Ipswich 1 Manchester U 1

Frank Stapleton

Ips­wich To­wn 1 Man­chester Uni­ted 1, Port­man Road, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, Feb­ruary 5, 1983. Man­chester Uni­ted and Ips­wich To­wn shared the spoils in a 1-1 draw at Port­man Road. John Wark han­ded The Blues the lead four min­utes ahead of the in­ter­val be­fore Frank Stapleton equal­ised for the vis­it­ors a min­ute in­to the sec­ond period.

Man­chester Uni­ted had beaten Ips­wich To­wn 3-1 in the re­verse meet­ing at Old Traf­ford thanks to a brace from Nor­man White­side and a goal by Ste­ve Cop­pell. In their last five Fir­st Di­vi­sion fix­tures, Uni­ted had de­feated As­ton Vil­la, Birm­ing­ham City, Not­ting­ham For­est, drawn wi­th West Brom­wich Al­bion, and lost ag­ainst Cov­entry City, where­as Ips­wich had beaten South­ampton, Brighton and Hove Al­bion, drawn wi­th As­ton Vil­la, and be­en de­feated by Nor­wich City and Sto­ke City. The East Anglia club star­ted the bet­ter and the ho­me te­am had sev­er­al good scor­ing chances early on. Ips­wich ev­entually es­tab­lished the lead thanks to a spec­tac­u­lar over­head kick from John Wark fol­low­ing 41 min­utes of play, but Man­chester Uni­ted equal­ised shortly af­ter the re­start thro­ugh Frank Stapleton who un­leashed a power­ful shot from out­side the pen­alty area pa­st To­wn net­mind­er Paul Cooper and in­to the goal in the 46th min­ute of the mat­ch. Wi­th less than ten min­utes left of nor­mal time, Ron Atkinson´s Uni­ted al­most had a late win­ner, but Ste­ve Coppell´s low free kick was bril­liantly saved by Cooper. A con­sist­ent and pro­lif­ic marks­man, Stapleton would go on to score 19 goals in 59 fir­st te­am ap­pear­ances for Man­chester Uni­ted dur­ing a sea­son which cul­min­ated in The Reds lift­ing the FA cup trophy for the fifth time in their his­tory af­ter beat­ing al­ready re­leg­ated Brighton in the fi­nal af­ter a re­play. Ips­wich To­wn Te­am: Paul Cooper, Tre­vor Put­ney, Irvin Gernon, Frank Thijssen, Rus­sell Os­man, Terry Butcher, Ste­ve Mc­Call, John Wark, Paul Mar­iner, Alan Brazil, Kev­in O’Callaghan. Sub­sti­tute: Mich D’Avray. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Ga­ry Bai­ley, Kev­in Mor­an, Gor­don Mc­Queen, Mi­ke Dux­bury, Ar­thur Al­bis­ton, Ste­ve Cop­pell, Ar­nold Muh­ren, Remi Moses, Frank Stapleton, Bry­an Rob­son, Nor­man White­side. Sub­stitutes: None.

 

Manchester United Quickfacts

Man­chester Uni­ted fin­ished the 1982-83 cam­paign in a dis­ap­point­ing third place wi­th 70 points won from 42 ga­mes played, as much as twelve points adrift of Fir­st Di­vi­sion Cham­pi­ons Liverpool.

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