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Matthew Eastley?

The Book

WHEN a balding, podgy Everton fan called Eddie Cavanagh legged it full-pelt across the famous Wembley turf hotly pursued, Keystone Cops-style, by helmet-clutching police during the 1966 FA Cup Final, he was expressing himself in a way that only football fans will ever really understand. To the absolute delight of his fellow Evertonians and millions of television viewers, Eddie’s famous dance of joy is perhaps the ultimate public display of what has become routinely called ‘The Magic of The Cup.’

This book articulates this magic through the eyes of the fans who were at these famous games which are etched in the memories of football supporters all over the globe.

The book has been written with the 40th anniversary of the epic 1970 Chelsea v Leeds FA Cup Final in mind, two matches which encapsulated the true drama of the competition. This book is about the 1970s, which was a particularly magical decade for the Cup, when the wonderful ‘David and Goliath’ stories that were part of the fabric of the competition, at last spread to the final itself.

Though the First Division at that time was usually fought out between Liverpool, Derby County, Nottingham Forest, Leeds and Arsenal, for some reasons, none of these top clubs were able to assert a stranglehold on the FA Cup, allowing less fashionable teams like Sunderland, Southampton, West Ham and Ipswich, their moment in the limelight and their fans a journey of unimaginable joy.

The stories of these successes are known by most football fans everywhere. For instance, they know that, in 1973, Sunderland produced one of the greatest shocks in Cup football when a goal from Ian Porterfield was enough to beat Don Revie’s mighty Leeds side, or that, three years on, a late goal from Bobby Stokes gave Southampton victory over Manchester United.

But, what isn’t known, is the stories of the fans who were at these games.Fans who went to extraordinary lengths to get tickets for the greatest match on football’s calendar, fans who defied the Football Association’s unfair ticket allocation policy to watch their team at Wembley. Mixed with news reports of the day, the television programmes that people were watching and the pop songs they were humming, this book portrays the sights and sounds of a time when the FA Cup Final was a truly unique and momentous event, watched on television not just by football fans but even by millions of people professing no love of the beautiful game. When the nation really did stop for a football match.Hundreds of fans from the clubs who played in the FA Cup Final during this golden period have recounted their personal stories for this book. They share their reaction to victory or defeat. What did those Sunderland or Southampton fans actually feel like when those goals went in?

What were Arsenal fans thinking when Charlie George’s 1971 screamer hit the back of the net to clinch the double?
Because, after all, the FA Cup was, ultimately, not about the players, the managers or the dignitaries who attended, it was about the ordinary fan. The fan who followed his or her club through the good times and bad times and everything in between. For many of those fans, a Wembley FA Cup Final was the pinnacle of their football- supporting life. And many of them are able to recall it as if it were yesterday.

As Tottenham legend Danny Blanchflower once said of the Cup Final: “The dream is not for the player, it is for the fan…the lover of the game who doesn’t really know what it is like out there and never will know. It is the fan’s day.”

In the 1980s and 1990s three factors conspired to change the complexion of the FA Cup.
In the early 1980s, terrestrial television companies began tentatively screening live league and cup football matches at weekends. Then the arrival of satellite television resulted in several live matches a week, removing much of the gloss and glamour from those extremely rare matches broadcast live during the 1960s and 70s, of which the FA Cup Final was the jewel in the crown.

Then came the Premiership, which made the rich clubs richer. Winning the Premiership became the ultimate achievement and, for the big clubs, eroded their interest in winning the FA Cup, rendering it a ‘nice to have’ rather than a ‘must have.’ Before long, the top clubs were resting players for Cup matches, blooding youngsters or giving disgruntled reserves a run. This pattern reached its peak in 1999/2000 when Manchester United withdrew from the tournament completely. It was the clearest signal yet that the Cup was not what it was.

This book though, takes us back to a period of tight shorts, mutton-chop sideburns and giant-killing, played out against a backdrop of economic gloom, industrial turmoil and some great (and not so great) music and television.