This season the FA Cup has brought more than its usual number of giantkillings resulting in just one Premiership team in the semi-final. And that club, Portsmouth, isn't one of the so-called top four. But Hereford United's victory over Newcastle still remains as the biggest giantkilling ever.
So it was very timely that last Monday, as Brian Viner writes in this morning's Independent, there was a get-together of some of those involved in Hereford's 1972 adventures in the Cup.
The perfect antidote to the dreary dominance of the "big four" and the FA's own myopia, it also made the presence on Monday evening of John Motson, Ricky George, Ronnie Radford, Colin Addison, Dudley Tyler and Billy Meadows at the Rankin Club in the small Herefordshire town of Leominster wonderfully timely.
All the above-named men played a role in what is still, Barnsley's defeat of Chelsea notwithstanding, the greatest FA Cup shock of all time, non-league Hereford United's 2-1 defeat of mighty Newcastle United in a third-round replay on 5 February 1972.
Except for Motson, who, aged 26, was cutting his teeth as a commentator for Match of the Day, they all played for Hereford that day, Addison as player-manager. And they still get together for reunions like the one at the Rankin Club, where Motson and George entertained a sell-out audience with their memories, and the others chipped in from the front row.
Addison told us that he knew for a fact that on the way home from Hereford 36 years ago, Joe Harvey, the Newcastle manager, stopped the team coach so he could throw up. I fancy that the only thing stopping Avram Grant alighting from the team vehicle to do the same last Saturday was that the team vehicle was above the clouds.
Anyway, I was pleased to find that Motty too was of the opinion, which dispiritingly is not shared by all football enthusiasts, that the FA Cup semi-final line-up is "fantastic for the democracy of the competition". He told us that he had a strong sense of déjà vu on the gantry at Oakwell last Saturday, spiriting him all the way back to a wintry afternoon long ago at Edgar Street. And even though he had also commentated on Sutton United's defeat of Coventry City in 1989, Hereford's act of giant-killing "will always be the biggest and the closest to my heart". Which was, of course, precisely what his audience wanted to hear.
It was a cracking evening, and I spent much of the interval chatting with Radford, now 64 and sporting a hearing aid, but scarcely less lean than he was when he so indelibly wrote his name in the history books by hammering home from fully 30 yards the equaliser to Malcolm Macdonald's opening goal.
It was George who bagged the winner in extra time, but as he told us, "If I'm outside Hereford I always claim Ronnie's goal. I'm sick of saying that I got the bobbly one from eight yards!" Radford wouldn't mind. A charming, modest man, he also talked about Addison's predecessor as Hereford's player-manager, the great John Charles. Before his debut at Shrewsbury in 1971, he asked Charles where he wanted him to play. "You're a midfield player, aren't you?" said Charles. "That's right," said Radford. "Play in midfield then," said Charles.
How times have changed; today there would have been diagrams, if not video analysis. Which is one of the reasons why in 2008 it is so comforting to be reminded that some things stay constant, and that FA Cup giants can still be slain.
Text at top (next game etc)
Next Game: Away At Buxton On Saturday 12th October at 3.00pm