The 'magic' of the FA Cup
In the long history of the FA Cup, the world's oldest football competition going all the way back to the 1871-72 season, there have been only two periods of cancellation, during the first and second world wars. But now the 2019-2020 FA Cup looks in jeopardy, being frozen at the quarter final stage since COVID-19 restrictions started and so this month will be the first May in over seven decades without an FA Cup Final.
Royal Engineers, who lost the first FA Cup Final in 1872 by a goal to nil against Wanderers, whose team photo is unavailable!
However, in comparison to the endless discussions and proposals regarding the restart of the Premier League, the lack of any significant concern for the FA Cup highlights just how far down it has gone as a priority in the minds of many football fans. That hackneyed phrase 'the magic of the Cup' is now nothing more than a lazy tagline used by the BBC to drum up some interest in television viewing and the 'Cup fairytale' of some obscure 'giant-killer' club getting all the way to Wembley is nothing more than just a fairytale, with West Ham's win of forty years ago being the last time a club from outside the top flight won the FA Cup.
But I do remember a time when the FA Cup had not just magic but real footballing importance, and this was especially the case in those grim years after the Heysel Stadium disaster when English clubs were banned from European competition and, after the First Division Championship, the FA Cup was the second most important show in town.
My club Liverpool has always had a slightly strange and unsatisfactory relationship with the FA Cup. Despite multiple successes in all other domestic, European and (as of 2019) world competitions, the FA Cup has proved somewhat elusive and slippery for Liverpool. In fact, the FA Cup was almost a century in existence before Bill Shankly's heroes of 1965 finally won it for Liverpool for the first time. Since then, there have been six more successes, but Liverpool's standing on the FA Cup roll of honour is lower down than for any other major competition.
Intermittent reinforcement
And now for a psychological segue and the phenomenon known as intermittent reinforcement, whereby experiences that are only occasionally and randomly rewarding are the ones that most grab us and can lead on to addictive levels of interest and pursuit. So for every hundred crushing losses and disappointments, a gambler will always have a story from their past of at least one euphoric victory that is enough to keep them hopeful that their next golden triumph is just around the corner. And in the world of sports fandom, I’m sure that intermittent reinforcement has a big role to play in driving grown adults to pursue their unpredictably successful teams from childhood and onwards over the decades of their lives.
May 10th, 1986
As a
Lifelong Liverpool fan, for me the first really big dopamine-releasing pulse of winning intermittent reinforcement was the 1986 FA Cup Final against Everton. My interest in Liverpool had been building for a few years, so I remember watching in confusion the tragic European Cup Final at Heysel just the year before and I have a vaguer memory of the 1984 European Cup Final, the highlight being the wonderful and gutsy wobbly legs antics of Liverpool goalkeeper Bruce Grobbelaar in the penalty shoot-out victory over Roma.
Bruce Grobbelaar doing his shaky legs routine and putting off the Roma players in the 1984 European Cup Final penalty shootout
But Saturday May 10th 1986, when I
was 12 going on 13, was a kind of early sporting Nirvana for me. I try not to
spend too much time looking at actual footage from the match as that only
brings home to me how mediocre even the great players were back then in
comparison to the near perfection of today’s footballers, while seeing players as
young men who are now ageing managers or television pundits is always tinged by
grim reminders of human mortality. And although YouTube can instantly provide a
video retelling of the entire match, nothing can recreate my unique excitement from that day.
Liverpool
and Everton were the undisputed top dogs of English football at the time and
had just slogged out a tough league campaign with Liverpool coming out on top
at the end by two points, the title not decided until the very last day of the
season, on May 3rd. I remember watching that last Liverpool game of the league
season in our sitting room with my father and brother. It was a tense game,
away to Chelsea at Stamford Bridge. A win would guarantee us the title and a draw might have been enough, with goal difference on our side. Defeat would lead
to the unthinkable scenario of Everton leapfrogging us into the champion’s spot
on the last day of the season.
