If David Coleman was right, and goals really do pay the rent, there would have been plenty of happy landlords on 29 October 1983. Up and down the country, defences dozed, forwards frolicked and nets bulged, as the 44 league games in the top four divisions produced 135 goals. Two men in particular grabbed the headlines. Ian Rush and Tony Woodcock both faced late fitness tests before their matches. By Saturday evening, Les Sealey and Nigel Spink must have wished they had failed them.
First to Anfield. Luton Town arrived in Liverpool in a positive frame of mind. Fourth in the table after three straight wins in the league, the Hatters were at least talking a good game before they faced the champions. “We are out to show we are no flash in the pan team and good enough to rub shoulders with the elite,” said Luton defender Paul Elliott. He and his teammates would soon find out just how good the elite were.
Liverpool’s hero of the afternoon almost didn’t make it on to the pitch. Rush had missed the midweek dismantling of Brentford in the Milk Cup due to a groin injury and was only cleared to play at the last minute. He pushed any injury doubts to one side by scoring his first goal of the afternoon after just 75 seconds. Rush added another just three minutes later and secured the match ball with a third in the 36th minute. “The lads say I’ve got so many I can open up a sports shop,” Rush joked later.
Kenny Dalglish scored Liverpool’s fourth before half time and it would have been more but for Les Sealey’s fine form in the Luton goal – despite the Liverpool Echo describing him as “on the wrong end of a coconut shy.” More pain was to come in the second half, though.
Rush added two more after the interval as Liverpool wrapped up a 6-0 win. “It was unbelievable,” said Rush. “I came here not expecting to play, but at five o’clock I’d got five goals.” He sounded remarkably modest for a man who had just become the first Liverpool player to score five in a top flight match since 1902. “I had only five touches and happened to be in the right place. The lads did all the work.”
Luton manager David Pleat admitted Liverpool’s display was “painful, but brilliant to watch.” “I thought they had 15 men on the field. Whatever you try to confront them with, they counter. The only time I was worried was when I left my seat for the dugout – in case I missed any goals.”
On any other day Rush’s achievement would have dominated the back pages but Tony Woodcock was doing his best to grab a share of the limelight at Villa Park. The Arsenal striker’s season had been a stop-start affair. He had pulled a hamstring while training with England at the start of October, then limped out of a Milk Cup match against Plymouth and ended up missing nearly three weeks. The rest clearly did him some good. Woodcock returned to action on 22 October and scored twice in a 4-1 demolition of his former club, Nottingham Forest. He was even sharper a week later.
Aston Villa were woeful on the day – “the worst I’ve seen since I’ve been here,” said their manager Tony Barton – but Woodcock was unstoppable. He scored four goals in the first 38 minutes and looked like he might replicate Ted Drake’s achievement of scoring seven for Arsenal at Villa Park in 1935. Even Woodcock was surprised by how well he was playing. “When the fifth went in early in the second half, I thought to myself: ‘God, this can’t go on. Everything I touch is a goal’.”
Arsenal eventually ran out 6-2 winners – Brian McDermott scoring the other – and Woodcock’s quintuple helped the club win £1,000 for the Canon top goalscorers in October (pipping Liverpool and Manchester United on away goals). “He has just given some of the best forward play I have seen anywhere, anytime,” enthused Terry Neill.
The Arsenal manager must have hoped his side would kick on after their resounding victory in Birmingham, but they continued to be infuriatingly inconsistent, losing five of their next six games and ending the season sixth in the league – despite Woodcock’s 21 goals. Rush was on a different level to any other striker in the country that year. He finished the season with 47 goals in all competitions as Liverpool won the league, the League Cup and the European Cup.
“Boring Arsenal? It is a tag we have never liked and never thought of as fair,” said Woodcock after his enjoyable afternoon in Birmingham. There was very little boring about 29 October 1983.
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