropping a point at home, but sixteen is a little generous. A more consistent home record and perhaps we would not be sixteen points away from fourth placed Bury.

The season though did get away in fine style away from home with successive victories at Brentford, Chester and Hartlepool. Our first home victory came on 3rd October with a 2-0 triumph over Hartlepool after drawing with Bradford City and Workington and suffering a defeat at the hands of Reading. We followed the Hartlepool victory with a win over now promoted Gillingham, in what was probably the best game of football at the Park all season.

Our next League match saw us crash 0-4, our biggest Fourth Division defeat of the season, at Rotherham. Even so the defeat might have been staved off had one of our players not been sent off by mistake when we were only one down. A month later we chalked up our biggest win of the season at home to Barnsley when we ran out 6-1 victors. Four days later in a game ruined by a terrific wind Doncaster Rovers became the second team to beat the City at the Park this season.

Home victories over Chester, Brent- ford and now promoted Colchester United with a victory at Stockport and draw at Torquay gave us nine points out of a possible ten. That was a fine way to see out the old year and see in the new. Only one point dropped in five games, and very unlucky to have dropped that one, promotion seemed really on again.

Any advantage gained from that five game run was lost during the next five games. Due to postponements at home to Mansfield, Scunthorpe and Rotherham four of the next five matches were away. From these five matches we picked up

two points. Both of these points came in the 4-2 win over Torquay after four away defeats. The Torquay game was City's first home game for seven weeks. The next weekend we picked up three points. On the Saturday we had a home draw with Mansfield. The Sunday saw Fred Binney give his final message to any interested parties in his final game before the transfer deadline with a hat-trick in our 5-2 victory at Crewe. Then the Flu bug struck. We only had nine fit players for the Peterborough match, but the show went on. After the 2-1 home defeat two of the flu victims who played were in a bad way. The club doctor seeing these players in a state of near collapse refused to give permission for any of the flu victims to play in the next match at Scunthorpe. At Easter, City had three fixtures. The first was a richly deserved draw at Bury. As it turned out our only spoil over the holiday period.

Highest gates:
Home-6,822 v. Reading
Away-9,641 v. Peterborough