Month: October 2022

III Division. The top 3 were promoted, the last 4 – relegated. 2 outsiders, one favourite and 3 teams fighting for the 2 remaining promotions.
Doncaster Rovers – last with 33 points.
York City – 23rd with 33 points. Bested Doncaster on goal-difference, but so what? Relegated.
Grimsby Town – nothing to be happy about, really. 22nd with 50 points and joining IV Division.
Rotherham United – unable to survive: 21st with 52 points.
Aldershot – escaped by a point: 20th with 53 points.
Mansfield Town – 19th with 54 points.
Chesterfield – 18th with 55 points.
Southend United – 17th with 55 points.
Preston North End – 16th with 58 points.
Chester City – 15th with 58 points.
Bury – 14th with 59 points.
Gillingham – 13th with 59 points.
Brentford – 12th with 62 points.
Port Vale – 11th with 65 points.
Blackpool -10th with 65 points.
Fulham – 9th with 66 points.

Bristol Rovers – 8th with 66 points.

Wigan Athletic – 7th with 72 points.
Northampton – 6th with 73 points. Running high – for them, that is.
Bristol City – 5th with 75 points.
Notts County – run for promotion, but missed it: 4th with 81 points. Back row; Kevan, Thompson, Belford, Dolan, Leonard, Kimberely, Atkin
Midddle row; Walker(Coach), Yates, Smalley, Birtles, Hart, Young, Lund, Davis, Hill(Youth), Jones(Physio)
Front row; Barnes, Snook, Pike, Barnwell(Manager), Harbottle, Fairclough, Jackson.
Walsall – clinched 3rd place with 82 points and got promoted to Second Division.
Brighton & Hove Albion – battled hard for promotion and succeeded: 2nd with 84 points.
Sunderland dominated the championship and won it confidently with 93 points. 27 wins, 12 tiles, 7 losses, 92-48 goal-difference. They scored most goals in all leagues this season, which was great as well. If anything, Sunderland could not accept staying in III Division and climbed back to II Division right after they were relegated.

IV Division. One outsider and one favourite. At least relegation to the formerly unseen bowels of English football did not trouble most teams. Two teams, however, had points deducted for infringements – Halifax Town was penalized with a point and Tranmere Rovers with 2 points.
Newport County was hopeless outsider this season and was relegated with 25 points. They received 105 goals in their net.
Carlisle United – very weak this year, but safe: 23rd with 44 points.
Exeter City – 22nd with 46 points.
Rochdale – 21st with 48 points.
Stockport County – 20th with 51 points.
Hereford United – 19th with 54 points.
Halifax Town – 18th with 55 points.
Crewe Alexandra – 17th with 58 points.
Hartlepool United – 16th with 59 points.
Cambridge United – 15th with 61 points.
Tranmere Rovers – 14th with 64 points.
Darlington – 13th with 65 points.
Scarborough, the first team directly promoted from 5th level, did very well for a debutante – 12th with 65 points.
Wrexham – 11th with 66 points.
Burnley – 10th with 67 points.
Colchester United – 9th with 67 points.

Leyton Orient – 8th with 69 points.
Peterborough United – 7th with 70 points.
Swansea City – 6th with 70 points. There was no end of misery… the Swans did quite well, yet, most likely for financial reasons they were out of the league in the next season. Remember their amazing climb to First Division less than 10 years ago? Looks like they were paying terrible price for that – now going out of professional football.
Three teams fought for 3rd place and two naturally failed to get promoted.
Torquay United ended 5th with 77 points.
Scunthorpe United – 4th with 77 points, ahead of Torquay on better goal-difference.
Bolton Wanderers clinched 3rd place with 78 points and was going to play in the III Division next season.
Cardiff City – comfortably 2nd with 85 points and promoted. Kind of relieve for the Welsh football – one of their teams was going to be higher than 4th level next year.
Wolverhampton Wanderers had no rivals this season: champions with 90 points from 27 wins, 9 ties, and 10 losses. Scored 82 goals, received 43.
Happy boys – after sinking to the very bottom, the Wolves were trying to climb back to glory. So far, up to III Division, but who knows?

England. Ranked 9th in the UEFA’s yearly table. Just a reminder why that: English teams were banned from European tournaments and could not get any fresh points. Ranking depended solely on the old record, which was so great that without any teams playing in Europe England was still 2 points ahead of Yugoslavia, ranked 10th at the moment. There was no doubt the English championship was much superior to practically all Europe, although the 1980s were years of trouble and decline.
The season in a nutshell: 3 points for a win, still a novelty in the football world. For the first time a team was directly promoted from bellow the 4 professional leagues and it did quite well in the 4th Division. The 1st Division was reduced to 21 teams, going to be of 20 teams the next season. Thus, 2nd Division had 23 teams at the moment. 4 teams were relegated from the top league and 3 promoted from 2nd Division. There was no dramatic race for 1st in any of the professional leagues and Liverpool entirely dominated the top division. For all pretense and myth-building of Everton, they finished distant 4th, not even able to challenge rising Manchester United, let alone Liverpool, from which they were separated by 20 points.
Lincoln City, having the disgusting honour to be the first directly relegated team from the traditional professional leagues, was instantly seen as a favourite for promotion – and they did not disappoint. They won the promotion and were going back to IV Division after only a year of absence.

