Why write a book on Yeovil Town and the FA Cup?


Without the FA Cup Yeovil Town would not be the club it is today. The FA Cup is so deeply intertwined with its fabric and fortunes. An FA Cup match in 1949 propelled the club to the worlds’ attention and from then on ‘Yeovil Town’ and in particular their sloping pitch were best avoided when it came to the FA Cup draw. Fans and players alike were brought up with tales of ‘1949 and all that’ and over the years it snowballed. In the clubs darkest hour the competition came to its rescue, an FA Cup run and a 3rd Round match against Arsenal in 1993 saving the club from extinction. Since then the club has not only gained more scalps in the cup, it has gone on to the greater heights of the Football League.

Like the club itself my own history as a Yeovil fan is littered by memorable games in the competition. Whilst I had been to games previously, the first game I can actually remember was Yeovil v. QPR in the FA Cup 3rd Round in 1988. Matters on the pitch didn’t linger too long in the memory but I do remember getting there so early that I needed to go to the toilet just before kick-off and losing my prime vantage point in the process. The streaker towards the end of the game made an equally indelible impact on my mind, that sort of thing didn’t happen in front on a normal Saturday afternoon crowd at Huish. I remember passing the newsagent the way home and getting a copy of the ‘Green Un’ (or was it the ‘Pink Un’) that was full of pictures from the big game. Even as a seven year old I could tell the FA Cup meant something special to the people of Yeovil.

My Grandad used to pick me up from my house minutes walk from the old ground and we’d walk to the ground talking of games gone by. He’d tell me all about that great day in 1949 when the mighty Sunderland suffered the greatest ever ‘Giantkilling’. In the unlikely event that any Hereford fans are reading this you may well disagree but it was recently voted the ‘Greatest Ever Cup Shock’ on the FA website. If Match of the Day has been had been around then we’d all be bored now with endless clips of Eric Bryant’s winner and not that of Ronnie Radford and the subsequent invasion of a young parka clad army!

Talking of Hereford it’s impossible to forget Yeovil’s replay victory at Edgar Street in 1992. This was my ‘Sunderland’ and a story I will never forget, the moment that reduced a young lad to tears. Neil Coates late winner which inched over the line in slow motion wasn’t just any goal, it was a goal that saved the club from financial ruin. The move from the old Huish to the new Huish Park was horrendously mismanaged and severe financial problems saw the club on the brink. The prize of a home tie against Arsenal in the next round ensured that there was a Yeovil Town Football Club for me and many others to support in years to come.

The Arsenal game saw the debut of my first ever Yeovil flag. My step-Mum had spent the day before stitching a green cross on a bed sheet with YTFC in each corner. It’s first outing was very nearly it’s last, as I joined the players on the pitch at the end. Micky Spencer took rather a shine to the flag he was holding with me and at the end he tried to take it with him down the tunnel. Luckily, I put him straight. I was pictured with said flag in the Western Gazzette, I was even more surprised in 2004 when the picture was used in the Charlton programme.

Walton and Hersham in 1994 was an unforgettable game, albeit for the wrong reasons. It was half term and I was making a rare trip to an away game. Fortunately not many have been as shambolic and awful as that day. Aside from the woeful performance the only thing I remember were visiting fans banging on the Yeovil dugout letting Brian Hall know just how much they ‘disapproved’! Great successes in his first spell as manager during the 80’s were soon forgotten. Humiliation in the FA Cup carries a high price at Yeovil Town and he was gone soon after.

Standing on a cold, wet, uncovered terrace in South Wales in early January doesn’t sound like the most appealing of places but the away trip to Cardiff in the 3rd Round in 1999 still ranks as one of my favourite ever Yeovil games. The atrocious conditions seemed to spur myself and many other drenched fans into creating a superb atmosphere and the players returned the favour. Someone lit a flare and the whole end was bouncing, even more so when moments later Carl Dale put us in the lead. The replay once again saw a dogged and determined display that bellied the differences on paper between the two teams. It also saw a goalkeeping mistake by the usually reliable Tony Pennock that was to later feature on Question of Sport and numerous gaffes videos. Whether for the right or the wrong reasons Yeovil Town and the FA Cup were once again linked.

I couldn’t believe my luck when in the first year of university up in Manchester Yeovil played north-west sides Blackpool and then Bolton, teams themselves with a rich FA Cup history. It pissed it down in Blackpool as well, so much so that the balloons that were released to greet the teams remained stuck on the floor! However a Nick Crittenden goal and a demon exercising performance from Tony Pennock saw us claim the 20th league scalp. Bolton looked like being the 21st when Warren Patmore put us in the lead and celebrated by running faster than ever before. An equaliser just before half time and an agonising last minute winner from Michael Ricketts put paid to that. Not that we were too despondent we were 8 points clear with 2 games in hand at the top of the Conference, this Giantkilling business would soon be a thing of the past. Alas and sorry to mention Hereford yet again, but after a slump in form it was they who put the final nail in our promotion coffin. I was convinced that the defeat to Bolton was a key reason for our failure, we’d been winning so many games that we didn’t forgotten what it was like to lose. I thought if we could still mess it up with such an advantage then we’d never do it and I’d have to settle for non-league football forever punctuated by the odd FA Cup run.

However a certain Gary Johnson entered the fold and he steered Yeovil Town to a long awaited and much deserved FA Trophy triumph in his first season. The club were on the road to even greater success and after a 108 year wait Yeovil Town finally became a member of the Football League.

In its first season in the football league the club still showed the world that the FA Cup was just as important only the ‘giants’ got bigger. Liverpool, the most successful club side in England, faced a tricky trip to Somerset in the 3rd round. The match was live on BBC1 and I along with millions watched as Yeovil outplayed their illustrious visitors with some scintillating football in the first half. We might have jokingly sung ‘Heskey for Weymouth’ but his introduction changed the game just after the hour mark. Add an outrageous Harry Kewall dive to win a penalty and Liverpool successfully negotiated the ‘banana skin’. However the club had shown those watching that, as always, Yeovil Town would still be a name to be feared when it came to the FA Cup. The hype and excitement that surrounded that fixture no doubt distracted the players from a positive league campaign, and we stumbled towards the end of the season and as a result narrowly missed out on a play-off place.

It was only another year later than Yeovil reinforced the point, this time at The Valley home of Premier League Charlton. Once again a superb performance didn’t quite end in the result that we deserved. This time though Yeovil didn’t let it slip in the league and became League 2 Champions.

The earlier successes in the FA Cup only delayed the inevitable, sooner or later the ‘Giantkillers’ would themselves be ‘Giantkilled’. This inevitably was firm in my mind but I still made the trip to Rushden and Diamonds for an FA Cup 1st Round tie. As a result I was not surprised as the non-league outfit made easy work of a poor Yeovil side. Now I knew what the fans of Hereford, Northampton, Colchester and Blackpool had felt like, it was a taste of our own medicine and it wasn’t nice!

Unfortunately we had to go through the same experience the following season only this time it was much worse it was live on national television and we lost 4-1 to Torquay. The roles were well and truly reversed. It says something of the significance of the FA Cup to the club that some fans saw a first round exit to a non-league for the second season in a row as good enough reason to oust Russell Slade.

It’s 20 years since that QPR game and in that short time I’ve been fortunate to witness many great and some not so great episodes in the Glovers FA Cup history. There are no doubt many more stories from Yeovil fans far and wide about the FA Cup to be told and hopefully the book will do that. What I do know is that if the past is anything to go by the FA Cup will continue to play a huge role in the fortunes of this great football club.