Peterborough we're our constant nemisis in those days, coming from non league football and beating us to the fourth division title in their first season.
Johnny Byrne would tell of his own personal rivalry with Norman Rigby, their captain and CB.

I remember that Aston Villa cup tie very well and can recall the coach journey home as the most silent trip home for a Palace match that I ever experienced.
The fact that Dennis Uphill scored was memorable in itself but no one would have predicted that result.

I was standing just to the left of the players tunnel and close up could see the the tears in Vic Rouse's eyes as he left the pitch. I was standing next to a Villa supporter throughout the match, as we could then and both wearing the claret blue team colours of the day. I recall him saying that if Villa gave us Peter McParland and £20 thousand, a lot of money then, for Johnny Byrne they would of had a bargain.

Five minutes from time my mates and I were looking at a return match at Selhurst with great anticipation, at home to a first division side at SP would have been a very attractive FA cup tie fixture way back then.
We couldn't wish the clock on the opposite stand around quick enough as we were over five minutes into injury time when Burrows crossed the ball over from their left flank.
The ball seemed to hang in the air as Rouse came to collect only for it to sail over his head into the net....still to this day I'll never know where all that injury time came from!

We left the ground in disgust and miserable as hell,with my mate kicking over an advertising board, that was vandalism then.

Edited by eagle in cornwall (25 Jan 2014 10.58am)

........................Then along came Johnny Byrne! and the rest, as they say, is history.....................

Attached is the Real Madrid team lining up at Selhurst.
The "Galloping Major" Ferenc Puskas is nearest the camera.

I was 6 and had never been to a game, my brother was going to take me to see the great Real Madrid but it was raining so my mum wouldn't let me go. I wasn't very happy, so 3 days later she relented and I went to Palace v Port Vale, 0-0, but I was hooked.

My next-door neighbours went to the Villa Park game and even now when I speak to one of them they moan about Vic Rouse missing that cross.

Attachment: Real Madrid at CP April 62.jpg (138.91Kb)

Zaha, Williams, Murray, Ambrose, Scannell.

A 5-man forward line who scored 3 goals in 10 minutes on 27th September 2011 at .......................

Great thread, and not just bcos it makes me feel young, I can tell you that beating Slovan Bratislava 6-0 or 6-2 was no mean feat, in '62 they won the cup winners cup the year b4 spurs won it, they're the only club from either Czecho or Slovakia (as it was) to have won a euro cup - and 40k+ v posh, it's why we need that new stand, it wud give us the potential to get those big crowds again

I went to the home game v Peterborough - AND to the away game just five days later! According to The Complete Record, the home match was on Wednesday September 7 and the away match on Monday September 12. I had a pal who supported Palace as his second team while Peterborough was his first. So we made a pact to watch both matches. We would have driven up to Peterborough for the away match (I was 18 and borrowed my mum's car). It was a humiliating occasion as Peterborough (known to my pal as Posh, of course) won 4-1, with Ron Heckman scoring the Palace goal. It was their first season in the league and they won the fourth division from us by just two points - but with an astonishing 134 goals against our 110. I remember going to the away match at Peterborough another year, possibly in March 1961 when we lost 1-4, and being jeered at by a group of Palace fans as we walked to the ground - presumably because they assumed we were Peterborough supporters.

The right place at the right time