If ever a day in the long history of Hull City AFC encapsulated the underachievement, the eclipsing of false dawns, the scattering of hope to the cardinal extremities of the earth that served collectively as a paradigm for the Club until the Wembley triumph last May, that day was 21st February 1987.
Brian Horton's third season at the helm had been an undistinguished one in the League: granted, it was the inaugural season for the play-offs, and we very nearly made it into them - the only trouble being that it was at the wrong end of the table, for in that season the team that finished just above the relegation spots had to participate in the play-offs along with those who had just missed out on promotion from the League below. Only a draw at Grimsby Town (a very tense fixture which sent the home side down) and a win at home to Crystal Palace (who missed out on the promotion play-offs as a result) in the last two fixtures kept us out of the fray.
If there was solace, it was in the FA Cup. Not that the Cup run of 1986/7 was notable for stirring feats of Tiger derring-do, but even though we limped rather than stormed into the fifth round, at least it was a genuine run. In round three we gained hard-won revenge for our League Cup defeat at the hands of Shrewsbury Town – a Division Two outfit like us in those days - and this earned us a trip to Swansea City. The Welsh side were languishing in Division Four at the time, but in a typically seething bear-pit atmosphere City were under the cosh from the first whistle to the last, suffered the additional handicap of Frankie Bunn getting sent off, and yet remarkably held out for a rare Vetch win after a scrambled Richard Jobson effort had given us the lead early in the second half.
And so, as the fifth round draw was made, hopes were high that we might finally get some reward for our endeavours on the road with a decent home draw against a Division One (that’s the Premier League in old money, kids) team, there still being a good number of them left in the competition, although big guns Manchester United and Liverpool had succumbed in earlier rounds. On that front, we were to be disappointed, as we were despatched to Springfield Park to meet Wigan Athletic. Still, it wasn't a bad consolation prize: the Latics were having a decent season, but on paper this represented the best chance we had of reaching the quarter-finals since the infamous Stoke City game in 1971. The perennially-apathetic Hull public, who for most of the season had shown a marked reluctance to venture through the Boothferry Park turnstiles, were not slow to pick up on this, and demand for City’s 2,500 ticket allocation was high. I worked in the Boothferry Park boardroom on matchdays at that time, and well remember the tales from the club staff of the querulous bleatings of people who attended City games once every Sheffield flood on being told that no, they would have to wait their turn for tickets until the passholders had got theirs, and then queue up like everybody else.
Those whose knowledge of football does not extend back beyond the current era may be surprised to learn that Wigan Athletic was a very different set-up in those pre-JJB/Dave Whelan days. Unlike Hull, Wigan genuinely was a rugby town (and still is). The impressive stadium that stood before you smack bang in the town centre, reeking of affluence with its towering floodlight pylons, imposing stands and deep banks of concrete terracing was not – as many football fans discovered to their cost over the years - the home of Wigan Athletic, but rather Central Park, the headquarters of Wigan RLFC, aristocrats of the 13-a-side game and followed passionately by legions of fans renowned for their arrogance, their gracelessness – in victory as much as in defeat – and their general lack of understanding of the game. Back in 1987, the Club was on the very brink of its most sustained period ever of domination of the English game.
Wigan Athletic, on the other hand, a League side for a mere handful of seasons at that time, plied their trade in a seedy, ramshackle, rain-sodden, windswept, 11,000-capacity ellipsoid arena atop a hill on the northern outskirts of town, fully three miles distant from Central Park. It felt for all the world as though they had been banished there by the town's powerful Rugby lobby, to keep them out of sight like a troublesome relative. The only seating was on one side of the ground and extended a mere 20 yards or so either side of the half way line, while the away end – and this is only 20 years ago – consisted of a steep shale bank with a narrow cover across the back and a mere six or so steps of terracing at the front. In wet weather – not exactly a rarity in Greater Manchester – you could feel your feet sliding unnervingly out of control down the slope. The smattering of fans who followed them were a diverse mix of die-hards from non-league days with holes in the elbows of their cardigans, socially-inadequate freaks, and fat kids in National Health specs with a pink patch over one eye. The place exuded decrepitude, stagnation and sheer bloody hopelessness.
