Dancing at Villa Park
By Colin Wiggins
It was twenty years ago today....give or take a week or two....that we
played in the second of our four (to date) FA Cup semi-finals. And we won.
We reached the Final of the FA Cup. For the first time. And not even
Alzheimer's will erase the memories of sun-drenched Villa Park, for those of
us old enough to have been there.
The 1984 Cup run, however, started badly. Away to Luton and two goals down,
things looked bad. Luton and Watford had been promoted to the First
Division, today's equivalent Premiership, in 1982. Top-flight football then
was not just a contest about how much money you had, or what antics your
players could get up to. Clubs like Notts County, QPR, Swansea City and yes,
Luton and Watford could compete and even thrive at that level, before greed
triumphed and changed our game into the sick spectacle it has become.
But twenty years ago, crammed into Luton's ugly ground, our Cup run suddenly
clicked into gear. A deflected free kick from John Barnes was followed by a
Maurice Johnston penalty. Final score, 2-2. The replay at the Vic was an
epic night. 3-3 after ninety minutes, Mighty Mo nicked it in extra-time. Into
the next round and a trip to Charlton, then a division below us. Easy peasy
lemon squeezy, a routine 2-0 win. The real news in the fourth round however,
came from Second Division Brighton, where Cup favourites and League
Champions Liverpool were sensationally beaten in a match that was the single
biggest upset of the season. 'This could be our year,' we thought, when we
learnt of Liverpool's unexpected but welcome demise.
The fifth round draw made it seem even more possible. At home to...wait for
it.....Brighton! Okay, they'd beaten mighty Liverpool but it was a fluke and
another routine win duly followed with Kenny Jackett completing the 3-1
scoreline.
For the quarter-final, all you ask for is a home draw. We got Birmingham
away. Birmingham were heavily fancied for the final. With home advantage and
some pretty decent players including a goalkeeper called Tony Coton, they
were the favourites. But we needn't have worried. John Barnes scored what
was possibly his most sublime Watford goal. Defenders were left wrong-footed
and gawping before he launched a vicious chip from the very corner of the
penalty area. It flew high over the bemused Coton and suddenly dipped to
send the Hornets ahead. The second half opened with inevitable Birmingham
pressure and Steve Terry conceded an own goal. But Les Taylor replied with a
r-o-c-k-e-t that must have come close to beating the sound barrier. One last
Barnes toe-poke from a nodded-on Cally throw-in and we'd reached only our
second semi-final.
From the First Division, three clubs were left. Watford, Everton and
Southampton. And somehow, Plymouth of the Third Division and Derby of the
Second, who were to replay after a goalless first match. It's fairly
obvious what draw the three First Division sides wanted. They all knew
without saying that a Wembley trip was theirs...if only they were paired
with Plymouth or Derby. The draw was going to be crucial. On Monday 12th
March, I unplugged the phone and switched on my tranny.
In those days, the Cup draw was broadcast from the headquarters of the FA,
live and exclusive on BBC radio at lunchtime on the Monday following the
previous round. It was performed as an ancient, sacred ritual. A voice of
hushed BBC reverence made us feel that we were privileged observers at some
secret ceremony. The announcer would respectfully whisper that we were now
moving through into the committee room. An image of heavy oak panelling,
leather upholstery and framed portraits of Stanley Matthews formed itself in
our minds. Elderly gentlemen, the Guardians of the Sacred Flame, could be
heard shuffling papers and mumbling indistinctly. Suddenly an authoritative
voice rang out. 'Gentleman. We now reach item six on the agenda, the draw
for the semi-final ties of the Football Association Challenge Cup.' The
traditional wooden balls would be heard rattling in the traditional velvet
bag, in exactly the same way as the year before. And the year before. And
the year before that, right back to the time of the Wanderers and the Royal
Engineers.
That sense of tradition, continuity and above all seriousness was what this
great competition was about. Nowadays, the FA Cup draw in its dumbed-down
format is presented as a tacky charade. A TV studio audience of gormless
rentacrowd supporters, clad in their too-tight replica shirts, watch a
couple of celebrity ex-players grin and make feeble jokes with the ghastly
David Davies of the FA, whose bizarrely shaped head bears a sinister
resemblance to a Jerusalem artichoke. Am I alone (apart from David Icke) in
believing him to be some kind of advance guard from an alien world that
seeks to conquer our planet and replace humankind with an obscure variety of
vegetable? He stands before the lurid tabloid-style graphics in the studio
and presides over the shoddy perspex lottery machine that has replaced the
ancient velvet bag. He brings a thoroughly grotesque air to this great
competition. But twenty years ago things were different. No grinning idiots,
no monstrous vegetable-heads, just unbearable tension, broken only when we
got the draw we wanted... we'd pulled out the passport to Wembley!
Southampton and Everton would have to battle it out for the other place.
Plymouth won their replay. Against Third Division opposition, we were there,
surely. We scored early on, a simple goal as George Reilly confidently
headed home a John Barnes cross. Cue ecstatic delight. Cally then had a goal
disallowed for offside but we didn't worry. We were happy waiting for the
next goals to come and safely take us to the final. But it didn't quite
happen like that. Further goals never came. And then we saw a late onslaught
from Plymouth, who dominated the last twenty minutes. Watford could find
nothing left and, as Graham Taylor readily admitted, if extra-time had
followed it seemed likely that Plymouth would have triumphed. Seconds to go,
Plymouth's Hodges found himself unmarked just six yards out. He hit his shot
and our hearts leapt into our mouths. The ball slowly skewed across the
face of the goal and brushed the post...on the outside. The final whistle
blew and we danced with joy. It was a dance we'd performed less than two
years before, in May 1982, when a brace from the legendary Super Ross had
taken us past Wrexham and into the undreamt of world of the First Division.
We had danced the same dance in May 1983, after we defeated Champions-elect
Liverpool and confirmed our unlikely but deserved place as League
Runners-Up, leaving Manchester United to finish third.
And now in April 1984 we were dancing at Villa Park, our place at Wembley
sealed.
And what a dance it was.
