Right, just the three goals then? I mean I only went to my first game in 1973, how hard could this be?
Where to start? Classic goals, important goals, significant milestone goals, screamers, goals of aesthetic beauty, flukey goals, surprise goals on days you think it’s never gonna happen, those rarest of goals when you instinctively know something is happening that split second before it actually does, goals that mean something personally or any of the 205 that Alan Buckley scored?
Then you think of one goal and it reminds you of another moment and you’re lost on the meandering road of nostalgia. Then, just as you think you’ve nailed it, Richard and then Matt and then Daz brilliantly describe other goals and off you go again re-living your life through those goals, teams and whole eras.
In the end I’ve opted for three of the very best – important, significant and symbolic. All historic moments – one of the biggest games the club ever played, one of our finest ever achievements and the setting up of one of our biggest ever days out. Three great teams with three of our best ever managers, two who are still rightly remembered as legends.
They comprise an equaliser that was probably only delaying the inevitable, a strike to give us a two-goal lead that went a long way to calming the nerves on a day when nothing realistically was going to go wrong and a late second also to put us 2-0 up to give us a foothold in a tie that would finally lay a ghost to rest.
And every one is connected by a common thread, something I believe the youth of today refer to as ‘limbs’. Moments of collective ecstasy where everyone around you goes apeshit crazy. Moments that those poor unfortunates who identify as non-football fans would never understand, and that really is their loss.
Goal number one: Kevin 7.2.84
David Preece goes on the offensive, deep into the Liverpool territory, shapes to pick out the run of the fresh legs of Kevin Summerfield, the ball takes a deflection off one of the surprisingly average home players but still lands into the substitute’s path. One quick glance at the position of the advancing Grobelaar and his goalframe, one deft touch to lob Bruce and we were level at the home of the then best team in Europe for a second time that evening.
With that the scoring was done – the only clearcut chance of the remaining 15 minutes (that naturally felt like 15 hours) falling to Mark Rees – try watching the footage back without shouting square it or use your left foot, believe me it’s impossible – and a huge part of our folklore had been written.
At some point in the early to mid-90s, late on in a game, Kevin Summerfield was preparing to come on as a sub for our opponents, I can’t think who for and cba to look it up; I started applauding. People stood around me gave some quizzical looks, so I pointed out this was a player, in fact the only home player, who had scored for Walsall in a major cup semi-final. (Our other goal had been a Phil Neal o.g.) The implication being give the man a bit of respect and, to be fair, most people did. Kevin Summerfield may be first and last and always in this respect but what a feckin goal, what a feckin moment.
Kevin was Walsall born and had been to my old school too. On the day me and my mates finished school early (during a free period of course) to go and get our semi-final tickets, some of the players were there -they often trained on the car park (as you did for a big game against Europe’s finest back in the day) – he recognised the Joseph Leckie uniform and came over to say hello like the all-round top bloke he was.
Assuming that we all make it to 2024, the next major milestone anniversary for the 83/84 Milk Cup team is the 40th by which point the run to the semi-final will be closer to the end of the Second World War. Just let that sink in. Realistically you have to be in your early forties now to have seen that team but they were a joy to watch. They put the ball on the floor and passed it around, this set them apart from most First Division teams, let alone our peers in the Third.
To give it a bit of further context, seven of the starting line-up were home grown, five were 22 or under, all but two of the squad were born locally and another one of them, Ally Brown, had a decade at Albion behind him (he’d almost signed for Wolverhampton, preparing to embark on one last disastrous season in the old First Division, the previous summer before realising the error of his ways and that dropping two divisions to play for the Mighty Saddlers was the correct choice).
Years later I heard the WM commentary of the game – if anyone has it, it would be brilliant to hear again – where even they took a day off from their B6/WV3-centric worldview to revel in something truly remarkable. ‘Oh God, it’s wonderful’ is the standout quote from commentator George Gavin.
Even better though is the Radio 2 live commentary (Radio 5 hadn’t been invented yet) from my dad’s namesake Peter Jones and co-commentator Jimmy Armfield. Peter Jones was a tremendous old-school broadcaster, he rightly gave us plenty of credit for our performance through the game, Armfield less so (to be fair he was a footballing great who would later go on to become a fine pundit himself). However after Liverpool had gone 2-1 up with less than 20 minutes left, Armfield joylessly proclaimed in his dour Northern tone that the natural order had been restored, implying we’d had our fun and that he expected the Reds to add another couple to their tally … except he didn’t get to the end of his sentence before Jones grabbed the mike from him to scream that Summerfield was through and about to level things up. A mate at school had recorded the whole thing and we only listened to it back about 300 times in the following week – happy days.
Goal number two: Chris 1.5.99
If you’d scripted it the night before, you’d have had Chris Marsh down on the scoresheet. He was our longest serving player, he’d apparently incurred the wrath of more than one manager over that time, he’d been there with us through the wilderness years from 88-94, he’d had his (unfair) share of stick in that time and overcome all that to become a real cult hero – the Stepover King. And he hadn’t scored all season.
Marshy marauds forward from right back, plays a one-two with Rob Steiner (how did we end up signing Mark Bobbins instead of him Sun Tan Man?) and then he was in on goal in front of a packed out home terrace. Marshy still had work to do but he wasn’t missing the target today, a dainty little poke over the keeper and the game was effectively wrapped up before the half time whistle. Which meant the most unexpected of all promotions was effectively wrapped up within 44 games.
