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If you look at that Tony Sanders managed team from his arrival to us reaching the pinnacle, the evolution was not dissimilar to what we are seeing today.

You had mainstays like Ivan Crossley and Mickey Brooke becoming squad players - but still playing an important role (Brookes goal at Droylsden taking us to White Hart Lane for example); you had a raising of the bar seeing upgrades from (eg) Mickey Moore to John Rogers, and a falling by the wayside of the (eg) Joe Flaherty's of this world.  You even saw the odd big name signing coming in and failing to make an impact (Tony Webber as example)

And the main thrust was strengthen the squad each year - Johnson and Webber in 76/7; Rogers, Bailey and King in 77/8; Barry Howard in 78/9; Graham Barrow and Barry Whitbread in 79/80.  And we ended up with a squad that had replaced (eg) Alan Heathcote with Graham Barrow

The arrival of Ceesay, Mooney, Senior, Colclough, Kosylo and Smith (the new Graham Barrow) is part of the same dynamic.

Coincidentally, the board is expanding to a similar size as it was in the late 70's - ambitious young dynamic business leaders (and me!)

The root cause of the demise from 80/1 onwards was that we felt we had to give the team that missed out on FL another go, and their momentum carried them to a second title.  Unfortunately they all reached the end of their career at the same time (albeit at Wembley).  We should perhaps have wielded the axe in 1980 and given new talent time to grow

Excellent summing up of a great time to be an Alty fan, then and now. The 80/81 side won the title, the league cup and made the 3rd round of the FA Cup (against Liverpool) but they didn't have quite the dominance over opposition sides they'd enjoyed the previous season and there were a few backs to the wall performances where we ground out wins. Losing Graham Barrow at the start of 81/82 was a huge blow and we knew early on that season that the team was past its best - even so, we made it to Wembley in the Trophy and the 3rd round of the FA Cup. If we'd won the Trophy in 82 it may have papered over the growing cracks and done us more harm than good in the long run. The club and current team is sensibly evolving and inevitably certain players will have reached their level having done their bit for Alty.

Yes how did I miss Lennie, saw him play right at the start of my time watching Alty, Johhny Worth was before my time

Lenny Dickenson - leading scorer in 62/3 season but a mainstay of the side from 72 - 77

Johnny Worth - 8 appearances in 63/4 returned to the club for great seasons from 66-72

Paying the volunteers who man the Alty TV live streaming service would have made no difference when dealing with the issues last night. We are lucky enough to have a team who know what they are doing and have put many many hours of preparation and testing into running the service. What they cannot totally plan for are technological issues beyond their immediate control such as occurred last night. The service was only initiated in late September and as such has run extremely well within a steep learning curve. I understand people being frustrated having paid for the service but the team are even more so when things don't go right after so much organisation and effort has gone into providing it for us.

As an aside, highlights are also provided for BT Sport and they have sent us equipment worth several thousands of pounds and we have had all sorts of problems getting the video to BT via the network channels they've setup and they're a multi-million pound communications company!


 

Excellent and sensible post.

I am all for competition but Tony Thompson is not the problem here. I'm struggling to attribute any of the recent goals conceded directly to him? You could make a case for some of the crosses, and his pass to Hampson for the second yellow was a bit suicidal, but I would say we simply need to defend much better than we have done. We very much did last night.

On crosses - the great Stuart Coburn was susceptible to this at times. If we had a keeper who could shot stop, command every cross and ping 60 yards consistently, they would not be here long.

So, on kicking - Thompson is not Ederson. There is always going to be an erraticity to what he does, and on the whole I think his distribution is the best I've seen so far at this level. The confidence he has to continually do what is asked of him by Phil and Neil, even if one or two don't go to plan, is commendable and he finds his man way more than he doesn't. This only ever seems to be questioned when we're on a bad run, convenient.

By all means put Matt Gould in on Saturday but when Bromley (who Conferenced the life out of us last time out with a high press) press us and one of our defenders has to go backwards, they're going to expect Thompson to be there. There's an understanding that has been developed and generally, our distribution out from the back has been excellent as a unit.

I do think Gould deserves way more minutes than he has had, though. He should have started in the Trophy and in a normal season we may have had a couple more Cheshire Cup games by now. I'd be all for him coming in if I felt Tony was losing us points but I just don't see how anyone is coming to that conclusion?

I'd really like us to beat them with them acting all Billy Big Bollocks and not allowing in any of our media team or  directors.

Whenever they do show our games it's usually an away game. They don't seem to like coming to Moss Lane.

They've looked at our superior Alty TV service and quite rightly concluded they can't compete 

I know a lot of work has been done in the Sponsors Lounge and that the Fanzone "pods" are ready and delivery/installation of them is imminent.

Must have been the following game because I've never been to Welling. Bobby Coy was the other new player to me.

It was a few games into Docherty's spell in charge, and was away at Welling United where we won 1-0 through a Gary Stewart penalty. Jimmy Collins, Bobby Coy and Adrian Mann were the players who made their debuts, but they were all gone by the following month. Adrian Mann scored in the following match.

PS I also have Mick Farrelly scoring a penalty at Hyde later that season.