Some decent points mixed up with nonsense. I’ve already posted a link about Uefa recognising it as the Uefa Cup predecessor, pretending otherwise is plain silly. No-one is saying we won the Uefa Cup btw. Here’s an article from 1970 about that years Fairs Cup competition. For clarification the Fairs Cup committee (including Senior Uefa officials) allocated places to countries (as Uefa do) and those individual countries nominated clubs based on Fairs Cups rules and in English clubs cases at the time continuation of the defunct Fairs Cup requirement of 1 club 1 city (and again in England this extended into the Uefa Cup). Had places been nominated on a non competitive basis then perhaps Sunderland might have been invited. Anyway, here you go:
All set to retain the Fairs Cup, last season, a temporarily off-form Leeds unexpectedly crashed disappointingly in the Quarter-Finals to Ujpest Dozsa — losing both legs, 0-1 at home, and 0-2 in Budapest.
But English revenge was close at hand — Newcastle, “shock” team of the 1968-69 Fairs Cup, had swept through to the Final in their place. There, Ujpest Dozsa, hammered 3-0 in Newcastle, were given much the same treatment by 3-2 in Budapest — and the Fairs Cup was England’s property for the second year running.
It had been a magnificent performance by unfancied Newcastle, who were given no easy passage through to the Final. Their very first Fairs Cup match saw them set up against Feyenoord, the vastly improved Dutch team who are nowadays no pushover for anyone.
Yet Newcastle, brilliantly 4-0 up in the home leg, only allowed Feyenoord to pull back a couple in their 0-2 defeat in Rotterdam. Next, the formidable Sporting Lisbon went the same way — with Newcastle drawing 1-1 away, and scoring the only goal of the game at home.
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Three goal hero over both legs, Bobby Moncur
Real Zaragoza were defeated 2-1 at home, with Newcastle losing 2-3 in Spain — the English side going through on the ruling that, where the tie is otherwise level, away goals count double. In the Semi-Final it was the turn of Glasgow Rangers — how they do seem to fall foul of English clubs in the Fairs Cup! — with a 2-0 home win to Newcastle following a 0-0 draw in Glasgow.
After Ujpest Dozsa had been licked in the Final, Newcastle Manager Joe Harvey gasped — and meant it — “This is one of the proudest moments of my life!”.
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Amongst British nominations, nowadays the winners of the Football League Cup are automatically included but there was no such luck for plucky Swindon last season. The Fairs Cup committee stand 100 per cent firm on their rule that only a nation’s First Division clubs can be accepted.
The Quarter-Finals of the 1969-70 Fairs Cup were scheduled to be played between 16th January and 18th March, and the Semi-Finals between 19th March and 15th April — with the dates for the Final left open until the actual Finalists are known, and matters can be mutually agreed between them. For, unlike the other two big European competitions, the Fairs Cup still prefer to stick to a two-legged, home-and-away Final rather than risk a dip in gate receipts through two far-distant clubs meeting in a country foreign to both.
Will this season provide a hat-trick of British victories? Will there be a worthy home successor to Newcastle and Leeds? Time alone will tell, but one thing is quite certain. Every British club left in will play to their very limit to achieve it!
