Sunday Mirror (Northern Ireland)
Digging save where Cross marks spot
WHEN Mark Crossley received an email from the firm overseeing the regeneration of the site on which Southampton’s The Dell used to sit, he first thought it must be a joke.
“They asked if I’d mind if they named a road at the end I’d saved the penalty ‘Crossley Place’,” he said.
“I thought it was a wind-up, but they actually did it. Maybe I should have asked for a house.”
Ah, the penalty. Crossley made some notable spot-kick saves during his career – three of them in a 1996 FA Cup fifth-round shoot-out between Nottingham Forest and Tottenham.
In the 1991 FA Cup Final between the same two clubs, he saved Gary Lineker’s penalty. And he is one of only three goalkeepers – along with Dave Beasant and Petr Cech – to have made a penalty save in normal time of the competition’s showpiece tie.
Despite those feats, the one which really earned Crossley pub-quiz notoriety, however, was the one he made for Forest on March 24, 1993.
Matt Le Tissier (below) was as masterful a penalty taker as you can get. But on that day Crossley blotted Le Tiss’s copybook by denying him – the only time the Saints star missed from the spot in 48 efforts.
“I just got taught to trust my instincts,” said Crossley. “And that’s the best advice you can give any keeper facing a penalty.
“That instinct when you’re standing there, in the seconds before the penalty is about to be taken.
“With Matt, I just decided I was going to go off to my right-hand side, no matter what his run-up was like, and I knew that if I guessed the right way, I had a chance of saving it. Luckily, I guessed the right way a lot.”
He added: “I’m honoured to have been the only one to save a penalty of Matt’s.”
Le Tissier spoke to this newspaper last year about the art of taking penalties and was asked if he bore any ill-feeling towards Crossley. “Not in any way,” he said, laughing. “In fact, if I could have chosen one keeper to save my penalty, it would have been him. He’s a top bloke, a lovely fella and we have a good laugh about it. I keep reminding him I did take five against him, so I’m 4-1 up really.”