Kenny Dalglish (the man who Roy Race wanted to be) wins the league for Liverpool
Kenny Dalglish (the man who Roy Race wanted to be) wins the league for Liverpool
1985-1986 was Kenny Dalglish's his first season as
Liverpool’s first ever Player Manager (there's a role we don't see too much anymore) and, like something from a film script, he
scored the only goal in that match at Stamford Bridge to secure the league title. Dalglish
was a real life Roy Race type character, Roy being the hero and at one stage Player Manager of Melchester Rovers, as featured in the comic Roy of the Rovers, an essential piece
of weekly reading in our house back then. In fact, such were Dalglish’s levels
of skill, leadership and overall superhuman heroism that I used to wonder if the writers based Roy’s
exploits on the living legend Dalglish.
Player Manager Kenny Dalglish after scoring the only goal against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge on May 3rd 1986, to win the league title for Liverpool
Roy Race of Melchester Rovers - a great player but not a patch on Kenny Dalglish
And Dalglish again - note the similarity to Roy Race...
And Roy again - this time demonstrating his deadly left foot,
known as 'Racey's Rocket' - this will become more
relevant towards the end of the blog...
With
the league wrapped up at the last minute, it was on to Wembley for the FA Cup Final a week later, with Everton
again standing in our way of glory. I remember newspaper articles billing the game
as a kind of Wild West shootout between the team’s two top strikers, Gary
Lineker of Everton and our Liverpool hero, Ian Rush. Everton had led the league for most of the season and they had beaten Liverpool 2-0 at Anfield in the league in February, so they were probably slight favourites going into the final.
Billed as a shootout between Gary Lineker and Ian Rush, the 1986 FA Cup Final
did kind of turn out that way...
Peter Shilton, Jack Charlton and Bobby Mimms
A
key event in the build-up was Everton goalkeeper Peter Shilton breaking his ankle while
playing in an international friendly for Wales against Ireland at Lansdowne Road the previous March.
This was Jack Charlton’s first game in charge of Ireland. Shilton was regarded
as one of the greatest goalkeepers in English football at the time. Also on
that Wales team was Liverpool’s Ian Rush. So even though I felt strange about
it at the time, I remember supporting Wales for that match, because of Rush’s
presence on their team - they wore all red for the game too so Rush looked like his normal Liverpool self.
Rush scored the winner, a headed goal where I remember he admitted that, due to lack of pressure from the Irish defence, he had his eyes closed when he rose unchallenged and nodded the ball in. From this inauspicious beginning, Jack Charlton would go on to lead Ireland to unprecedented levels of success - little did we know at the time. But from a Liverpool viewpoint, Shilton’s injury was hugely significant, as it meant that he would not be able to play in the FA Cup Final and Everton's replacement goalkeeper would be the 22 year old Bobby Mimms.
The build-up...
Rush scored the winner, a headed goal where I remember he admitted that, due to lack of pressure from the Irish defence, he had his eyes closed when he rose unchallenged and nodded the ball in. From this inauspicious beginning, Jack Charlton would go on to lead Ireland to unprecedented levels of success - little did we know at the time. But from a Liverpool viewpoint, Shilton’s injury was hugely significant, as it meant that he would not be able to play in the FA Cup Final and Everton's replacement goalkeeper would be the 22 year old Bobby Mimms.
Everton's star goalkeeper Neville Southall, who broke an ankle while playing for Wales against the Republic of Ireland on March 26th 1986,
thus missing out on the FA Cup Final
The build-up...
I distinctly remember the night before the FA Cup Final. We had been visiting friends and I
was wound up in anticipation for the match, to the extent that I
would have been happy to hear if it was called off. No one in my vicinity seemed even aware of what was happening the next day, so I felt I was shouldering all the Liverpool hope and anxiety alone. As we were leaving our
friends’ house I heard a news headline on the television: ‘Liverpool will win
tomorrow’s FA Cup Final by two goals to one’. My heart jumped. Then the newsreader continued: ‘According to a computer simulation,
tomorrow’s FA Cup Final…’ I’m not sure what type of simulation was done, or how scientific it was, but I
took some solace from it.
The morning of the FA Cup Final was warm and sunny. I must have got a lift
to the village with my parents as I was serving at Saturday morning Mass as an altar boy. Then I
walked halfway home but got a lift with a neighbour for the last part of the journey.
We chatted about the match. He had no real interest and he certainly wasn’t
supporting either team. ‘I suppose ‘twould be good if the other crowd won this,
since Liverpool won the league’. I was quietly horrified at such a casual
oversimplification of things. This crack at the league and FA Cup double would make the Liverpool team immortal. Spurs had done the double in 1961
and Arsenal in 1971 but no team had managed it in my lifetime and Liverpool had
never managed it. The league and FA Cup double was as good as it got,
especially considering the European ban at the time. This was Liverpool's chance at perfection.
