Barnes stings the Hornets

Just 4 months after our FA Cup win the Hammers set about regaining their top flight status, after a slow start to the season, No wins in first three games, the team were on the up after winning 3 out of their next 3 to leave them sitting fourth in the table, with a European adventure to boot, Lyalls legends were up and running.
The first european game is remembered for all the wrong reasons as crowd trouble marred the night but it was that game that saw a young 17 year old Youth star make his first appearance for the club, coming on as a substitute for Nicky Morgan Bobby Barnes got his first taste of the big time.
Bob didn't have long to wait for his second appearance though as just 3 days later on the 20th September 1980 he was handed a starting place wearing the No7 shirt again replacing Morgan from the Wednesday night defeat in Madrid.

West Ham Team

Phil Parkes

Ray Stewart

Frank Lampard Snr

Billy Bonds

Alvin Martin

Alan Devonshire

Bobby Barnes

Paul Goddard

David Cross

Trevor Brooking

Geoff Pike

This was only our 3rd ever Football league meeting with the Hornets and we had yet to win the previous two but this game was to be a goal fest.
Watford took the lead in the first half with a goal created by Luther Blissett and scored by Malcolm Poskett and it took until the second half for the Hammers to come back into it with a David Cross goal after a great cross by Lampard.
Stung by that goal, Watford hit back with a goal from their own teenage player, Kenny Jacket, to put West Ham back behind in the game. This though was where Barnes came into the game and joined the list of Hammers to score on their full debuts, as the video show below he picks the ball up just inside the Hornets half, slips the ball past a watford midfielder to run on goal and as two defenders close he shoots past their keeper to equalise.
The game is won by Brooking with a fantastic header which in 1980 wasn't as rare as many believe.
3-2 to West Ham and they move up to second spot in the table, top spot would be achieved on 11th of November and from that day until the end of the season they never dropped down a place again, winning the league with a (2 point a win) record of 66 points, 13 clear of second placed Notts county.
That season West Ham only lost 1 home game, and that was the first against Luton in the August, they finished with 21 home games played, 1 loss, 1 draw with Oldham and 19 wins of which though Bobby Barnes would start just the one game, with 5 other sub appearances which considering his start is perhaps surprising but would be indicative of his career at West Ham. In the 5 years he spent around the first team he would make just 38 starts, scoring 6 goals before leaving to join Aldershot but he will mainly be remembered for his goalscoring start to his hammers career.

The video has all 5 goals with commentary from Brian Moore from the Big Match 

1980-81

Dear Shoots the Foxes

Brian Dear

Christmas 1967 and West Ham face Leicester in two games over the festive period that were packed with goals, mainly by 1 player but also we see perhaps the start of a legendary career as a young academy graduate score for the first time.
That season the hammers had a indifferent start to the season before slumping down to the lower reaches of the table hanging around the bottom three for a period in November and into December but in the last game before christmas with goals by Billy Bonds and Brian Dear, West Ham managed to defeat rivals Spurs 2-1 at the Boleyn to start a run of 6 wins in 7 games with the only defeat in that time away to Manchester United.

GAME 1

Boxing Day 1967

The Beatles were No 1 with Hello, Goodbye as the hammers welcomed Leicester to the Boleyn to witness the first of the two games with the team that day
Bobby Ferguson, Billy Bonds, Frank Lampard, Martin Peters, John Cushly, Bobby Moore, Brian Dear, Ronnie Boyce, Trevor Brooking, Geoff Hurst and John Sissons
The 26,000 in attendance that day were treated to to great spectacle as Dear grabbed himself a hat-trick, his second of the season after he grabbed 5 V West Brom earlier in the season, the other Hammers goal was grabbed by 19 year old Trevor Brooking, scoring his first ever goal for the club in his first season as a first team player in only his 8th start for the club.

