Man Utd 3 Notts County 3

Kevin Moran

Man­chester Uni­ted 3 Notts Coun­ty 3, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, Dec­ember 27, 1983. Fir­st Di­vi­sion title con­tenders Man­chester Uni­ted could on­ly man­age a 3-3 draw ag­ainst re­leg­a­tion bat­tling Notts Coun­ty at their Old Traf­ford ho­me. But des­pite los­ing two cru­cial points ag­ainst Larry Lloyd´s boys, Uni­ted re­mained sec­ond in the Di­vi­sion One ta­ble, three points be­hind lead­ers Liverpool. 

In their last five Fir­st Di­vi­sion en­coun­ters, Man­chester Uni­ted had over­come Ips­wich To­wn and Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur, drawn wi­th West Ham Uni­ted and Cov­entry City, and be­en beaten by Ever­ton. Notts Coun­ty, mean­while, had de­feated Sun­der­land and lost ag­ainst Queens Park Ran­gers, Birm­ing­ham City, Liver­pool, and Luton To­wn. Fol­low­ing a goal­less fir­st ha­lf, FA Cup hold­ers Man­chester Uni­ted ev­entually push­ed them­selves in­to the lead when Tot­ten­ham Hot­spur loanee Garth Crooks be­at Re­pub­lic of Ire­land goal­keeper Seamus Mc­Don­agh in the 58th min­ute of the con­test. The Old Traf­ford men doubled their ad­vant­age as Scot­land in­ter­na­tion­al Gor­don Mc­Queen head­ed ho­me a cor­ner on 63 min­utes, but Tre­vor Christie ma­naged to re­duce the de­fi­cit for The Mag­pies as the stri­ker con­ver­ted from the pen­alty spot shortly af­ter­wards. Ir­ish cent­ral de­fender Kev­in Mor­an then made it 3-1 in Man­chester United´s fa­vour wi­th a head­er from a flag-kick a few mo­ments la­ter, on­ly for Nottts Coun­ty for­ward Justin Fashanu to score from in­side the six-yard box in the 81st min­ute of the clash, and the pre­vi­ous Nor­wich City and Not­ting­ham For­est play­er fou­nd the back of the net ag­ain wi­th an­oth­er clo­se ran­ge ef­fort wi­th sev­en min­utes left of nor­mal time to make the fi­nal sco­reline read 3-3.

The Di­vi­sion One mat­ch ag­ainst Notts Coun­ty was Jeff Wealands´s last fir­st te­am ap­pear­ance for Man­chester Uni­ted be­fore the thirty-two-year-old goal­keeper was trans­ferred to am­bi­tious Al­li­ance Pre­mier Lea­gue out­fit Al­trin­cham whom he help­ed win the FA Trophy in the 1985-86 cam­paign. The Dar­ling­ton born shot stop­per, who had also ap­peared for Wolver­hampton Wan­derers, Northamp­ton To­wn, Dar­ling­ton, Hull City, and Birm­ing­ham City dur­ing a goal­keep­ing ca­reer stretch­ing twenty-four years, was la­ter in­volved wi­th a highly suc­cess­ful prop­erty res­tor­a­tion and de­vel­op­ment com­pany in Man­chester. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Jeff Wea­l­ands, Kev­in Mor­an, Gor­don Mc­Queen, Mi­ke Dux­bury, Ar­thur Al­bis­ton, Remi Moses, Ar­nold Muh­ren, Ray Wil­kins, Garth Crooks, Frank Stapleton, Ar­thur Gra­ham. Sub­sti­tute: Nor­man White­side. Notts Coun­ty Te­am: Seamus Mc­Don­agh, Ma­rk Good­win, Nigel Wor­thing­ton, Pedro Richards, Da­vid Hunt, Bri­an Kil­cline, Mar­tin O’Neill, Justin Fashanu, Tre­vor Christie, Rachid Harkouk, John Chiedozie. Sub­sti­tute: Da­vid Clarke.

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