Kick-off...
Kick-off...
The
next thing I remember was sitting in front of the television and the game
starting. Derealization is a very technical psychological term, but it’s the only word I can
think of that comes even close to describing my feelings - everything felt disconcertingly unreal, and vaguely unpleasant. Then straight to my first memory of the match, with Peter Reid of Everton sending a long through ball towards Gary Lineker, whose first
shot was blocked by Bruce Grobbelaar in the Liverpool goal, but Lineker knocked in the rebound to put Everton ahead. I remember a sense
of utter emotional deflation, and a bit more of that derealization.
Half-time team talk...
Gary Lineker puts Everton ahead
Half-time team talk...
The
next thing I remember was half-time and going into the bedroom that I shared
with my younger brother and taking some quiet time to gather my thoughts. I looked up
at the Liverpool squad poster for the 1985-1986 season that I had stuck on my
wall. That poster had been my guide and inspiration since the start of the
season the previous August. The Liverpool players in the photograph looked happy and strong and
full of confidence. Unusually, they had no trophies to display from the previous season,
with Everton having won the league of 1984-1985 and Manchester United winning
the 1985 FA Cup. But these were seasoned players who had won many domestic and European titles before.
I started to think about the FA Cup - I hadn't been born for the first Liverpool win and I was not old enough to remember the second win in 1974. Maybe Liverpool were somehow jinxed when it came to the FA Cup. Maybe the FA Cup was for more glamorous clubs, such as Tottenham and Manchester United. I remember looking at the poster one last time, quietly imploring and reassuring the players that they had it in them to turn this game around, before going back with a sense of helpless dread to watch the second half.
Second half...
I started to think about the FA Cup - I hadn't been born for the first Liverpool win and I was not old enough to remember the second win in 1974. Maybe Liverpool were somehow jinxed when it came to the FA Cup. Maybe the FA Cup was for more glamorous clubs, such as Tottenham and Manchester United. I remember looking at the poster one last time, quietly imploring and reassuring the players that they had it in them to turn this game around, before going back with a sense of helpless dread to watch the second half.
The Liverpool team photo from the start of the 1985-1986 season
Second half...
And
so Liverpool did turn the game around, in some style and with some of the aforementioned 'FA Cup magic'. The record shows that it was on 56 minutes, but it felt like it was straight after the start of the
second half that Ian Rush got the equalizer.
Then it seemed like it was all Liverpool, surging forward in a sea of red: Jan Molby of Denmark, Craig Johnston of Australia, Ronnie Whelan of Ireland, Steve Nicol of Scotland.
And soon after the equalizer, Craig Johnston put Liverpool in the lead.
And then the delirium was complete when Ronnie Whelan set up Ian Rush to bang in Liverpool’s third, knocking down a television camera behind the goals in the process.
Ian Rush equalizes, with young Bobby Mimms on the ground
Then it seemed like it was all Liverpool, surging forward in a sea of red: Jan Molby of Denmark, Craig Johnston of Australia, Ronnie Whelan of Ireland, Steve Nicol of Scotland.
And soon after the equalizer, Craig Johnston put Liverpool in the lead.
Craig Johnston puts Liverpool 2-1 up...
And then the delirium was complete when Ronnie Whelan set up Ian Rush to bang in Liverpool’s third, knocking down a television camera behind the goals in the process.
Ian Rush scores Liverpool's third goal, to secure
the League and FA Cup double and deliver football Nirvana
I
don’t remember much afterwards, except for a sense of being very pleased with
myself, as if I had masterminded the win with my own bedroom half-time team talk delivered to the Liverpool team photo. For a young Irish boy, an added bonus to the victory was the fact that
Liverpool was a completely non-English team, apart from the unused substitute
Steve McMahon (but with a name like McMahon, he must have had Irish heritage). On the first eleven there were the three Irish internationals (Mark Lawrenson, Jim Beglin and Ronnie
Whelan), four Scots (Alan Hansen, Kevin McDonald, Steve Nicol and Roy Race
himself, Kenny Dalglish), the Welshman Ian Rush, the Australian Craig Johnston,
the Dane Jan Molby and, most exotic of all, the Zimbabwean goalkeeper Bruce
Grobbelaar. In contrast, Everton were altogether more conventional looking, with
seven English players on their team.