Thus it was an uninspiring sight that greeted two and a half thousand expectant Tigers as they descended on the place. The home fans gawped open mouthed at the procession of packed buses from Hull snaking across the car park behind the main stand. Tigers' chairman Don Robinson actually got on our bus to check that we all had tickets. The local constabulary were taking no chances, and ushered the away fans as they alighted from their transport straight onto the shale bank before they could disperse. Thankfully, the bus I was on had made a pre-arranged beer stop at a Working Men's Club in Rochdale, where we watched Football Focus over our pints, guffawing at the indecipherable diction of Wigan striker Bobby Campbell and listening aghast to the treachery of former City player and future director Emlyn Hughes as he forecast a Wigan victory.
At this juncture I shall not be forgiven if I neglect to relate the experience of a friend of mine that day, who on reaching the ground was ushered towards the player's gate by a member of the Wigan staff in the mistaken belief that he was taking part in the game. Not that outrageous a mistake, you might say – except that this particular friend very obviously walks on callipers and could not by any stretch of the imagination be regarded as athletic of physique, as he himself would be the first to admit.
You will note that so far there has been no mention of the actual game. Well, let me assure you that that is no accident. So monumental a wasted opportunity was it that, even after all this time, I can barely bring myself to talk about it.
To be fair, it all started very promisingly, in front of a full house comprising 2,500 City fans, 1,500 Wigan supporters, and 7,000 Wiganers notionally neutral and presumably there out of curiosity. In fact, we dominated the first half and, with Billy Askew controlling the centre of the park, should have been a couple of goals to the good by half-time. The photo shows a disbelieving Neil Williams (centre) after he had missed a gilt-edged chance, with strike pairing Andy Saville (left) and Alex Dyer (right) wondering why he didn't leave the opportunity to them.
In the second period surely we would make our superiority count?
Well, we might have done, had we managed to maintain it, but things started to go horribly awry after the break. We were caught inexcusably square at the back after about an hour and Chris Thompson raced through to score. Horton then promptly panicked, substituting Askew, by a country mile the game’s most effective player – a decision which, to his credit, he later publicly acknowledged was a mistake. It all fell apart majestically after that. Self-belief and composure went out of the window, and it was no surprise when the rotund Scouser Paul Jewell (yes, that Paul Jewell) fired a second home. And just to prove that, no matter how bad you think things have got, they are always capable of getting worse where City are concerned, the butt of our lampoonery back in Rochdale earlier in the day, Bobby Campbell, and one of those strikers who always seemed to score against us, added a third in the dying minutes.
On the approaches to the ground on the bus, we had been full of it, cockily sneering and gesturing at the downtrodden home support. On the way out, to a man we went out of our way to avoid catching their eye as the bus rumbled through the streets of terraced houses surrounding the ground. A day that had promised us so much had ended with a degree of humiliation that, even by the standards of the long-suffering City fan, was hard to take.
And just to prove that, no matter how bad you think things have got, they are always capable of getting worse where City are concerned. In the sixth round Leeds United – if anything a weaker team than City - went to Springfield Park and showed us exactly how it should be done, getting a couple of early goals and then shutting up shop, in the process earning a Hillsborough semi-final against Coventry City, a game they lost that they should have won. Coventry, of course, went on to win the Cup that season (on the same day that my dad and I went to Hampden to watch his team, St Mirren, lift the Scottish Cup).
But for once there was scant consolation to be derived from Leeds' chagrin. Opportunities to progress in the Cup such as the one that we had presented to us that season are a rare gift, and we blew it spectacularly. How very, very City.
Ian Thomson is a member of the Tiger Chat mailing list and a reporter for spin-off site On Cloud Seven.
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