The promotion season of 1968/69 has gone down in history as laying the foundation for the club’s run of success in the early/mid 1970s, however it’s often forgotten that the season had actually started in highly unconvincing fashion. The Rams failed to win any of their opening five games and, when Oxford arrived at the Baseball Ground on August 31^st, the league table made for grim reading – 19^th place and only a point ahead of bottom club Carlisle. The Oxford game (a 2-0 victory) was an initial turning point as it was the first occasion where new signing Willie Carlin combined with the fit-again Alan Durban in midfield which proved an unqualified success, the club immediately going on an 8-match unbeaten run.

Three wins and a draw had seen the club rise to 9^th place by the time Millwall arrived on September 21^st. There was the distraction of a League Cup tie at Stamford Bridge coming up just a few days later but Millwall would be tricky opposition. The Lions lay in 3^rd place having won 5 of their 9 games to date and had an upcoming League Cup tie at Molineux to look forward to on the same night Derby were at Chelsea.

Brian Clough named an unchanged lineup for the fifth successive game and the Millwall team was the same one as had drawn 2-2 with Bristol City a week earlier.

The Derby programme that season featured no fewer than three separate front cover designs and the Millwall issue was one of just six which featured the club’s name in a vertical bar (of the three, it’s my personal favourite). This would change once again come mid-October. It would also include the free “Football League Review” supplement – an innovation which spanned the years 1965 to 1973 and, at one point, edited by the same Harry Brown who would have a spell as editor of The Ram newspaper in the early 80s.

Up till the turn of the year a different player would grace the cover of each issue and, on this occasion, it was Roy McFarland who had arguably been the club’s outstanding performer in the season to date and had been called up for the England Under-23 squad. Brian Clough had recently started to pen a few notes for the programme (not something he’d commenced the season doing) and those for the Millwall game pulled no punches as both the Post Office as well as those fans who decided to leave early or arrive late bore the brunt of his caustic wit.

The remainder of the programme is, to be charitable, a bit on the bland side and, to be uncharitable, shows the club taking the lazy way out knowing that there would be plenty to read in the Football League supplement anyway. (I do wonder what Brian Clough made of the programme, and how influential he was in switching to the far more informative Ram newspaper some three years later). The eagle-eyed will spot on page 3 that Sam Longson, thought of by many in the media as being the Derby chairman throughout the Clough/Taylor era, actually wasn’t so during this season. Just a mere director. Sydney Bradley (whose menswear store has an advert on page 10) occupied that role at the time.

The advertising content shows a distinct bias towards light industry and one wonders whether the working people of Derby had any leisure time at all given there is not a single advert for a café or restaurant and only one ad for a licensed premises. Changed days from the 1930s when the club programme was choc-a-bloc with both!

One interesting statistic shows that the club’s average home attendance of 20,635 the previous season had risen to 23,525 for the five home games so far this season. Around 75% of capacity, then.

The match itself wasn’t particularly memorable. With Millwall playing with just one man up front. Derby dominated first-half possession and netted the game’s only goal on 30 minutes, Dave Mackay found Alan Hinton out on the left wing who cut inside and crossed to the far post. Lions defender Dennis Burnett made a hash of his headed clearance, the ball dropping to Alan Durban who volleyed into the net past a stationary Bryan King.

Millwall manager Benny Fenton sent his team out with a more positive mindset as they tried to retrieve a point but McFarland and Mackay had little problem dealing with the visitors’ rather rudimentary style. There was only one scare when Mackay mistimed a tackle and Derek Possee bore down on goal only for McFarland to time his tackle perfectly.

Grinding out 1-0 home wins is a tried and tested method of earning promotion, of course, and this result which saw the Rams jump up to 5th place in the table, very much the division’s form team and now only three points behind leaders Charlton Athletic. With hindsight, I’d argue that this Millwall win saw the end of ‘Phase One’ of the Clough/Taylor revolution. Those players deemed not good enough to be part of the journey had seen them jettisoned, the influence which Peter Taylor had figured that Dave Mackay could impose as the central figure in a settled team was now very much in evidence, and that settled team were showing themselves capable of getting the better of awkward opponents such as Millwall.

Phase Two was about to begin – and it would be the midweek trip to Stamford Bridge and the replay triumph at a packed Baseball Ground in front of the TV cameras which would bring the Clough project, both on and off the field, the attention of the national media.

Derby County: Green; Webster, Robson; Durban, McFarland, Mackay; Walker, Carlin, O’Hare, Hector, Hinton. Sub: Barker (for Walker)

Millwall: King; Gilchrist, Cripps; Jones, Kitchener, Burnett; Possee, Weller, Conlon, Jacks, Dunphy

Attendance: 25,000 (if you believe the Derby records) or 26,000 (as per the Millwall records).