On this day in 1981, Orient beat Sheffield Wednesday at Brisbane Road, the first time the Owls had played in Leyton since 1974.
Sheffield Wednesday had a good season and sat sixth in the table, 14 points behind eventual champions West Ham. Orient sat 14th and were having a decent season, as manager Jimmy Bloomfield had a wealth of experience in the team; Mervyn Day, Tommy Taylor, John Chiedozie, Stan Bowles and Peter Taylor.
The latter scored in the 2-0 win against Wednesday and the other goal came from another highly experienced footballer, Billy Jennings. The local born centre forward played over 200 games for West Ham Watford during the 70's, scoring over 60 goals and finishing as the top scorer in the Third Division in 1973/74 with 26 goals. Coincidentally he was later the agent of the former Orient manager Kevin Nolan. Orient went into the game having not won since the 7th of February, which was against lowly ranked Wrexham - the O's win prior to that game came almost 2 months earlier. During the time between the Wrexham and Sheffield Wednesday game, only John Margerrison managed to find the net for the O's, which was in a respectable 1-1 draw at the Baseball Ground. The team that day was Day, Fisher, Roffey, Taylor, Gray, Moores, Chiedozie, Bowles, Jennings, Mayo, Taylor and Godfrey. A surprising result came on the following Tuesday when Orient beat Terry Venable's QPR side 4-0 - a 'kick up the R's' for the likes of John Burridge, Terry Fenwick, former-O Glenn Roeder, Gerry Francis, Tony Currie and future-O Barry Silkman. However in the end, it was not as such a surprising fact that Orient missed on relegation by just two points that season, finishing 17th and only getting 13 wins all year.
The Owls finished 10th and would miss out on promotion to the First Division but a solitary point the following year, but would go up two years later in 1984. Orient tumbled out of the Second Division the year after, their centenary year, and haven't returned since.
*This article has not been edited*
Comments