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Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive looks back at at the FA Cup Fourth Round tie

Blackpool 1990. It could be a Northern Noir novel. Or an early Shane Meadows film that didn’t quite make it. But this article is in fact about our FA Cup Fourth Round trip to the Golden Mile in January 1990.

Yellows WhatsApp groups are great. You get a lot of opinions on a wide range of subjects, only some of which relate to the club. On Sunday afternoon somebody said how much they liked Blackpool. Someone else took a different view, and off we went. Before I knew it, I was reminiscing, and I thought you might like to join me on a trip down memory lane.

I’ve been in touch with several people asking them what they remember of the day. Jamie Pike and Jamie Tune-Holmes sent me some great stuff. My TUST colleagues Robin Causley and Michel Thomas have chipped in, and old mates Dave Hammond and Martyn Clarke have also been generous with their recollections. These six gentlemen have pretty much written this for me, but all the mistakes are mine. I hope you enjoy it, anyway.

HIRONS BEATS THE IRONS

It was Paul Hirons’ fault. Our 1990s version of Saul Halpin had written his name into Plainmoor history in the third-round win over West Ham. He was a slip of a lad, only 18, a left winger with a trick who maybe could have had a better career. But you’ll never take that goal away from him. Thrown on by manager Dave Smith late in the second half of a soggy January afternoon, he struck the Hammers a deadly blow only three minutes later. The young Bristolian then gave an all-timer of a winning goalscorer’s interview afterwards:

“Well I seen Paul Smith run down on the right, and I think he knocked it back for Robbie Taylor to shoot, and he knocked it inside to me and I just hit it and hoped for the best, and it went in, and I couldn’t believe it.”

Jamie Tune-Holmes remembers the West Ham game clearly:

“I was 19. Had a girlfriend called Gill. I took her to the West Ham game. True story: I actually binned off being best man for a friend, Chris. He never forgave me, and we haven’t spoken from that day to this.”

The club we love had only reached the FA Cup fourth round four times before during its illustrious history.

So we had to be there, really.

GETTING THERE

It wasn’t quite trains, planes and automobiles, but there were quite a few transport options for fans still pinching themselves and realising that after a grim few years promotion from Division Four was actually a possibility and cup success wasn’t just something that happened to other clubs. The previous May, we had become the first professional Devon club to play at Wembley (losing to Bolton in the Sherpa Van Trophy Final) and we were always going to take a big following to Blackpool.

The club laid on a special train, which came the long way round, even visiting Shrewsbury at one stage.

Michel and Robin take up the story:

“There were coaches laid on to take us to the ground. The policing seemed quite heavy-handed, I don’t really know why. They had helmets and a couple were on horseback.”

Jamie Pike was 14:

“I got driven up by my Grandad with my Dad and Uncle in tow. Just remember it being a typical winter’s day. Dull, cold and wet. It certainly didn’t improve the further north we went. We must have arrived fairly early. We parked up in a side street and walked to the Promenade, where we were greeted by the Irish Sea in all its grey beauty. We took a trip up the Tower in the drizzle to get a better view of the greyness and then down to the Tower Ballroom, which even through my teenage boy’s eyes was pretty impressive. We stopped off on the way to the ground for my first ever McDonalds- it was considered a treat to go there then”

Me:

I was 21, recently out of Uni and hating my accountancy traineeship. Martyn and Dave were still plugging away at higher education in Stoke and Sheffield respectively, and we had met up in Preston where another Torbay friend Rob was also attempting to make a fist of student life. The football was always a good way to stay in touch- an experience many of the Yellow Army can still relate to 35 years later.

We had a couple of drinks on the seafront, and I bought a sombrero- perhaps the only one sold in Blackpool that winter. The Herald Express had sent their photographer (Colin Bratcher) to capture the day, and we appeared together in Monday’s edition looking- if I’m being kind- gormless, along with Birmingham’s finest, Dean Gripton.

THE GAME

Every single written recollection I have gathered for this article features one, two or more of these words: Windy, cold, sleet, snow, disappointing.

Spoiler alert: we lost 1-0. We barely fired a shot in anger, although we had a huge penalty shout near the end. The wind howled and rain turned to sleet. The classic Torquay awayday really: a day of great craic ruined by 90 minutes of football.

