Many Saints fans this season are asking where is the Ted Bates Trophy match ? so its a good time to look back at the game when we did honour him.
The real story behind the Ted Bates Testimonial though happened over three months before the game was played, originally the match to honour him was scheduled for the end of the 1973/74 season, Portsmouth were to be the visitors on Tuesday April 30th.
Just why it never went ahead is now of course speculation, certainly 10 days before the due date, in the programme for the final home game against Man Utd it was still on, as it included an advert for the game, I would hazard a guess that impending relegation prompted the postponement, three days after you have been relegated is never a good time for a testimonial, add to that, the fact that its against your nearest rivals and it has all the ingredients for a major incident, although strangely enough Saints did honour their commitment to travel to Fratton Park on the 3rd of May in that year for a Testimonial to one of Pompey's stalwarts, that game was a 0-0 draw showing how keenly contested friendlies were back then, Im sure that the Fratton End had a ball reminding us of the previous weekend.
For the record 8,302 were in attendance and a disinterested Saints side comfortably held a Pompey side including Ron Davies who were determined to win, from Saints perspective it was memorable for one thing and that was the last appearance in a Saints shirt for Terry Paine.
So the benefit game for Ted was switched to the start of the following season, 13th August 1974 to be exact and this time the visitors would be a little more glamorous than Pompey, the reigning Champions no less, Leeds United and they were being led out by their new manager. a cartain Brian Clough.
If memory serves me well it was a fairly decent crowd for a testimonial, somewhere in line with the 16,730 who attended the season opener in the League against Hull, it was a competitive affair, bearing in mind that the only first team player of note that Saints had lost since relegation was Terry Paine and Brian O'Neill was the scorer in a 1-1 draw, of course as the book and film have alledged, the Leeds players were not exactly enamoured of their new manager so might not have been trying as hard as they were in winning the title the previous year, that didnt help future Saint Joe Jordan however who gained his gapped tooth grin when losing a front tooth in the Archers Road penalty area.
Ted Bates of course built the foundations for the modern day Southampton Football Club in the same manner as his contemporary Bill Shankly did at Anfield, sadly it seems that in this year, in all years being our 125th anniversary, that the great man is being snubbed with the dissapearance of the Ted Bates trophy game.