One Club Four Cups
Remembering when we had cup runs!
Remember when we used to get excited for a great cup run each season? It’s been a long, long time since we had one and being a club with a great cup history, this is something that we are long overdue. Can Ian Evatt get it right this season? Can we see any kind of priority on bringing some big clubs to the stadium, creating a buzz around the town? Let’s hope so.
Once upon a time the football season consisted of the league, the League Cup, the F.A. Cup and at times the Sherpa Van Freight Rover Papa Johns Shield Cup Trophy. As always the league took precedence, but a bloody good cup run was always the catalyst for the season’s true excitement.
Thinking back over recent seasons, I’m really struggling to recall any moment when we’ve experienced this kind of thrill. In fact, Other than a 4th round tie at Anfield that we battled out a goalless draw in 2015 (we only entered the competition in the 3rd round, so hardly a run), I can’t remember anything of real note over the last decade, maybe even longer. So, I decided to dig a bit deeper. Whatever happened to the great nights at Anfield and Goodison, the wonderful victories over the likes of Brighton, Spurs and Chelsea at a packed Burnden, trips to Old Trafford backed by 10,000 Whites and the near misses with Barrow and Gretna? Of course not forgetting the delights of Jay-Jay Okocha and his worldy strike against Aston Villa in the League Cup semi-final of 2004.
How long is it since we witnessed the huge snake-like queues around the ground waiting on the ticket office to try and struggle to meet demand? Hmmmm. Let’s see.
In part one of however many it takes, and in no particular order, here’s how some of the more exciting cup runs panned out, starting with the 1991/92 F.A. Cup journey.
1991/92
20 years ago, Bolton travelled over the Pennines to Huddersfield for an F.A. Cup tie with non-league Emley. The minnows, unable to stage the game at their own ground, opted to use Leeds Road. It was the first round of a really exciting cup run and saw Bolton ease past the part-timers 3-0. Home wins in the next two rounds (Bradford 3-1, Reading 2-0) set Bolton up with a highly exciting fourth round tie with Brighton & Hove Albion from the division above. It was always going to be a tough test, but Andy Walker and Tony Philliskirk (pen) fired Bolton through 2-1 and put them in the hat for the fifth round leaving a packed-to-the-rafters Burnden Park rocking.
Come Monday evening the whole of the town tuned into the radio awaiting the rattle of the balls before the team names came out of the hat. Just who would we get? “Bolton Wanderers… will be at home to… Southampton or Manchester United”. Get the fuck in!! Yesssss!!!
We’d not reached the fifth round in over 12 years and now we would be playing the mighty Manchester United at home. Surely. They’d drawn down at The Dell, so just had to dot the i’s and cross the t’s and set-up the game many of us had been waiting for in a lifetime. Of course, we’d met in the fourth round of the cup only the season before, narrowly losing 1-0 at Old Trafford. But this was a whole new ball game now. We had Andy Walker up front and they’d not been to Burnden Park in many, many years. They were going to come up against an incredibly partisan crowd with a ferocious desire to see their team get whacked off the park.
So there we all were, Wednesday 5th February, watching intensely and for once, wanting United to win. There I’ve said it. We did. We wanted them badly. Tickets had already gone on sale in the town and we’d sold our entire allocation of over 20,000. The tickets stated “Southampton or Manchester United” on them. But we all knew it would be the Red Devil’s from Trafford. The queues up and down the Manny Road and round the back of the Lever End along Croft Lane, were huge. Some of us had never witnessed such a clamour to get a prized ticket for a tie at Burnden. F.A. Cup fever had hit, big time!
“Bolton Wanderers… will be at home to… Southampton or Manchester United. Get the fuck in!! Yesssss!!!”
Kicking-off the replay at Old Trafford, to our surprise, Southampton turned on the form and quickly shot themselves into a 2-0 lead, a young Alan Shearer getting the second. What the fuck! No, no, no. I was in the local pub, and the place had gone deadly silent. Even the closet United fans were looking in disbelief at our equally stony-faces.
