WIN CUP AND OFF TO BED...
ON Thursday, it will be 32 years to the day since Lawrie Sanchez scored the only goal of the game as Wimbledon beat Liverpool to win the FA Cup.
Back in 1988, he celebrated with something very like an early night!
“I remember leaving the party at Plough Lane at 10pm,” Sanchez said.
“It had been a scorching hot day, we’d had all the pre-match and, when we got to the stadium, it was 100 degrees pitch-side
“Princess Diana was presenting the trophy, so we were introduced to her and I remember, as we were lining up, one or two players were giving her the eye, as players do.
“We ran our legs off and then there was champagne after the game and all the interviews.
“The team was staying at
Cannizaro House on Wimbledon Common, which was well beyond our normal price bracket, and we sat on the terrace drinking.
“People were coming up saying, ‘What have you done today?’. We said, ‘We’ve won the FA Cup’.
“They said, ‘Oh, have you? Well done, boys’. That was the middle-class area Wimbledon was at the time.
“The hotel was so posh that when Dennis Wise asked for ketchup with his evening meal, they said, ‘Sir, we don’t have that’.
“They went away and mixed some mayonnaise with tomatoes. Dennis put it on his chips and said, ‘That ain’t ketchup’.
“Anyway, we carried on drinking at a marquee at Plough Lane, very little eating, and by 10pm I was out on my legs, falling asleep at the table.
“I met my brother, who was arriving at the party as I was leaving. He’d been out celebrating because he had me at 33/1 to be first goalscorer.
“He said, ‘Where are you going? You’ve scored the winning goal in the Cup final – best day of your life!’.
“I told him I was finished, but to come to the hotel the next day and I’d get him on the coach for the parade.
“I didn’t actually see him till a week later — it was the best week of his life!”
As Sanchez made his way to bed back at Cannizaro House, he asked the night receptionist for all the English newspapers next morning.
“I sat in bed and went through every one of them — it was fabulous,” Sanchez recalled.
“We were what Cup giant-killing is about, although at the time we probably didn’t quite realise.
“It was probably the last of the old-fashioned Cup finals, a great big thing that united the country – and that doesn’t exist any more.”
■■The Crazy Gang, part of the BT Sport Films series, airs on Thursday, May 14 at 10pm on BT Sport 2.