It Was Thirty Years Ago Today

[Ray de Galles]

The Crazy Gang beat the Culture Club ;

People often now say that it wasn’t much of a shock given Wimbledon’s sixth place finish in Division One that season but I think it’s often forgotten that had only been elected to the Football League ten years earlier, had been playing in Division Four five years prior and it was only their second season in the top flight. The equivalent would be someone like Burton Albion carrying on their initial upward league trajectory and beating Man City in this season’s final.

There’s a dinner at Kingsmeadow on Friday night to celebrate the anniversary with Beasant & Sanchez in attendance amongst others.

[jameswba]

I always remember vaguely wanting Wimbledon to win in the run-up to the day. Then I read Jeff Powell's* review on the morning of the game ; it is still perhaps the most unpleasant, snootily dismissive piece of 'football writing' I've ever read - all about how 'Liverpool must win for the good of football' - and it ensured Wimbledon had my fervent support for the day.

Liverpool are like that for me. I spend most of my life not giving a toss about them, then either a sympathetic journalist, a fan on a website, or the club itself, do or say something ridiculous and I hate them for a while. Powell's piece, Luis Suarez, and Klopp's recent nonsense after the game at the Hawthorns are just a few of the things to have triggered this feeling.

*Why I was reading the Daily Mail in the first place is what I don't recall.

[Jah Womble]

Blimey - this means that it'll be thirty years next week that I moved to SW12.

A happy retirement to Motty and all that, but, uh, that was a fairly cringeworthy piece of pre-scripted commentary. (I mean, not quite up there with his 'Klinsmann/Lion King'-line, but not far off...)

[Rogin the Armchair fan]

They'd beaten Liverpool at Anfield the year before, and drawn with them at Plough Lane that season. Liverpool probably suffered from winning the title with about six games to spare, they'd been on holiday for a month.

[nmrfox]

My first ever visit to Wembley thanks to a Wimbledon supporting mate. Every time I went to see him always made sure it co-incided with a home game at Plough Lane (the 5-0 pummelling of Forest was an especial pleasure), so he kindly came up trumps for a ticket on the big day. Have some great memories of a great day; Wimbledon town centre on the day - only a handful of shops had anything in their windows about the game, our little knot of blue and yellow being beseiged by Liverpool fans asking for spares, being behind the goal when Sanchez scored an going ballistic, loads of comments of what Vinnie would say to Princess Di when he got his winners medal, going back to Wimbledon and a group of lads picking up a Reliant Robin - with driver still in it - and carrying it down the road until the Bill had a kindly word, much to the drivers relief, the pubs running out of glasses, Wimbledon Theatre had the Rocky Horror Show on and the night took a surreal twist when all of the dressed up ladies and gents joined in the celebrations, at the Town Hall the next day the banner the team unfurled mocking journalists who despised them (I remember Brian Glanville's name being on there?), Vinnie nicking the Lord Mayors hat and pretending to throw it to the crowd.

A truly unforgettable weekend.

[Jah Womble]

They'd beaten Liverpool at Anfield the year before, and drawn with them at Plough Lane that season. Liverpool probably suffered from winning the title with about six games to spare, they'd been on holiday for a month.

Also, Liverpool finally had a (proper) domestic double by then (ie, the double that everyone else forgets), so that particular 'holy grail' was not of such importance.

I always quite liked John Aldridge as a player - his touchline rant at the 1994 World Cup remains as legendary as it was justified - so felt there was some karma when he bagged a Cup Final goal the following year.

[Snake Plissken]

Huh. I was the scorer for Barnoldswick 2nd XI away at Rolls-Royce 1sts. As the players came off for tea, I told them the result to a general disbelief.

[Third rate Leszno]

I don't even remember watching it, but I would've wanted Wimbledon to win because I was an avowed Liverpool hater back then. Funny how life turns out...

[Patrick Thistle]

I remember watching it. My mum won the family FA Cup final first scorer sweepstake. She always won.

[ad hoc]

I was a steward at Wembley that year, which meant I got to see this (though I had to do the turnstiles so I missed most of the first half), the Wolves vs Burnley Sherpa Van Trophy final, a schoolboy international, and the games in that post Home International trophy (the Rous Cup?) in which England played Scotland and Colombia.

[G-Man]

There'll be commemorative celebrations in Milton Keynes tonight.

[Ray de Galles]

Even for an elite footballer, and especially allowing for the fact that I imagine they spent a lot less time in the gym thirty years ago, will you take a look at the size of the thighs on Laurie Cunningham ;



He came on as a sub that day at the end of his seven game stint with The Dons, his tragic death was a little over a year later.

[ooh aah]

Now granted I only really started watching football regularly from Italia 90 onwards, but looking at the starting line up for Liverpool there is a bit of an eye-opener. Hansen, Beardsley and Barnes are quality no doubt, but the rest seems somewhat... I don't know... underwhelming.

