Our countdown to the start of the season continues
Have you ever heard the quiz question, who scored seven goals in an FA Cup tie and still managed to be on the losing side…?
After disposing of Northampton Town in the third round of the competition in 1961, the Town entertained Manchester City in the fourth at a sodden Kenilworth Road.
Top-flight City and striker Denis Law were rampant despite the poor conditions of the pitch. Law helped himself to all six of the visitors’ goals and led 6-2 with 20 minutes still left on the clock.
But, with a place in the fifth round beckoning for City, the referee decided to take the conditions into account and abandon the tie and scrub out Law’s double hat-trick.
The luckless Law scored again for City in the rematch three days later, but two goals from Alec Ashworth and one from Jim Fleming gave the Hatters a 3-1 victory in front of a crowd of 15,583.
The Hatters’ luck would run out in the fifth round, however, as Sam Bartram’s side were knocked out of the Cup following a 1-0 defeat at Barnsley.
"It's not every day that you score six goals," recalled Law back in 2007. "I never did it again - the most I managed in a game that counted was four, which I got a couple of times. But then the heavens opened. Obviously it wasn't meant to be. The funny thing was when we went for the replay on the Wednesday the pitch was in a worse state than it ever was on Saturday."