‘They only ever talk about the replay and my 35-yarder...but the real glory was at Newcastle in the first game!’
THEY always talk about the sequel, which made Newcastle manager Joe Harvey stop the team coach to be sick in a lay-by on the retreat from ignominy.
But nobody mentions the original tie, where heroic Southern League part-timers held top-flight heavyweights to a fearless 2-2 draw on Tyneside.
Every year, the most celebrated FA Cup giantkilling in history is recycled on TV, forcing the Geordie nation to draw the curtains as John Motson’s excitable soundtrack, on his Match of the Day debut, earned him a contract as a front-line BBC commentator.
Yet half a century later, Hereford United’s audacious performance in the third round at St James’ Park in 1972 is still as forgotten as amnesia itself.
Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown, as former Newcastle and England legend Malcolm Macdonald would discover. But before the defining one-liner from
‘I will never grow tired of watching the replay, and what that goal did for a carpenter from Wakefield’
Henry IV Part II, William Shakespeare had to set the scene in Part I.
Ronnie Radford, whose sensational equaliser in the third-round replay is still the cup’s greatest mudlark, agrees that before the glory came the real guts.
“In the first game, Brian Owen put us in front after 17 seconds with a goal that was as good as you will ever see,” said Radford (right), now 78.
“He hit it from the corner of the box, it flew across the Newcastle keeper Willie McFaul and got stuck in the stanchion at the top of the net. Absolutely fantastic, it was. There were 39,000 fans crammed around three sides of St James’ Park that night because one stand had been demolished. A lot of them missed it because they were still pouring into the ground. “I’ll never forget the fantastic reception the Geordie fans gave us when our team coach pulled up outside the players’ entrance. “We had already been up there once and it was called off. It made us feel like they were thanking us for coming back. But we went toe-to-toe with Newcastle, under lights on a Monday night on their own patch. It was 2-2 by half-time and we matched them all the way.
“I will never grow tired of watching the replay, and what that goal did for a carpenter from Wakefield, but a giantkilling wouldn’t have been possible without that performance in the first game,” said Radford (above, celebrating after the 1972 replay with fellow scorer Ricky George).
Newcastle, in fairness, did not enjoy much luck as they awaited their fate, in postboxred away strip, in an Edgar Street quagmire.
Holed up in Worcester for 10 days, as three attempts to play the replay foundered in the midwinter swamps, Harvey’s players bought up most of a Cecil Gee menswear store’s stock as emergency supplies.
When Macdonald headed Newcastle in front eight minutes from the end, Hereford’s resistance finally appeared to be broken.
But almost immediately, the original Rocket Ronnie – more than 20 years before snooker ace Ronnie O’Sullivan set foot in the Crucible – forced extra time with his supreme long-range hit.
And when sub George smuggled the winner beyond McFaul, on-duty police had no chance of preventing the joyous pitch invasion – so they joined in. “It was a magical time,” added Radford.
“Even now, when people talk to me about my goal, I still get emotional about it.
“It makes me sad when people talk about the cup losing its magic. For us guys in the lower leagues, it’s still our chance to let the big boys know we’re around and to make a lot of people happy when they experience something once in a lifetime.”