Intro:
Originally posted circa. 1986, in A Man For All Season, a short-lived, ad-hoc, occasional and very limited print-run football travels/ground-hopping journal/fanzine that chucked together for eight issues.
For the record, the Third Round game depicted herein, records for posterity, what is still to this very day, the last ever occasion that a non-League team beat a top-flight side away from home in the FA Cup... and given the way that the finances in football have been carved up since then and the subsequent disparity that exists within the game, I'd be very surprised if it wasn't the (never to be repeated) final time, that such a scenario will ever unfold.
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| Issue 9 was never published |
Unless of course, the bigger clubs take the self-important route, as they're wont to do, of relegating the importance of the 'greatest cup competition in the world' even further down their scale of priorities and start using the competition as an excuse to field their development squad players, sans any first team personnel at all, in which case, such results will probably become more commonplace... the times they are a changing.
In all seriousness though, that kind of thing already happens to a certain extent, so my crystal ball might be all steamed up with tired and weary eyed nostalgia, when all is said and done, the expression: 'never say never', was coined for the unpredictable and arse-biting ferocious beast that we know as Association Football.
THE FANZINE FILES PART ONE:
FA Cup Third Round
at St Andrews, Birmingham
Birmingham City 1
Rob Hopkins 63,
Altrincham 2
Ronnie Ellis 65, Rob Hopkins 75 OG
Attendance: 6,636
1) David Seaman, 2) Ray Ranson, 3) Julian Dicks, 4) Jim Hagan, 5) Ken Armstrong, 6) Martin Kuhl (12) Billy Wright), 7) Des Bremner, 8) Brian Roberts, 9) Andy Kennedy, 10) Nicky Platnauer, 11) Robert Hopkins
Altrincham:
1) Jeff Wealands, 2) Phil Gardner, 3) Peter Densmore, 4) Jeff Johnson, 5) Paul Cuddy, 6) Peter Conning, 7) Doug Newton, 8) John Davison, 9) Ronnie Ellis, 10) Paul Reid, 11) Gary Anderson, (12) Mick Farrelly)
But, even though Birmingham City are still a top-flight club (for the time being anyway), I do think that calling them actual giants is stretching a point.
Sure, if you look at the calibre of players on the First Division side's team-sheet tonight, including a couple of household names, they really ought to have had sufficient quality to see off non-league opponents, but football doesn't always work like that. Blues are a fairly big club and probably a bit on the plump side if truth be told, but they weren't exactly a mythological Goliath type character getting roughed up by the legendary little Dave.
Birmingham are struggling this season and are only a solitary place above bottom club and neighbours: West Bromwich Albion. They're on the ropes and taking a standing count and now if it remains to see if they're capable of fighting on having taken a sucker punch tonight, smack on the end of their collective noses.
Seconds out! Ding, ding... time to go again.
Ron Saunders, the home team's manager tonight, left Aston Villa a couple of years ago, over a contract wrangle two months before the 'Villans' won the European Cup.
Ron Saunders, the home team's manager tonight, left Aston Villa a couple of years ago, over a contract wrangle two months before the 'Villans' won the European Cup.
After tonight, according to a story that has grown legs and started to march at ramming speed over the past twenty four hours, he's on the move again, heading five miles due north in the direction of the Hawthorns, where he'll become the first manager ever to have taken charge of the west Midlands trio of: Albion, Blues and Villa. And if the former pair of those three clubs don't buck their ideas up sharpish, he'll also be in the unique position of having managed two top flight clubs that were relegated in the same season. I'd imagine that is something that he'll hope won't quite fit onto the bottom of his management curriculum vitae.
As a parting shot tonight, Saunders steadfastly refused to allow the waiting press and television cameras into the dressing room area, to capture the non-leaguers celebrations for posterity, in the time honoured fashion that traditionally follows any of these apparent 'David v Goliath' slayings.
His miserable demeanour, was perhaps a double-edged sword (that he was about to fall on) due to the fact that in goal for 'Alty' tonight was one Jeff Wealands, a former fans player of the season at St. Andrew's, who was initially ostracised from first-team duties and ultimately jettisoned as surplus to requirements, from tonight's losing team, following the arrival of the former Villa boss into the hot-seat at Birmingham.
John King acquired Wealand's services from Manchester United, where he had gone to be a back-up squad member on his release by Saunders.
All three goals were netted within a twelve minute spell during the second-half, during which time Rob Hopkins managed to score at both ends of the ground. His opener was scrambled in from close range, to put Blues in front, but that was quickly cancelled out by a Ronnie Ellis goal that had the thousand-plus 'Alty' fans, bouncing about like a terrace full of Tiggers.
Hopkins then thumped the ball past David Seaman from an impossible angle, with a strike that would have beaten all-comers hands down for Birmingham's 'goal of the season' if he hadn't directed it into his own net. Why? I don't know, but I can't imagine that Jeff Wealands would've been unduly concerned by the turn of events. He must have been tempted to make a "That's two Saunders" hand-gesture towards his former boss.
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Blues must've wished that the weather had forced this tie to be called off for a third time tonight, but it wasn't to be and their slump continues to spiral into the quicksand; out of both cups and seemingly en-route to Division 2 too.
Birmingham City 1 v Altrincham 2
There's always next year, or the one after, or the one after that.
"It's a grim old time to follow Blues" said a silver haired old lady to nobody in particular, as we were filing out of the ground. "It always was and it always will be, it's character building", offered a passer-by by way of an answer, as a quickly diminishing number of despondent fans nodded solemnly in agreement and vanished silently into the night.
The Altrincham fans sounded to be in a celebratory mood back along the road mind you.
Hopkins then thumped the ball past David Seaman from an impossible angle, with a strike that would have beaten all-comers hands down for Birmingham's 'goal of the season' if he hadn't directed it into his own net. Why? I don't know, but I can't imagine that Jeff Wealands would've been unduly concerned by the turn of events. He must have been tempted to make a "That's two Saunders" hand-gesture towards his former boss.
Birmingham City 1 v Altrincham 2
There's always next year, or the one after, or the one after that.
"It's a grim old time to follow Blues" said a silver haired old lady to nobody in particular, as we were filing out of the ground. "It always was and it always will be, it's character building", offered a passer-by by way of an answer, as a quickly diminishing number of despondent fans nodded solemnly in agreement and vanished silently into the night.
The Altrincham fans sounded to be in a celebratory mood back along the road mind you.