Record crowd saw Rams reach final
SEMI-FINAL VICTORY ON THE WAY TO FA CUP GLORY,
YOUNG wing-half Jim Bullions sat nervously in the Maine Road dressing room in March 1946 and thought he could hear thunder.
Minutes before the Rams’ FA Cup semi-final replay against Birmingham City was due to get under way, the noise started as a low rumble, slowly building up into a crescendo.
“We looked at each other and wondered what on earth it was,” Bullions recalled. “Then we realised that it was the noise of people’s feet stamping on the wooden floor of the stand above us.
“I’d never heard anything like it. “And when we ran out a few minutes later, I’d never seen anything like it, either.”
As the Rams players emerged from the tunnel on that Wednesday afternoon, 75 years ago this week, they realised that Maine Road was bursting at the seams.
Terraces and stands were full to overflowing, with spectators wedged right up to the touchline.
What the players could not have known was that they were about to become a part of football history.
In the first season after the end of the Second World War, the Football League was still being played on a regional basis, but the thirst for a return to normality saw even the regional competitions packing in the crowds.
In December 1945, there were 60,926 Merseyside supporters at Goodison Park for the visit of Liverpool.
In January 1946, a record crowd for a wartime league fixture, 63,820, saw Aston Villa draw 2-2 with Birmingham City.
In April, a crowd of 62,144 watched the Manchester derby at Maine Road.
But the FA Cup had returned, albeit with the unique condition that ties up to and including the quarterfinals were to be played over two legs.
After six long, war-weary years, Cup football was the real signal that better days were ahead.
And with it came some of the biggest attendances the game has ever seen.
The Rams’ quarter-final game at Villa Park had attracted a crowd of 76,588, still a record for that ground.
There were 65,000 at Hillsborough for the semi-final against Birmingham and if they saw a drab 1-1 draw, that dissuaded no-one from the Maine Road replay.
The crowd of 80,407 is still a record for a midweek game between two English clubs outside Wembley, a figure that is unlikely ever to be beaten.
Bullions said: “When we took throw-ins and corners, we had to move people out of the way. It was absolutely incredible.”
After 90 minutes, there was still no score, but in the fifth minute of extra time, Peter Doherty reached Dally Duncan’s cross a split second before Birmingham’s Ted Duckhouse to put the Rams ahead.
The two players collided and Duckhouse was carried off with a broken leg.
Raich Carter remembered: “I heard a crack and thought: ‘Oh my god, Peter’s broken his leg.’ I was so relieved when he stood up.”
It was poor Duckhouse who was stretchered off, leaving Derby to run riot against 10 men.
After 103 minutes, Jack Stamps made it 2-0, sliding Duncan’s pass beyond Gil Merrick in the Birmingham goal. Nine minutes later, Doherty dribbled up to Merrick before poking the ball between his legs. And near the end, Stamps made it 4-0 from Raich Carter’s pass. Yet it might have been so different. In the 50th minute, Birmingham’s Harold Bodle had only Vic Woodley to beat. But the former Chelsea and England goalkeeper, who had come out of retirement to help the Rams, kidded Bodle by leaving a huge gap – and Bodle was so surprised, he planted the ball straight into Woodley’s midriff.
Whether the Rams would have equalised, no-one will ever know. The reality, however, was that Derby were through to Wembley and on course for what, 75 years later, is still the only FA Cup triumph in their history.
Their place in the record books was already assured.