We hung on in and some of us murmured the odd encouragement to the bitter rival from down the road. But, the bubble of such a potential great cup tie at the rickety old Burnden Park looked to have been burst. A few of us in the pub were already making our excuses, “yeah, it will still be a class against the Saints”, but deep down we were gutted. Still, there was over an hour of the game left and United weren’t mugs by any longshot. The Ukrainian wing wizard, Andrei Kanchelskis reduced the deficit just before half-time and suddenly our pints tasted a little sweeter. Rubbing shoulders with other Wanderers in the toilets at half-time “this could still be on”, and “they’ll pull this back”, were muttered and the mood started to change.
Sat back in my seat looking at the TV screen across the pool table, I was clenching my fist and uttering the unforgivable words “come on you Red bastards!”. The half seemed to drag on forever before the whistles started to come from the healthy Saints following. The last five minutes then whizzed by and our fate was sealed… or so we thought, until the most bizarre goal ever. With United pressing, a cross was fired into the box, bounced out, ricocheted off a Southampton defender’s head across his own box, looping over keeper Tim Flowers and was met at the back post with a diving Brian McClair header. The net bustled and the pub erupted. United 2, Southampton 2! Within seconds the final whilst sounded and the landlord rubbed his hands with glee at the prospect of another half hour of football and “pint buying” Wanderers fans. Those grimaces were now smiles and you’d have thought you were in a pub full of diehard Reds.
Extra time came and went and pints flowed freely. “Wife’s going to go ballistic, only came out for a couple” said one lad. Now it was all about penalties. No top flight team had ever been knocked out of the F.A. Cup in a penalty shootout, but that would all change in a matter of minutes.
With palms starting to feel a bit sweaty and both nervous Wanderers and United fans pacing all around the pub, up stepped Saints’ Neil ‘Razor’ Ruddock. Boom 1-0. Namesake Neil Webb was up first for United and missed! “You dumb fucker” screamed the lad next to me. And so the penalties continued, Alan Shearer and Barry Horne scoring for Southampton, Dennis Irwin and Lee Sharpe for United. Next up was Mickey Adams and the room fell even more deadly silent as he smashed the ball past Peter Schmeichel to put Southampton 4-2 in front. Ryan Giggs was fourth up for United and simply had to score. This was the last chance saloon, but his reliable left peg would see us right. Wrong! Tim Flowers guessed correctly and within seconds the TV screen was awash with celebrating Southampton players running hapzardly around the Old Trafford playing surface, leaving the United team on their knees.
The dream was over, both for United and for the hordes of Bolton Wanderers fans who’d bought tickets for the fifth round tie. If you didn’t hate United before, you certainly did after this defeat! Red bastards.
“If you didn’t hate United before, you certainly did after this defeat! Red bastards.”
Ah well, it’s all about us now we thought. We can change our focus totally to the game. It’s all about the football and less about any bitter rivalry.
Southampton rocked up to find Burnden Park packed solidly. Many of us Whites had never seen the old ground so full, having been used to 4,000 crowds on a regular basis. The top flight team were favourites to win, that was in no doubt, but we had the major advantage of the home support backing our players to the hilt.
Cue the worst possible start ever. Matt LeTissier, playing in an unfamiliar blue strip for the Saints, whipped in two identical corners, both were met by Richard Hall and both resulted in goals. Go on YouTube, find the highlights, when he heads in the second you actually think you are watching a replay of the first goal, it really was a ‘spot the difference’. Gullible defending? It has to be said.
Bolton came out all guns firing for the second half. No way where they just going to lie down and die. We’d come this far, we’d filled our ground and we’d been done by two sucker punches. Scott Green came off the bench and was instrumental in Andy Walker’s near post strike that reduced the deficit. The toothless Wanderer then met a David Reeves cross at the back post with a crisp header… the Lever End netting bulged once more and Burnden Park physically shook. Wow. What a comeback.
Everyone marched out of the ground in high spirits, we weren’t phased with the prospect of a replay, away. No siree. Other than being vulnerable and naive with the two corners for their goals, we’d held our own and could’ve won.
Can’t remember much about the replay ticket sales – but I got one and that’s all that mattered.