A lifetime of intermittent reinforcement...
Since 1986 there have been countless lows and a fair few highs as a Liverpool fan, ensuring lots of intermittent reinforcement and helping cultivate my addictive fandom. The Champions League Final of 2005 was a true footballing fairytale. In contrast, the 1988 FA Cup Final loss to Wimbledon and Michael Thomas winning the league for Arsenal at Anfield with the last kick of the season in 1989 are footballing hells that I have never been able to watch again, as was losing the FA Cup Final to Manchester United in 1996, thus handing them their second league and FA Cup double.
But the arrival of Jurgen Klopp in 2015 has finally turned things around for Liverpool, with the partial and ultimately false dawns of the Souness, Evans, Houllier, Benitez and Rodgers eras now feeling like distant and dull disappointments (not to mention that nightmarish period when the manager of Liverpool Football Club was Roy Hodgson).
A lifetime of LIverpool FA Cup Finals...
Regarding the FA Cup itself, Liverpool have won it four times since 1986 but, unlike the league championship or the European Cup, they have never made their own of the competition.
I have very clear memories of where I was for each of the FA Cup Finals since 1986. I watched the 1989 final at home, with my brother and cousin. Featuring Liverpool against Everton again, it was highly charged emotionally, coming only a few weeks after the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. As a result, the two sets of spectators came together for the city of Liverpool. The game itself was an absolute humdinger, going to extra-time with Liverpool winning out 3-2, Ian Rush scoring Liverpool's two extra time goals. And yet despite the emotion of the build-up and the excitement of that game, I remember very little of it.
The 1992 FA Cup Final win was over Sunderland, by two goals to nil. I watched that one alone on a small black and white portable television in a little flat in Dublin, at the end of my first year in college and living away from home for the first time. Liverpool were managed by Graeme Souness at the time and were just at the beginning of a major decline from the glory years of the 70s and 80s so the victory felt a little hollow. Four of the 1986 heroes were on the team, including Ian Rush, who scored Liverpool's second goal. Again, however, I don't remember much of the game itself.
By the time of the 2001 final, I was properly grown up. During that match, a 2-1 victory of Arsenal, I was in the air with the Blonde and flying to Malta to make plans for our upcoming wedding.
I didn't watch the 2006 final either, because of a close relative being very unwell in hospital at the time. Steven Gerrard led Liverpool to a penalty shootout victory over West Ham.
And that brings us up to the most recent FA Cup final appearance for Liverpool, a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea in 2012. In many ways this should have been one that I would be keenly waiting for and watching, with Kenny Dalglish back for a second brief spell as Liverpool manager and a sense of nostalgic hope that the club was starting to recover from the doldrums of the previous two decades. But the game was played on the day of our eldest child's seventh birthday so the house was full of partying children and I only got glimpses of the television. Even if I had been able to see the whole thing, I doubt if I would have had much interest, with the footballing importance and 'magic' of the FA Cup long gone at that stage and Liverpool's long league championship title drought being much more of a priority. And even Roy Race's real life counterpart Kenny Dalglish had lost his lustre and seemed a little out of his depth up against a Chelsea team who were then in their pomp and about to become champions of Europe two weeks later.
But whatever happened to Roy Race? Tragically, in 1993 he had to have his famous left foot amputated after a helicopter crash, thus very definitively and dramatically ending 'Racey's Rocket' and his playing career (just to clarify, I had grown out of reading Roy of the Rovers by that stage). Roy made an emotional farewell to Melchester Rovers and moved on to manage another team, in a story that had some parallels with Kenny Dalglish leaving Liverpool in 1991 and going on to manage Blackburn Rovers.
What does it all mean?
So after all that, any sane person who has no interest in football could quite reasonably ask why you might bother to put yourself through the lifelong emotional roller-coaster of helplessly following a football team.
Why allow yourself to be battered by waves of alternating joy and (more often) despair when you have absolutely no control over the outcomes?
I suspect the answer to these questions relates somehow to that psychological notion of intermittent reinforcement, and for me it has a lot to do with a glorious FA Cup Final played out 34 years ago today.