Seven days earlier leaving Sincil Bank after a late Wracky winner on a mudbath of a pitch on the day that Manc City (pre-petrol dollars) had bottled it, there seemed to be a collective, almost telepathic, calculation take place in the minds of every Saddler bouncing out of the away end. Two points from three games – even Walsall can’t mess up that one up.
And so it was: two points from three games for the most unexpected but glorious and thoroughly deserved promotion starting with that home fixture with Oldham. In nine glorious months Sir Ray Graydon had created a team that were coached in a way where everyone knew what they were doing and did it well, a team that gave everything out on the pitch, that were truly horrible to play against yet rarely knew when they were beaten, a team that had unified the fans, a team that wore the badge with pride, a team that made you proud to be a Saddler. Easily the greatest season ever, one that I’d happily play on repeat if there ever was some kind of ‘Groundhog’ season.
Goal number three: Tom 7.1.16
James Baxendale initially closed down the tired attempts of the PNE defenders to launch the ball forward and then chased and harried the full back into playing a ball back to his keeper that was, if not quite suicidal, then an attention seeking cry for help at the very least.
Often you see the semblance of a chance and hope it falls to the right player. And this time it felt different because … well because it did, it fell to Super Tom. Tom Bradshaw is simply one of the best finishers I’ve seen in a Walsall shirt in my time, one who always gave you the confidence that he knew what he was doing, one who truly looked the part.
Tom was onto the back pass in a nanosecond, he beat the keeper to the ball, shaped himself and deftly slid it under the keeper. Then time seemed to slow down but in a way that was beautiful, the ball was going in, we all could see it was going in, there was never a chance of it not going in but there seemed to be enough time for the entire away end to process the fact that it was indeed going to cross the line and hit the net.
2-0, with a few minutes and the most tense game ever in the 2nd leg to negotiate, but 2-0 nonetheless. Realistically it was better than we could have imagined beforehand but this was the clincher. This time it felt different because finally we had more than hope, we could believe we were going to Wembley.
We all know the story now of Walsall FC’s 127 year wait to play at Wembley – although realistically, as the club was formed many years before Wembley was built, it was ‘just’ the 92 years, still way too long though.
It wasn’t as if we’d not come close, falling pretty agonizingly at the final hurdles in 84, 93, 98 and 99; winning Play Off finals two years before and then one year after they were played at Wembley, and then twice opting out of the Play Offs simply by being way too good for them and going and winning automatic promotion as our rivals bottled it (hi 1995 Chesterfield, hi 1999 Man City).
However, in 14/15 something about our run in the JPT just felt different. By the time it got going, we were heading for archetypal mid-table League One placement, yet the team were good enough on their day to take on anyone in the league. We were well into the Smith Project (most of the way through as it turned out) and our pleasing on the eye style of play was embedded.
We beat an in-form Rochdale, three weeks after one of our regular drubbings there. Then we disposed of another top 6 side in Nigel Clough’s Sheff U, who were either ‘wanting to win every game’ or taking the ‘not a priority’ approach to the competition depending on whether you hear Clough Jnr’s before or after match interview.
The real test had been at Tranmere in the last eight, two down in a downpour against a team bound for the National League, it had all the hallmarks of a typically Walsall-esque crushing disappointment. But like I say this felt different. Two all at fulltime was a good comeback, but then at 4-2 down in the penalty shootout, we needed 3 successive spotkicks to go our way just to stay in it. They did. Richard O’Donnell was always going to save at least one, the first kick of sudden death was as good a time as any, and then Paul Downing smashed one down the middle and we were through. It felt different.
Preston over two legs, starting at Deepdale on a filthy night, was always going to be tougher, the shrewd rope-a-dope tactic of letting North End have the ball for the entire first half that relied heavily on O’Donnell having the game of his life as he conducted a one-man campaign against Beckford and co was risky but it worked. As they ran out of steam we waited for our chance then pounced. Romaine was felled outside the box and I’m certain Anthony Forde’s sublime free kick gets better every time you watch it back, but that he was just the support act. That night, that time and that season it felt different and Super Tom Bradshaw was always going to be the headliner.
Hidden Extras
I have to mention some of the other nominees: the Buck in the 3-2 win over Man United in 1975, George Andrews’ winner against Newcastle in the next round and Alun Evans’ last minute winner against Leicester at the same stage three years later.
Hat tricks from David Kelly and Stuart Rimmer, Darren Byfield at Cardiff, Pedro against Stoke, Jorge at Charlton, Trevor Benjamin at Notts County, Deano at Swindon, Merse’s opening day double or Andy Rammell’s one-man crusade against the WM’s not-quite-as-big-as-they-imagined boys in 99/00.
An array of eye-catching individual goals – James Clarke and Wes McDonald from this season alone. And moments when everything just falls into place like it’s a film set and an imaginary director has just shouted ‘action’ – the ball dropping onto Julian Gray’s left foot for him to loop it back into the opposite corner of the goal to put us 3 up against Bristol Rovers in the 6-1 win in January 2011, a game which doubled up as the official launch party of the Great Escape.
Then there are the personal moments, for me it was Rambo against Stoke in December 98. I’d become a second-time dad for the day before but we were short of a middle name; Andrew just fitted perfectly then and still does now.
Here’s hoping that one day soon a Josh, a Caolan, a Wes or an Elijah can join this illustrious list.
The No Nobhead Policy 