Two mini-buses left my local pub on the day of the replay. In the space of the next seven days I went to away games at Southampton, Peterborough and Hartlepool, can’t think of a week where I’ve done more mileage as a supporter. But that’s an aside to the game in question. I’d never been to The Dell before but had always imagined it was a ground close to the pitch with a cracking atmosphere. I wasn’t to be disappointed. Backed by a large away following Bolton put in a great performance. There’s a far better account of the match in the “Good, Bad & Ugly” book, but the main events were pretty much as follows:
Firstly, two of my pals got ejected! Yep, passing around a bottle of whisky in the mini-bus on the way down, not big, not clever. Every other passenger declined. Surprise, surprise both got pulled from the crowd by the police. In fairness everyone had supped a fair few beers, the pubs all around The Dell seemed to be massively populated by Wanderers fans. I remember seeing lads I’d not seen at the match in years down there. The whole affair had generated an incredible buzz about the town and the fans had travelled in vast numbers to back the 11 men in white.
But as drunk and boisterous as many Wanderers fans were, my two pals were in a league of their own. As was the norm at the time, they got pelted with drinks, coins and pies as they got walked around the pitches perimeter to the awaiting Black Maria.
“Enter Welshman Barry Horne. The midfielder collected the ball in the middle of the park for the home team and tried a speculative long range shot…”
Bolton started brightly but it was Southampton who took the lead when Alan Shearer went through on goal deceiving keeper Dave Felgate who had come out of his box and misjudged the bounce of the ball leaving Shearer with an open goal to knock into. Bolton soon equalised through Andy Walker. The talisman Scottish striker demonstrating that being two divisions apart meant nothing to him. He was a class act. Again, it was poor keeping with Tim Flowers making a carbon-copy error on the edge of his box. Walker flicking the ball into the top corner despite the efforts of two Saints defenders on the line.
With the second half at a stalemate and seemingly heading for extra time Julian Darby smashed in a cracking volley right in front of the travelling army of fans from a half cleared corner. The away end was literally on fire swaying with expectation and joy. We could do this!!!!
The clock was ticking down, the Bolton support was whistling and screaming for the final whistle that would signal progression to the next round of the F.A. Cup. We were in touching distance. Or so we thought. Enter Welshman Barry Horne. The midfielder collected the ball in the middle of the park for the home team and tried a speculative long range shot – straight into the arms of Wanderers keeper Dave Felgate… sorry, straight THROUGH the arms of Felgate. It was a shocking error from the Bolton number one. Years later Mark Patterson would make a howler in a cup tie with Oldham at Burnden and feel like he wanted the pitch to swallow him up. No doubt on this night down in Hampshire, Felgate felt the same. Collectively the team and fans were on their knees with every ounce of oxygen sucked out of their lungs.
Barry Horne let’s fly….
Dave Felgate looks to have it covered…
Quite clearly, as is usually the case, the team in the ascendancy went on to win the tie. I think for all of us in the away end we’d kind of expected the game to slip from our grasp like the ball had slipped from Felgate’s. Still, we got behind the team and tried to cheer them on, but everyone was feeling massively deflated. It was Barry Horne that finished us off with his second of the night, again from long range.
On the long journey back home barely a word was spoken. Apart from the occasional “Fuckin’ flapper Felgate!” accompanied with groans and more expletives! As for my two pals, they ended up sharing a black cab back to Bolton in the early hours of the morning. We’d arrived at the police station to pick them up but were told they wouldn’t be released until the morning. Minutes after we left, they were released. With no mobiles phones in those days they had no way of contacting us. Bit of a twat’s trick from the police, but it’s what you came to expect back then.
Their black cab got ambushed at a service station by some Pompey fans returning from wherever they had been playing that evening. They had presumed the lads in the taxi were Saints fans and potted all the windows and tried to drag them out for a beating.
I rocked up in work the following morning with my excuse all ready for the boss as to where my pal was… but to my surprise he was sat there, regaling his tale to everyone on the shop floor. They’d pulled up in Bolton town centre around 7.30am in the same black cab… windowless!!!
It had been a memorable cup run but unfortunately we only won five of our remaining 18 league games and Phil Neal was sacked in May, making way for a new man to take the helm. How would Neal’s successor Bruce Rioch fair in both the league and cup competitions over the next few seasons?