Since 1986 there have been countless lows and a fair few highs as a Liverpool fan, ensuring lots of intermittent reinforcement and helping cultivate my addictive fandom. The Champions League Final of 2005 was a true footballing fairytale. In contrast, the 1988 FA Cup Final loss to Wimbledon and Michael Thomas winning the league for Arsenal at Anfield with the last kick of the season in 1989 are footballing hells that I have never been able to watch again, as was losing the FA Cup Final to Manchester United in 1996, thus handing them their second league and FA Cup double.
But the arrival of Jurgen Klopp in 2015 has finally turned things around for Liverpool, with the partial and ultimately false dawns of the Souness, Evans, Houllier, Benitez and Rodgers eras now feeling like distant and dull disappointments (not to mention that nightmarish period when the manager of Liverpool Football Club was Roy Hodgson).
A lifetime of LIverpool FA Cup Finals...
Regarding the FA Cup itself, Liverpool have won it four times since 1986 but, unlike the league championship or the European Cup, they have never made their own of the competition.
I have very clear memories of where I was for each of the FA Cup Finals since 1986. I watched the 1989 final at home, with my brother and cousin. Featuring Liverpool against Everton again, it was highly charged emotionally, coming only a few weeks after the Hillsborough Stadium disaster. As a result, the two sets of spectators came together for the city of Liverpool. The game itself was an absolute humdinger, going to extra-time with Liverpool winning out 3-2, Ian Rush scoring Liverpool's two extra time goals. And yet despite the emotion of the build-up and the excitement of that game, I remember very little of it.
The 1992 FA Cup Final win was over Sunderland, by two goals to nil. I watched that one alone on a small black and white portable television in a little flat in Dublin, at the end of my first year in college and living away from home for the first time. Liverpool were managed by Graeme Souness at the time and were just at the beginning of a major decline from the glory years of the 70s and 80s so the victory felt a little hollow. Four of the 1986 heroes were on the team, including Ian Rush, who scored Liverpool's second goal. Again, however, I don't remember much of the game itself.
By the time of the 2001 final, I was properly grown up. During that match, a 2-1 victory of Arsenal, I was in the air with the Blonde and flying to Malta to make plans for our upcoming wedding.
I didn't watch the 2006 final either, because of a close relative being very unwell in hospital at the time. Steven Gerrard led Liverpool to a penalty shootout victory over West Ham.
And that brings us up to the most recent FA Cup final appearance for Liverpool, a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea in 2012. In many ways this should have been one that I would be keenly waiting for and watching, with Kenny Dalglish back for a second brief spell as Liverpool manager and a sense of nostalgic hope that the club was starting to recover from the doldrums of the previous two decades. But the game was played on the day of our eldest child's seventh birthday so the house was full of partying children and I only got glimpses of the television. Even if I had been able to see the whole thing, I doubt if I would have had much interest, with the footballing importance and 'magic' of the FA Cup long gone at that stage and Liverpool's long league championship title drought being much more of a priority. And even Roy Race's real life counterpart Kenny Dalglish had lost his lustre and seemed a little out of his depth up against a Chelsea team who were then in their pomp and about to become champions of Europe two weeks later.
An ageing Kenny Dalglish leads Liverpool out in their most recent FA Cup Final,
a 2-1 defeat to Chelsea in 2012
But whatever happened to Roy Race? Tragically, in 1993 he had to have his famous left foot amputated after a helicopter crash, thus very definitively and dramatically ending 'Racey's Rocket' and his playing career (just to clarify, I had grown out of reading Roy of the Rovers by that stage). Roy made an emotional farewell to Melchester Rovers and moved on to manage another team, in a story that had some parallels with Kenny Dalglish leaving Liverpool in 1991 and going on to manage Blackburn Rovers.
1993 and the last issue of Roy of the Rovers
What does it all mean?
So after all that, any sane person who has no interest in football could quite reasonably ask why you might bother to put yourself through the lifelong emotional roller-coaster of helplessly following a football team.
Why allow yourself to be battered by waves of alternating joy and (more often) despair when you have absolutely no control over the outcomes?
I suspect the answer to these questions relates somehow to that psychological notion of intermittent reinforcement, and for me it has a lot to do with a glorious FA Cup Final played out 34 years ago today.
Celebrations after the 1986 FA Cup Final - note the English lads are the subs
The double of 1986 - Kenny Dalglish with the only trophies that then mattered
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