[Ray de Galles]

Houghton, Ablett, Nicol and McMahon were all top notch players at the time too. They were effective rather than dazzling though but that's how Liverpool played, Beardsley and Barnes added the flair on top.

[ursus arctos]

I remember seeing it as a major upset at the time for exactly the reasons Ray states, but also was of the view that that Liverpool team did not reach the heights of its late 70s or mid-80s predecessors.

[Ray de Galles]

I remember Andy Gray writing a book on tactics in the mid-nineties called 'Flat Back Four' that seemed quite good at the time (no, really). It took key individual matches as case studies on certain tactical issues and one of them was the '88 Final and how Wimbledon negated Liverpool's strenghts that day. I'll have to dig it out and take another look.

[Arturo]

A happy retirement to Motty and all that, but, uh, that was a fairly cringeworthy piece of pre-scripted commentary. (I mean, not quite up there with his 'Klinsmann/Lion King'-line, but not far off...)

Seconded. That Crazy Gang/Culture Club line has irritated me from the day Motson first said it. It usually gets an airing whenever there's a Motty retrospective on the telly, so expect to hear it a lot over the forthcoming days.

Wimbledon's win means more to me with hindsight as I didn't particularly have a soft spot for them. John Fashanu's career ending challenge that season on John O'Neill strengthened my dislike further. I certainly remember having mixed feelings at the time as to who I wanted to win the match and I think the magnitude of the achievement was lost on me as a teenager.

[Ray de Galles]

While certainly pre-prepared, I think it's quite a good line really. Well done Motson for even considering the eventuality of it happening to prepare it, though I too dread the orgy of coverage over his retirement (at least ten or fifteen years too late) this weekend.

I did like the remix when Wimbledon first beat the Franchise :

https://twitter.com/nicklibertine/status/519600524027387904

[Various Artist]

Houghton, Ablett, Nichol and McMahon were all top notch players at the time too. They were effective rather than dazzling though but that's how Liverpool played, Beardsley and Barnes added the flair on top.

Yes, to me that reads like a really strong side too – but that's probably because I came in 18 months to 2 years ahead of ooh aah, when they were the dominant team in the land, so I have a different perspective on those players who weren't the 'flair' stars but nonetheless seemed to beat everyone. At the time I instantly became an avowed Liverpool hater precisely because they were such 'overdogs', if that's a word, but unlike TRLB up the page I have never wavered in this since because it was such a formative dislike it's never shifted.

It remains frustrating that I only started taking notice of football from early in the 1988-89 season, so missed out on the Wimbledon cup win by only perhaps 3 months. It's odd to read Jah's comment up the page about Aldridge, because it makes me realise that I never considered his goal in the 1989 final (in only the 4th minute, as I recall) as some sort of redemption for his penalty miss a year earlier, since it was not only the first final I'd seen but was also the first one I was even really aware of – so from my point of view everyone was starting from a blank slate. Similarly, by the time Spurs won it two years later their shock loss to Coventry in the 1987 final belonged to prehistory as far as I was concerned (though, again, I wish I'd been paying attention to that at the time) and so I don't know how much of a 'redemption narrative' there was; I certainly didn't pick up on one.

[Satchmo Distel]

I felt at the time that Liverpool bottled this game but maybe that's unfair on both sides.

[Jah Womble]

I remember watching it. My mum won the family FA Cup final first scorer sweepstake. She always won.

I can remember Laurie Sanchez saying afterwards that his unemployed brother had a tenner on him to score the first goal, at 33-1. So, £330 - 'that was a lot of money in those days', etc: I signed on briefly in 1987 and benefit back then was £26 a week, so I'm sure I'd have been the first to castigate Sanchez the Younger for such reckless profligacy with his dole money. If I'd have known him, like.

[Third rate Leszno]

At the time I instantly became an avowed Liverpool hater precisely because they were such 'overdogs', if that's a word, but unlike TRLB up the page I have never wavered in this since because it was such a formative dislike it's never shifted.

I might have been the same had I not moved to Liverpool in 1990 and married a season ticket holder 9 years later. It took quite a while to warm to them even after I began going to matches, although that was the Souness era so there wasn’t a great deal to admire.

Looking at that Wimbledon team pic up thread, the thing that seems most remarkable now is that Bobby Gould was somehow capable of managing a team to win a cup final.

[Ray de Galles]

Dave Bassett is credited by most people at Wimbledon for building the side that won the final, even though he left the summer prior after six and a half years where took them from Division 4 to the sixth place Division 1 finish. I think Gould readily acknowledges that himself.

[Ray de Galles]

On a more personal, and bittersweet, note - today is the tenth anniversary of the 2008 Cup Final (the one I'm sure nobody else remembers) between Cardiff and Portsmouth. We really should have played the then 17 year old Ramsey from the start, would have won it then.

[N est à?]

Ironic that the most 'magic of the cup, eh?' FA cup of our era was won by a club financially doping itself to destruction.