Greatest Seasons: Woking’s FA Cup run of 1990/91
Chapple’s Woking rock West Brom to earn dream cup-tie at Goodison
THIS WEEK, we go all the way back to the 1990-91 season when Geoff Chapple’s Woking reached the FA Cup third round for the first time and pulled off one of the biggest ever cup shocks, beating West Bromwich Albion before being paired with Division One giants Everton in round four...
FOR 102 years, the club’s existence had been largely uneventful. A 3-0 win over Ilford in the FA Amateur Cup in 1957 at Wembley was the clear highlight but by the time Geoff Chapple arrived in 1985 the Cards were struggling in the Isthmian League Division Two South.
He guided the club to two promotions in four years, back up to the Premier Division before embarking on the 1990/91 season that would be forever etched in Woking and FA Cup history.
Entering the competition at the fourth qualifying round, the Cards beat Conference sides Bath City, Kidderminster and Merthyr Tydfil to reach the third round for the first time in their history and a tie at Division Two side West Bromwich Albion, four leagues above them.
“Even before the West Brom game, Woking had these three colossal ties against Kidderminster in the first round,” recalls journalist Chris Dyke, who covered the club for 35 years. “There were no penalty shootouts back then. The first two games ended in draws and then Woking won the second replay. Kidderminster were a top Conference side in those days so to just win that was something special.”
“I’m highly delighted with the draw,” said Chapple about the tie with West Brom. “And if they underestimate us they could be in for a shock.”
Fodder
“That was cheap talk, really,” says the 73-year-old, who is now Woking’s director of football. “Deep down I thought ‘can we really give them a game?’
“But driving home from training one night I thought ‘why am I worried? We’ve got a good side, they’re having a difficult time in Division Two, we’re riding high.’ “We went up there the day before and on the morning of the game the heavens opened. We thought it wasn’t going to be played, it was torrential, but, of course, it was. “We walked up the tunnel and the West Brom lads were sitting in their changing room nonchalantly reading the programme and papers. I got the feeling they thought we were chicken fodder to them, I thought they looked ultra-confident, very relaxed.” Backed by an away following of 5,000, Woking fell behind after 15 minutes as Colin West headed in from a corner. “There’s the first one!” remarked a local commentator, perhaps now expecting the floodgates to open despite Woking’s bright start that had seen Darren Bradley clear off the Albion line. “We were 1-0 down at halftime and I told the players they’d been absolutely fantastic,” says Chapple. “At the back of my mind, I was thinking if the score stayed the same, what a tremendous performance it would have been. Well…”
The next 45 minutes would change everything for the football club courtesy of former Gibraltarian international cricketer Tim Buzaglo, plucked from the Sunday Leagues playing for Weysiders.
Derek Brown threaded a pass through the heart of the hosts’ defence for the striker to burst onto and slot in an equaliser with his left foot. Five minutes later and Woking were ahead. Buzaglo reacted quickest to a ball that dropped behind the Albion defence, rode one challenge and then nodded home into an empty net as the ball flicked up when he and the goalkeeper came together.
Woking’s third – Buzaglo’s hat-trick – was good enough to grace any level.
The masterful Mark Biggins dummied the ball leaving West
Brom’s Graham Roberts on the turf before receiving it, pulling back for Adie Cowler on the edge of the penalty area, who setup Buzaglo for the finish.
Substitute Terry Worsfold added a fourth with his first touch on a day when everything went right and even though Bradley pulled a late consolation back for West Brom, the final whistle was met by boos from the home support.
The defeat would spell the end for manager Brian Talbot and as some Albion fans invaded the pitch at full-time, they charged over to Buzaglo, only to lift him up on their shoulders and chant ‘sign him up!’
“All the photographers wanted pictures, it was the last thing I wanted,” Buzaglo said. “I just wanted to finish the game and get off. I couldn’t believe the reception we got from the West Brom fans after what we did.”
Chapple was dumped in the bath by the players during their post-match celebrations, leaving the Woking boss needing to borrow a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from the West Brom kit room. Buzaglo, meanwhile, along with coach Fred Callaghan quickly left for the Match of the Day studio.