As was the tradition back then it wouldn't be long till the clubs met again in the league, in fact it was just 4 days

Game 2 

Dec 30 1967

The same two teams met at Filbert St but this time the Match of the Day cameras were on hand to record the game, which was played in poring rain.
In typical West Ham fashion the good start in the first half, Brooking scoring again with his second goal for the club, was undone by two Leicester goals leaving the Hammers training 2-1 at half time.
In the second half that all changed as a header from the man of the moment Brian Dear put the teams level, then next the foxes young keeper, a certain Peter Shilton 29 years before he joined the hammers, would be left embarrassed as the ball squirms through him into the goal direct from a John Sissons corner.
Brian Dear completed the victory with his second of the game and fifth against Leicester in 4 days and those two victories pushed the hammers up the table away from the relegation places, a trend that continued in the second half of the season as West Ham managed to finish in a respectable 12th place.

The video below is the goals from the second game with David Coleman providing the commentary.

Lights Out Lampard

3rd of November 1997, West Ham welcomed Crystal Palace to the Boleyn Ground for a Monday night game live on TV, it could be described as a non decrepit game but one that would later be be found to be part of an international betting scam, featuring corrupt security guards Chinese triads and Malaysian  betting fixers. Yet those us of us in the ground that night would never have thought what happened was nothing but co-incidence. Months later it would look to be part of a sinister plot to fix football matches in this country to allow asian gangs to collect their winnings as in asia they pay out on abandoned games as long as the second half has started unlike here that just void all bets.
West Ham had made a topsy turvey start to the season, winning 3 out of their first 5 games, before losing 5 out of the next 7 games, but with only the one defeat happening at the Boleyn, including victories over Spurs and Liverpool,the home fans had enjoyed the season so far.
Confidence was high with palace struggling in the table, surely this would be an another home win, Palace though had other ideas going into a first half two goal lead thats to a Neil Shipperly brace.

Whatever Harry said at Half Time though seemed to have done the trick, first Hartson scored what should of been his 13th goal of a so far profitable season, and then Frankie Lampard 

scores to equalise just 15 minutes into the second Half, but as can be seen in the video above, within seconds the floodlights go out on the game, which at the time seemed to just add to the excitement of the goal and 30 minutes later, around the time the game should have finished, the game was abandoned.
It would take 2 years before the truth would come out in a trial at the Middlesex Guildhall Courts of those suspected.
It seems that using a wireless trigger, the gang could disable the floodlights and stop them from working, to do this though they had to have had someone on the inside to assist in them placing a trigger across the floodlights electrics.

This is known as a year later the betting gang had tried again to fix another game, this time at Charlton, but having recruited the Addicks Head of security to the cause, the guard he had asked to help as well instead phoned the Police, and the gang + Charlton's security man were arrested in the act of planting the trigger. At The trial it was revealed this game and another at Selhurst park featuring Arsenal and Wimbledon that again had floodlight failure with the game tied in the second half.
The Hammers and Palace, unaware of what had caused the lights to go out met again just 1 month later to replay the abandoned game, again live on Sky though this time West Ham were not going to be caught cold.
A great exhibition of control in the box from Eval Berkovic sets up John Hartson for the first, who else but shipperley would equalise, but before the half was out Berkovic would score as the ball came off the bar after a Hartson header. Two more goals in the second half from David Unsworth and Steve Lomas would see us to the victory and push us back into the top 10 after 4 weeks just on the edge of it.

While West Ham would end the season in 8th spot with 56 points, second highest total in the Premier league for the club, and with a -1 goal difference, currently our best ever in the Premier league, Palace would finish rock bottom and go back to the Championship only 12 moths after promotion.
What of the betting syndicate, well the Police never found any direct evidence that they were the cause of the floodlight failure at The Boleyn but they had established a link between them and an employee of the club who was arrested but with a lack of evidence was released without charge.
The 2 Malaysians and Charlton's Security advisor were not so lucky, being jailed for between 18 months and 4 years.