Saddlers Memorable Matches

Walsall 3 Oldham 1
Saturday May 1 1999

Having gone back to the 1930’s last week I decided to look back at a game, like Cardiff, that every Saddlers fan remembers.

Having over-achieved for most of the 1998/99 (over-achieved in relation to how poor 1997/98 was!) Graydon’s men only needed to beat Oldham to guarantee promotion to the second tier of English football.

The game itself was a cracker and I can honestly say amazingly it was one of the few times that I actually felt comfortable watching the lads.

In front of a packed Bescot Stadium, we were 2-0 up inside 35 minutes thanks to two Saddlers legends- Darren Wrack and Chris Marsh. Strangely one of the few things I remember of that game was Wrack going off the field for about 15 minutes having stitches put in after cracking heads with an Oldham defender.

At half time the sun was beating down and things were looking great but Walsall being Walsall ten minutes into the second half Oldham got one back. Now normally as I say this is when I and everybody else panics and things start to go pear-shaped but that day was different.

We stayed positive and so did the team and with 15 minutes to go, Siggy Eyjolfsson, who had only been on the field ten minutes was put through and wrapped the game up.

At the final whistle, 9000 fans flooded the pitch despite being told not to but frankly nobody cared and the party lasted well into the early hours.

Let us know what your memories of that game were on our forum and also if anybody knows what happened to Siggy I would be really interested to find out!