Given that most first and second division sides were still in the Cup, we hadn’t really bargained for drawing a team occupying the Division Three basement. Although Stanley Matthews had famously won the Cup for Blackpool back in 1953, their team and ground were at a horribly low ebb when we rocked up there.

Bloomfield Road was falling down. It was a decrepit shadow of anything good it might once have been.

Jamie Pike:

“We sat in the not-so-Grandstand, with its wooden seat and rotting floorboards. The ground wasn’t pretty (not many in the late 80s and early 90s were). Sitting there we could actually see through the floorboards to the kitchen below, The build-up of many years of crap was falling through the gaps as people shuffled around at half time. I’m sure some of it fell into the deep fat fryers below. Obviously the Bradford fire disaster a few years before hadn’t made any impact on their safety officer- if they had one.”

Martyn:

“I just remember standing on that crappy big open terrace behind the goal and how bloody windy and cold it was. Didn’t Dave have an inflatable banana with him? The game passed me by as I just wanted it to end because it was freezing in that wind.”

Dave:

“I had always had a liking for Blackpool stemming from my grandparents living just along the coast in St Anne’s. I’ve got many glowing summer memories of that area and of Blackpool itself. But this was a cold and deep grey winter’s day. It must have been windy because Blackpool always is. I recall Torquay having chances but also lots of cold fans getting increasingly frustrated as the game went on.”

Michel:

“I remember that the away stand was miles from the pitch and the players looked tiny! Blurry oranges in Blackpool’s case.”

All in all, it certainly wasn’t a Tangerine Dream.

We had a decent side, but it wasn‘t our day. In his post-match interview Dave Smith said he had no complaints. We lined up:

Kenny Veysey; Paul Holmes, Phil Lloyd. Matt Elliott, John Uzzell; Paul Smith, Sean Joyce (John Matthews 46), Ian Bastow, Paul Hirons; Dave Caldwell, Robbie Taylor (Carl Airey 46).

THE AFTERMATH

Rob, Dave, Martyn and I got a bus back to Blackpool North, sitting back whilst Preston and Blackpool fans threatened each other.

The snow which had been threatening all afternoon set in soon after we got back to Preston. We headed out for the night with a view to drowning sorrows and hopefully warming up a bit! The taxi driver obviously wasn’t used to the white stuff because he pulled up well short of the Student Union declaring it was too slippery to continue.

Martyn:

“I remember having a lot of beer in Preston afterwards and all of us staying in Rob’s freezing digs- man it was cold!”

Dave:

“I resolutely wore my yellow replica shirt out that night, which drew sympathy from the locals. It continued to snow all evening. My final recollection is leaving Preston Poly bar into a winter wonderland with an alcohol-induced chorus of ‘Oh Torquay we love you,’ which induced a bombardment of snowballs from all angles.”

Me:

One thing I remember was waking up shivering on Sunday morning, hungover and contemplating a train ride down to Bristol for a week’s training. I poured my heart out to Rob through chattering teeth (in reality, it was probably only a sentence or two). He gave me some good advice. I can’t use the actual words, but the gist was: “Pack it in.” A few weeks later I did, and it’s a decision I have never regretted.

Our season fizzled out after Blackpool really, but it turned out to be the start of a beautiful relationship.

SEQUELS

Blackpool predictably got relegated, so we renewed festivities in Division Four in 1990/91. That season of course culminated in our glorious Friday night return to Wembley Way, where a Wes Saunders and Matt Elliott-inspired Torquay won a heart-stopping penalty shootout thanks to Bamber’s Right Foot. Paul Hall danced in my sombrero (true).

Many years later Paul Buckle’s Blue Square heroes pulled off one of the biggest giant killings in our history, knocking then-Championship Blackpool out in the Third Round thanks to a beautiful Matt Green winner.

Blackpool gets mixed reviews to this day. I love the place. I think it’s brilliant because it knows what it’s about and sticks to what it’s good at, which is to welcome people from near or far for a good time they don’t need to think about too much.

My son has rightly fallen in love with the cricket ground, where Lancashire play a game or two each summer.

Dave still adores it.

Jamie Pike and Martyn both tell me they have no intention of going back, although Martyn had a few pints there in 1994 ahead of our playoff defeat at Preston.

Jamie Tune-Holmes can have the last word (as he often does):

“Been back a few times since. One trip included a fabulous trip to the “Funny Girls” drag show. If you haven’t been- then you should!”