December 3 2009

Crystal Palace

Saturday's match against Doncaster brings about one of the least played fixtures in Crystal Palace's history, writes Simon Pophale.

We do have an outstanding record against Doncaster at home and the matches can be split into three strands; The Fourth Division, The League Cup and The Championship.

The Fourth Division

Due to the consolidation of the North and South flavours of Division Three, we first met Rovers back in the bottom tier of the pyramid back in the 1959/60 season. Both clubs being founder members of this division, the first match ended with a resounding 4-0 win in our favour on November 21st 1959.

Over a year went by before we met again at Selhurst, in fact it was the final day of 1960 and we managed to exact revenge for a 5-1 drubbing at the Belle Vue stadium back in August by reversing the scoreline at Selhurst. Happy New Year indeed! Nine goals scored and only one against and that was only the start.

The League Cup

Palace and Doncaster have met three times in the League Cup, spawning four matches and focusing only on the home matches, sees our record remain unblemished.

The 1981/82 season was one for us to probably forget about, following relegation to the Second Division the previous season.

The turmoil surrounding the club at the time was probably matched by the optimism at Rovers, who were promoted to the Third Division and the final score of 2-0 was just enough to take us through on aggregate, 2-1 after a 1-0 defeat three weeks before in Doncaster.

Fast forward twenty two years and we met Doncaster in the Second round of the Carling Cup. Once again, we made heavy weather of this against from Division Four (or League Two as it was now named) by squeaking through with another 2-1 result.

Two first half penalties from the prolific Andy Johnson put us in charge, but Doncaster pulled one back just after half-time to ensure a nervy last 40 minutes. Doncaster were on the rise with this season providing a second straight promotion, after coming out of the Conference the season before.

The Championship

Which makes the matches in the Championship a remarkable achievement, given that in 2002 Doncaster were playing the Conference, six years later in the 2008-09 season we met for the only time in the Championship.

Those present last season, were witnessing “a first” at this level.

With the record now reading played four, won four against Donny, the team had a standard to uphold and once again, we managed to win with a third 2-1 margin.

In true Palace versus Doncaster fashion, they had us on the back foot after Paul Heffernan put them in the lead after only a quarter of an hour. Given that Doncaster had only scored 10 goals all season prior to that point, going behind was a surprise.

We had been shorn of Craig Beattie who had returned to West Brom as well as Ben Watson who was out injured. Shefki Kuqi, back in form after a long period in the wilderness, kept up his claims for a starting berth with first forcing Neil Sullivan into a save and then earning a penalty which saw Matt Mills sent off.

Kuqi picked himself up to despatch the penalty himself to bring us level and although he went off injured soon afterwards, his replacement not only provided the winner, but saw his own journey from the road to perdition begin.

Alan Lee; much maligned and out of sorts since signing for us, netted from close range on 88 minutes to bring us all three points and lifted us into seventh place.

One of the key contributors in that match was John Oster and alongside Neil Sullivan, both should take their place in the Doncaster side. Sullivan played one match for us back in the 1991-92 season when he was an emergency loan for an injured Nigel Martyn against QPR for the last match of the pre-Sky top flight era.

John Oster will be remembered more for a belting goal against Norwich (amongst others) at Carrow Road in his one season stay.

Five matches, five wins and fifteen goals to celebrate, with only three conceded. A proud record which we will hope will remain intact come 4.50 on Saturday afternoon.