Austria. Ranked 8th. Like Scotland, Austria was not as good as ranking suggests – based on UEFA’s computation of teams performance in Europe, the ranking gives somewhat inflated picture sometimes. Austrian championship was modified into unusual for Europe scheme precisely because of financial troubles and relatively low quality: it was 2-phased championship. In the fall the top leagues played regular season. In the spring the top 8 in the fall continued between themselves to compete for the national title, carrying their fall records. The last 4 in the fall plus the Second Division top 4 in the fall played in another spring league, serving as promotion/relegation tournament – the top 4 in it moved to the top league for the first stage of the next season, the rest – to Second Division. No previous records were carried to this stage, naturally.
Starting from there: the last 4 of First Division – SK VOEST Linz, Linzer ASK, SK Austria Klagenfurt and VfB Modling were joined by the Second Division top 4 in the fall: VSE Sankt Polten, SK Vorwaerts Steyr, Kremser SC, and SV Austria Salzburg. Quite an interesting mix, at least at the level of trivia: both clubs from Linz found themselves in danger of relegation. SV Austria Salzburg was still a far cry from the strong club, which they became (under different name) in the 21st century. Kremser SC enjoyed its best ever season, creating a sensation. SK Vorwaerts, practically unheard of club so far, was going very soon to employ the greatest Soviet player – Oleg Blokhin. But another world-famous player was already here:
Mario Kempes started his second season in Austria for Second Division VSE Sankt Polten – after playing for top-league First Vienna the previous season. Hardly noticed by anyone… Kempes was going down by some time and practically disappeared from sight and mind already. Now 33 years old, he was no good for big and famous clubs, but for modest St. Polten was great help.
VfB Modling finished last in the spring with 6 points and moved to second level for 1988-89.
Austria Salzburg was next to last with 9 points and stayed in Second Division. Kremser SC was unable to get promoted – 6th with 12 points.
VOEST Linz ended 5th with 15 points and after many years in First Division was relegated.
Vorwaerts Steyr earned 17 points and with that finished 4th – and was promoted, which most likely moved them to importing Blokhin, very old by now – but that was later.
VSE Sankt Polten also succeeded: 3rd with 17 points and promoted. Mario Kempes helped enough, himself moving back to top flight football.
Austria Klagenfurt put itself together after terrible fall stage and finished 2nd with 18 points. Lost top position on worse goal-difference, but it did not matter – the main task to stay in First Division was completed successfully.
Same for Linzer ASK, which topped the table – goal-difference placed them above Austria Klagenfurt, but no matter – keeping place among the best mattered. They had somewhat amusing spring campaign: did not lose even a match – the only team in the relegation group without a loss – but did not win often either. They won 4 games and tied 10! Consequently, they were modest scorers – only 16 goals, less than relegated city rivals VOEST and not even close to Kempes-lead VSE Sankt Polten, which scored 30 goals in their 14 games.
The championship play-off. Things were pretty much already decided in the fall, so there was exciting battle for the title. The lower one goes… it is safe to say that for at least half of the teams the real work ended in the fall – securing a place in the top league for the next season. In brackets is the club’s position and points they had at the end of the fall stage.
Wiener Sportclub – last with 31 points (8th with 22)
Grazer AK – 7th with 35 points ( 3rd with 27)
Swarovski Tirol – 6th with 37 points (5th with 25)
Admira/Wacker – 5th with 38 points (4th with 25)
First Vienna FC – 4th with 39 points (7th with 23)

Sturm Graz – 3rd with 42 points (6th with 24)
Austria (Vienna) – 2nd with 46 points (2nd with 28)
Rapid (Vienna) – champions with 54 points (1st with 36 points). They dominated the full championship, way stronger than the usual rival Austria. 22 wins, 10 ties, 4 losses, 81-40. Austria outscored them by 2 goals, but that was nothing. Otto Baric kept his great work with the team, which, as usual, was completed with Yugoslavians – Zlatko Kranjcar (31 years old), Sulejman Halilovic (32), and Zoran Stojadinovic (25). Somewhat lesser names than Austria’s imports (Hungarian Tibor Nyilasi, Czechoslovak goalkeeper Vladimir Borovicka, and Argentine Jose Percudani), but as a whole Rapid’s selection performed much better.
Eventually, a Soviet player was added to the squad – the 31 years old former national team midfielder Sergey Shavlo. How much he contributed to Rapid is even unimportant: the big note here is the real start of USSR exporting players. Shavlo was one of the first, soon to be followed by many, but there was significant gap of years until the Soviets decided to follow up their over-careful opening some years ago, when Zinchenko was let play for same Rapid. In any case Rapid won one more title and no reason to mention how many they had.
The Cup final was quite unusual – Swarovski Tirol reached the final, which, in general, was nothing new, but the other finalist was Second Division Kremser SC. Hardly heard of club outside Austria. The underdog won the first leg of the final at home 2-0 and surprisingly scored a goal in Innsbruck. They lost the second leg, but this goal proved to be pure gold: 1-3. The away-goal rule made Kremser SC the winner.
Swarovski Tirol, a new ambitious project, was more ambitious than strong at the moment and unexpectedly lost the final. Too bad for the project… which was just a typical Austrian example of desperate efforts to keep football alive: the Innsbruck club was fairly well known and successful name, but behind the familiar name a history of trouble lurked: the club changed names, reformed, amalgamated, re-started, the famous sponsor Swarovski came to help, dropped out, came back again. This was fresh re-incarnation, barely 2 years old and not fully developed. Hence, ambition did not match strength and they lost.
Kremser SC from the city of Krems was modest club, usually playing somewhere deep down in the Austrian football system. Of course, they never won anything substantial and, to a point, playing well in the Second Division was the best they probably dreamed of. But they played well this season and had a chance even to get promoted to the top league. That chance they lost, but reaching the Cup final fueled hopes for success. They won the final a bit luckily, but cannot blame them for winning. A great victory of the underdog – their first and last! Such historic victory and one never repeated deserves better memory than the club has… their website practically does not mention the success and there is no picture of the club’s greatest heroes. Let put it like that: as a whole, Austria is not all that crazy about football and prefers alpine sports.