DRAX, DJ & DING SCARED THE TOON AND WON HEARTS OF THE NATION!
By JOHN LYONS
HAVING a memorable FA Cup run is just a dream for most people – Johnson Hippolyte will never forget living the reality.
His DJ Campbell-inspired Yeading side were creating ripples in the Isthmian League 15 years ago, but their Cup adventure catapulted them into the national consciousness. Little did they know that when they won 1-0 at Chelmsford City in the first qualifying round in September 2004, it would be the start of a journey that would take them into the New Year and a date with Premier League giants Newcastle United in the third round.
It was when they beat Halesowen Town 2-1 at home in the first round proper that it began to dawn on the Ding that they had a golden opportunity to reach the third round and throw their name into the hat with the big boys.
“It was a really hard-fought game,” recalled Hippolyte, a 55-year-old project manager for a building firm.
“When we got through that, we thought ‘wow, this is really exciting’. We drew Slough in the second round (Yeading won 3-1 away) and we couldn’t say it at the time but we fancied beating them. Then the whole thing took off.
“We seemed to be on the back of every newspaper for weeks and we were doing interviews and all sorts in the lead up to the game. You look back and cringe at some of it!
“I remember going to work in the weeks before the game and people looking at me on the building site and saying ‘Is it him?’.”
For someone who’d always loved the FA Cup, you can understand why it was such a special time for Hippolyte, who was rapidly carving out a rep
utation as one of Non-League’s up-and-coming bosses following his playing days.
“The FA Cup was always important to me,” said the man known as Drax (“I got the nickname at school. I did a Mike Tyson and bit someone – I was only about seven at the time!”)
“As a kid, for my sins, I was a Leeds United supporter and I remember them losing a replay to Chelsea when I was six (in 1970) and getting beat by Sunderland (in 1973). It always had that glamour for me.
“In my playing days at Yeading, we did well in the Cup. We drew at home against Gilingham (0-0 in 1993) and Colchester (2-2 in 1994), and I scored in that game against Colchester.
“The highlights were on the telly, which was pretty much unheard of then. It was on telly for ten seconds and that was the highlight of the season!”
But Yeading had much more than ten seconds of fame when they took on Graeme Souness’ Magpies in 2005. At least they were well prepared.
“Newcastle really looked after us,” said Hippolyte. “They flew myself, the chairman and a director up there and we went to watch them before our tie.
“They put us up overnight and the mood was so special leading up the game. Perhaps they were so friendly because we were so far down the leagues!”
Indeed, Johnson admits he was worried that his Yeading side would be torn apart by the Magpies in a tie that had been switched to QPR’s Loftus Road.
“When the draw was first made we thought we would be on our way to Newcastle,” admitted Hippolyte. “However, there had been a bit of a hoo-ha a couple of years before when Farnborough had switched their tie to Arsenal and the rules had been changed to avoid that happening again.
“Yeading only had a ground for two or three thousand at a push, so it was never going to be there. It ended up being a choice between QPR or Brentford.
Pedigree
“Everyone was so excited. We all had family and friends coming to the game – I had people coming who I had been to school with 20 years earlier!
“I was quite worried about Newcastle beating us six-nil, eight-nil or ten-nil, though I didn’t say it at the time! When we were playing teams three or four leagues below us, we would thrash them, so if they’d hammered us, it wouldn’t have been a surprise.
“When I saw their line-up, I thought ‘Oh my god!’. I think they only left out Shearer and Given. They weren’t in the best of form at the time and put out a really strong side.”
Indeed, Newcastle’s line-up was no bunch of novices. It included the likes of Jermaine Jenas, Lee Bowyer, Craig Bellamy, Shola Ameobi and new £8m signing Jean-Alain Boumsong.
But Yeading didn’t stand off and admire the Toon Army’s play. They got stuck in and created their own chances before second half goals from Bowyer (51) and Ameobi (61) ensured there was to be no upset in front of more than 10,000 fans.
“I remember that Graeme Souness was up in the stand with the England manager
Sven-Goran Eriksson at the start of the match,” said Hippolyte.
“We started really well and Souness came down to the dugout after ten minutes – I thought ‘we’re doing something right’.
“Garth Crooks had followed us in the build-up and I recall him saying that if we could hold them to 0-0 at half-time, the viewing figures would go through the roof. We’d had one or two chances in the first half and their keeper made a great save.
“We held our own in the first half, but their fitness started to tell in the second.