“I found it all embarrassing, really,” Buzaglo added. “I’m quite a shy person anyway and to have all this attention... I was quite happy playing football and scoring goals but I didn’t need all that.
“I got as far as the changing room before being told I had to do BBC 5 Live, I needed a shower! By the time that had happened everyone had gone, it was just me and Geoff in the changing room.
“Then they said I was doing Match of the Day. I said, ‘No I’m not. There’s no way on God’s earth I am, get someone else to do it.’ But I was forced to.”
Credit
“I remember lying on the bed that night watching them on TV with Des Lynam,” Chapple. “I said to the players afterwards, ‘your lives will change, you will have cameramen and reporters knocking on your door, you’ve become national heroes.’ For a period of time, they found that out. The stories that came in after are the ones that make it so special.
“A lot of Non-League footballers where I live, Farnham and the surrounding areas, were all playing at a 2pm kickoff that day. A load of them told me that they were saying to the referee, ‘hurry up! We want to go and listen to the rest of the Woking game on the radio, they’re winning 4-1!’ News had travelled quick.”
Buzaglo was sent home from work early due to the number of calls he was receiving while Chapple’s neighbours thought he’d committed a murder as TV cameras waited outside his house!
The media frenzy didn’t end there – the fourth round was still to come…
“The very next day we had a live TV link-up in the clubhouse, watching the draw,” recalls Chapple. “You couldn’t have scripted it any better – out comes the first ball ‘WOKING’.
“We were all getting excited and then Everton came out and we were all hanging off the ceiling!”
The tie was switched to Goodison Park where a crowd of 35,000 gathered, including 10,000 from Woking, to see them take on the top-flight giants.
“I flew up and watched them a couple of times,” says Chapple. “The week before, we lost at home to Basingstoke, which wasn’t the best preparation. I thought ‘God, I’ve got a feeling we’re going to get smashed about 9-0’, I really did.
“A hundred and twenty-five coaches from Woking went. As for us, to be sitting on a coach with four police outriders front and back, going through red lights, blue lights flashing everywhere, for a day we felt like kings.
“Philip Carter, who was the chairman of Everton, came in before the start and said, ‘Gentlemen, you lads have been a credit to the Non-League.
“I’d like to present you with this crate of champagne as token of our thanks and best wishes. I’ve got one request; I want you drink it before you play us!’”
Platform
A first-half goal from Kevin Sheedy was enough for Everton to advance with Woking applauded off the pitch by every spectator.
“We put in a fantastic performance. It could have been a lot closer, we had a couple of good chances,” says Chapple.
“We became good friends with Everton. Myself and Howard Kendall (Everton manager) struck up a decent bond and they came down the following year for a pre-season friendly, and we raised about £10,000 for a local charity at the same time.
“That run really put us on the map. I was lucky enough to be manager of a fantastic group of players at that level who gave me everything. You need a bit of luck but I never saw it coming. It was a really fun time.”
“What you have to remember,” adds Dyke, “is that all the players were proper parttimers, unlike clubs today. Tim Reid, the goalkeeper, was a bank clerk, Tim Mitchell – a Hotpoint engineer, Adie Cowler – an interior designer, Derek Brown fitted industrial doors, I could go on through the whole team. They were very much a local, Non-League bunch of footballers.
“There were 87 people at Geoff’s first game against Clapton, later in the 90s they were averaging 2,800. I loved every single minute of covering Woking. I don’t know how many games of football I’ve seen but that West Brom match remains the best.”
After the cup run it was back to reality for Chapple’s charges. “It’s amazing how you can come from a massive high to a low,” he says. “We were going reasonably well in the league; I remember saying to the players that we had to try to win the title. I think we only won one more game. We had a terrible end of season but the run gave us the platform to go on and it brought in some much-needed funds to start developing the ground.”
The following season Woking won the Isthmian Premier title and would go on to win the FA Trophy three times in four years under Chapple while reaching at least the second round of the FA Cup in six consecutive years. They were the next Football League club in waiting…