Matchday Memories: On This Day 1964 – See The Hud’s Colchester Strike Confirm CCFC D3 Champions!!
The Sky Blue ‘Hud’
Magical memories for older Sky Blue fans! On this day (25th April) in 1964 the Sky Blues won the Third Division title on the last day of the 1963-64 season with a 1-0 win over Colchester United.
Club legend George Hudson (sadly passed away all too recently) scored the only goal of the game after 24 minutes in front of 36,901 at Highfield Road.
George slots home the D3 Championship winner
Apart from giving the fans a promotion, the win also revenged a 2-1 defeat for the City at Layer Road, Colchester back the previous October when former CCFC winger Mike Grice sealed the win with a screamer just after the half hour before the Sky Blues Willie Humphries got a consolation goal four minutes from time.
The victory was badly needed as the Sky Blues had suffered a mini slump away from Highfield Road in the previous two games getting a goalless draw at Millwall and a worrying 2-0 defeat at Peterborough United after a massive exodus of 12,000 Sky Blues fans had trekked across to East Anglia to set up the Posh’s ground record attendance in the league of 26,307.
Captains shake hands before kick off
‘The Hud’ rounds the goalie
The ‘Hud’s’ promotion clincher came after he had been reinstated into the side after a seven match gap following a ‘fall-out’ with Sky Blues iconic gaffer Jimmy Hill. A magical goal from a true Sky Blue legend! Both ‘the Hud’ and JH later became Association members. Promotion kicked off a purple patch for the club as the ‘Sky Blue Express‘ really took off under the ‘Bearded Messiah’ with the Division Two Championship following in 1966-67.
A packed & joyous Highfield Road celebrates promotion
A good amount of some wonderful and rare colour film of the City v U’s game and the developing Highfield Road arena (courtesy of our former committee member Dean Nelson) can be seen by clicking the link or picture below.
JH with the 1963-64 D3 Champions trophy
JH‘s* Sky Blues team that day was (*sadly these Sky Blues have since passed away):-
Mick & Pat Kearns at LD22
Players (along with JH) who later went on to become CCFPA members are underlined.
In addition Mick came back to celebrate with us both for LD22 (right) and Legends Day 2023.
Neil Franklin‘s Colchester United put out the following side:-
Percy Ames, Duncan Forbes, John Fowler, Roy McCrohan, Keith Rutter, John Docherty, Mike Grice, Bobby Hill, Martyn King, Billy Stark and Peter Wright Referee:- H.Richards
The squad celebrate after the game
The single goal was enough to give City top spot on goal average (1.607) over Crystal Palace (1.431) who had the same points as us (60) and shared promotion with us. In modern terms we also had a much better goal difference too!
Notts. County (bottom), Wrexham (23rd), Crewe Alexandra (22nd) and Millwall (21st) were all relegated to the Fourth Division.
Thanks to CCFPA’s Mike Young (& Dean Nelson) for sourcing the images.