“We weren’t disappointed to lose the game because we knew the chances of us winning were quite slim, but we were disappointed not to score.
“We wanted to put in a good performance, which we did, and I was so proud of the boys. I said at the time, and it’s a common cliché, but apart from my children being born, it was the proudest day of my life.” The FA Cup adventure reinforced Hippolyte’s view that it is a magical competition, even though some of the fat cats treat it with disdain these days.
“The Cup has always been special and they need to keep it going,” he said. “It means so much in Non-League especially – it can change lives.”
And one of those who benefited the most was star striker Campbell. He’d notched a whopping 65 goals in two title-winning seasons on the trot as Yeading marched up to Conference South football.
“He was a lad that shouldn’t have been at our level in the first place,” explained Hippolyte. “He had a proper pedigree from being at QPR and Aston Villa as a youngster and it was no fluke he went back into the league. “He needed man-managing to get the best out of him, the right manager at the right time who had faith in him. The Newcastle game gave him the opportunity to show what he could do and he held his own. “He showed flashes of brilliance on the day to make (Brentford manager) Martin Allen think that he was worth a chance. Within six months of joining them, he got his move to Birmingham and the Premier League – it was no surprise to me.
“He was a star for us all the time we had him. If you have a centre-forward who has the knack of scoring goals on a regular basis, it’s going to make your life a lot easier.”
But Hippolyte is at pains to point out that his Ding team was much more than just a oneman band.
“We had some quality players who were playing a few rungs lower down than they should have been – and went on to prove that,” he explained.
Limelight
“DJ was the star but our midfield of David Clarke, Darti Brown and Davis Haule was absolutely phenomenal. They were our Vieira and Petit in the middle of the park.
“Sven-Goran Eriksson said he hadn’t seen a better player outside the top divisions than David Clarke and he got man of the match against Newcastle. That wasn’t a ‘let’s just give it to someone on the losing team’ – he was that good. What a player he was. We had a knack of picking up quality players. Myself and my assistant Dereck Brown hadn’t stopped playing that long before and we knew how players felt. We wanted to make them feel special.
“I would like to think I was a bit like Klopp – a man-manager. I look at him and think ‘that’s how I managed’ – passionate on the line, hugging his players.
“Sometimes other managers would say ‘you’re too close to your players’, but it worked for us. We had a close bond with them.”
Of course, the Cup run also provided a welcome financial boost for Yeading. Hippolyte believes it earned the west London club in excess of £200,000.
“The chairman Phil Spurden, bless him, was one of those who put a lot in out of his own pocket and I was so happy for him,” he said. “I don’t know the exact figures, but it was a tidy sum for a club of our size and helped with things like ground improvements.”
Hippolyte admits the team was ‘found out a little bit’ the following season in Conference South – they finished 16th – though losing Campbell to Brentford hardly helped.
There had been an added bonus for the players that pre-season – Newcastle invited the Ding to play them in a pre-season friendly ahead of the 200506 campaign at St James’ Park.
The Magpies led 1-0 at the break before four goals in the last 11 minutes gave them a 5-0 victory. Ameobi bagged a lastgasp double while James Milner also got on the scoresheet.
Hippolyte said: “I can’t speak highly enough of Newcastle – the way they treated us before, during and after the cup-tie was very professional. They knew how much it would mean to us to play at that great stadium and that we would give them a decent test.
“We went up and played there, stayed overnight and the boys had a big night out – maybe that’s why we finished 16th!”
Hippolyte left Yeading for Maidenhead in 2006 and spent almost a decade in charge of the Magpies, guiding them to promotion to Conference South via the Southern League playoffs in his first season in charge.
Following a spell at Staines Town, which ended in 2018, he has ‘retired’ from football management and regularly watches his son Jonathan, 25, who was a mascot at the Newcastle game, play for Chertsey Town.
However, Hippolyte – who has done some scouting for AFC Wimbledon and recommended left-back Nesta Guinness-Walker, 20, who signed for the Dons from Met Police – hasn’t entirely ruled out a return to the dugout.
“I’m not one of those managers you see at games or going in the bar afterwards trying to get a job,” he added. “I’m retired but I will never say never.
“If a chairman rang me and sold me a dream, I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t come out of retirement. I would speak to them.”
But if it doesn’t happen, Hippolyte can always look back on that amazing Cup run of 2004-05 – and especially the tie against Newcastle – when he and his Yeading team hogged the limelight.