Man Utd 0 Nottm Forest 4

Paddy Roche

Man­chester Uni­ted 0 Not­ting­ham For­est 4, Old Traf­ford, Eng­lish Foot­ball Lea­gue Fir­st Di­vi­sion, Dec­ember 17, 1977. Pad­dy Roche had a busy day in goal as Man­chester Uni­ted suf­fered a 4-0 de­feat to Fir­st Di­vi­sion lead­ers Not­ting­ham For­est be­fore a crowd of over 54,000 spec­tat­ors at Old Trafford. 

Man­chester Uni­ted had on­ly ma­naged to win three of their pre­vi­ous ten fix­tures in the Fir­st Di­vi­sion and were lan­guish­ing in mid-ta­ble wi­th 17 points gain­ed from 18 mat­ches. By con­trast, Not­ting­ham For­est had emer­ged vic­tori­ous in six of their last ten out­ings and were top­ping the ta­ble wi­th 29 points col­lec­ted from 19 ga­mes. Bri­an Clough´s men, who wore their all-yel­low away strip, went ahead in the 22nd min­ute of the con­test when Man­chester Uni­ted de­fender Bri­an Green­hoff was un­for­tu­nate enough to put the ball in­to his own net and three min­utes la­ter they fou­nd them­selves two goals up as a low cross from John Robert­son was passed back to To­ny Wood­cock who ham­mered the ball bey­ond the reach of Re­pub­lic of Ire­land in­ter­na­tion­al goal­keeper Pad­dy Roach and in­to the onion bag. For­est, led by the per­petu­al run­ning Arch­ie Gem­mill in mid­field, con­tin­ued to be dan­ger­ous fol­low­ing the in­ter­val and had their third goal of the ga­me in the 52nd min­ute of pro­ceed­ings when Robert­son fin­ished off a counter at­tack by round­ing Roche and slot­ting the ball in­to the net. The Tricky Trees then sco­red their fourth goal wi­th two min­utes re­maining of the tie as Wood­cock took a long ball in­to his stride and be­at Roche wi­th a com­posed fin­ish to com­plete his hat-trick of the day. Man­chester Uni­ted Te­am: Pad­dy Roche, Jim­my Nich­oll, Stew­art Hou­s­ton, Bri­an Green­hoff, Mar­tin Bu­chan, Sam­my Mc­Ilroy, Ste­ve Cop­pell, Lou Ma­cari, Stu­art Pear­son, Jim­my Green­hoff, Gor­don Hill. Sub­sti­tute: Ash­ley Gri­mes. Not­ting­ham For­est Te­am: Pe­ter Shilton, Vivi­an An­der­son, Co­lin Bar­rett, Da­vid Need­ham, Ken­ny Burns, John McGov­ern, John Robert­son, Arch­ie Gem­mill, Pe­ter Withe, Mar­tin O’Neill, To­ny Wood­cock. Sub­stitutes: None.

 

Paddy Roche Quickfacts

Pad­dy Roche made 53 ap­pear­ances in all com­pet­i­tions for Man­chester Uni­ted be­fore he joi­ned Brent­ford in 1982. He la­ter played for Hal­i­fax To­wn, Chester City, and fi­nally North­wich Victoria.

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