46 years on, the pesky corner flag that ruined Blyth Spartans’ epic Cup run still rankles
THESE are important times at Blyth Spartans even without Maidstone United’s attempts to disturb their place in FA Cup history.
Blyth of the National League North were taken over last week by Irfan Liaquat, a local businessman who hailed his new acquisition as the ‘most famous non-League club in the world’ as he swept into Croft Park.
If they are as Liaquat says it is chiefly down to their FA Cup exploits in the Seventies, and specifically a giant-killing run when they embarrassed Chesterfield and Stoke City on the way to a classic duel with Wrexham in the fifth round in February 1978.
They remain the lowest ranked team to reach that stage of the competition and it still rankles in the Northumberland town that they did not make it to a quarter-final against Arsenal.
Revisiting those days, nobody I spoke to failed to mention referee Alf Grey. Nor the corner that never was. Nor the flag that refused to stand up on a breezy day in North Wales.
‘ The flag, the bloody flag,’ chuckles Brian Slane, a maths teacher who scored 242 goals for Blyth Spartans as a player and had returned as manager for the epic cup run. ‘ People are still talking about it.’
Slane’s team were the first non-Leaguers into the last 16 since Yeovil Town, 29 years earlier. They had made it through eight rounds and were darlings of the national media by the time they went to the Racecourse Ground.
In former Sunderland defender Ron Guthrie, they had an FA Cup winner in the ranks and Slane’s charismatic assistant Jackie Marks was a rich source of copy for newspapers, not least the secret pre-match servings of what he liked to call ‘ speed oil’ that turned out to be tots of whisky.
The BBC cameras were rolling and Barry Davies was telling Match of the Day viewers how one fan he met had placed 50 pence on the Northern League amateurs to win the FA Cup at 200,000/1, when former Brentford striker Terry Johnson put them ahead.
Spartans held the lead into the last minute of the game when they conceded a corner. This was the first gripe, because replays clearly showed John Waterson kicked it against Wrexham’s Bobby Shinton.
Then the business with the bloody flag. Conditions were poor, the ground was icy and the wind was whipping about. The corner flag lolled drunkenly in its frozen hole as Les Cartwright addressed the ball.
Cartwright was keen to remove it but corner flags must be in place according to the rules and referee Grey trundled across, told him so and forced it back into position.
When eventually delivered, Spartans goalkeeper Dave Clarke punched the ball behind for another corner. Cartwright swung it over again. This time, lofted high. Clarke caught it cleanly, only for Grey to then blow his whistle because the flag was not in its hole.
The corner was retaken and, this time, Cartwright delivered it deep, beyond the back post, where Dixie McNeil climbed to head in an equaliser. There was barely time to restart the game.
‘ That was the killer bit,’ recalls Blyth captain Waterson. ‘Then the draw came and it was Arsenal. If only we had managed to hold on for another 30 seconds. Like everybody else, it was easy for me to see it was never a corner in the first place and that really went down badly. It’s been hard to forget.’
They went to a replay and Blyth were advised on safety grounds to move it to Newcastle’s St James Park. The official crowd was 42,167 but local folklore has it at more than 50,000.
‘We’d done a bit of light training and I wanted to see the pitch before I chose between two players but the bus got stuck because traffic in Newcastle came to a standstill,’ says Slane.
‘I thought there must have been an accident but it was the amount of people coming to watch the game. We had to get a police escort to get through. I still think, “Well, that was really something”.’
Wrexham won 2-1. They went two up, the first a disputed penalty, before Johnson pulled one back. Spartans gave it a go but could not find a second.
There was revenge of sorts in the obscure Debenhams Cup, a short-lived two-legged contest held at the end of the season between teams from outside the top two tiers who went furthest in the FA Cup.
Chester City beat Port Vale to win the inaugural edition in 1977 and Blyth won it a year on, beating Wrexham who were without their Wales players. Then the idea was canned and sponsors Debenhams reclaimed the trophy for a golf day. Blyth, still the holders, technically at least, did get it back, many years later, thanks to the power of social media and the determination of a fan.
For some of Slane’s players, things would never be the same, with Alan Shoulder and Steve Carney both signing for Newcastle, and the club’s place in FA Cup folklore was secure.
Their unusual name and striking kit is lodged in the consciousness of anyone old enough to remember the time they shook football as they prepare to celebrate their 125th anniversary, Liaquat has taken over and installed former Hartlepool, Derby and Luton centre forward Steve Howard as sporting director.
Maidstone of the National League South, the first sixth-tier team to reach the last 16 since Blyth, will enhance their own case if they beat Coventry City today.