Text at top (next game etc)

Next Game: Brentwood In The FA Trophy At Edgar Street On Saturday 16th November At 3.00pm

Friday, January 08, 2016

It's FA Cup Weekend


It used to be the FA Cup that Hereford supporters would look forward to, but now it's the FA Vase. Which shows how far down the football ladder the club now finds itself at.

However that game from 1972 still remains one of the highlights of the FA Cup and the Guardian featured it in an article yesterday.

And then there was Hereford United. Their 1972 victory over Newcastle United wasn’t quite as big a shock in pure footballing terms as Walsall’s 1933 win against Arsenal: Newcastle, while a decent side, simply weren’t anywhere near the level of Chapman’s men. But it was non-league versus First Division, and it’s probably more famous these days, what with being on colour television and all that. The drama it provided wasn’t half bad, either.

If you want a picture of English football in the 1970s, this is the one: a quagmire of a pitch, kids in green parkas hanging out of nearby trees to catch a free peek, everything saturated in a washed-out beige. Hereford had taken a shock 17-second lead in the original tie at St James Park, and scrapped to secure a 2-2 draw. Newcastle were still expected to win the replay at the Southern League club’s Edgar Street ground, what with being mid-table in the First Division and having won the Fairs Cup (now the Europa League) only three years earlier. But no.

Newcastle and England striker Malcolm McDonald looked to have settled matters with a goal eight minutes from time, but Ronnie Radford equalised with a ludicrous long-range screamer from the mud three minutes later, and Ricky George sealed it in extra time. Radford’s goal – click here, again and again and again – is unquestionably the most memorable in third-round history. In the early 1980s, the BBC produced a series of five-minute programmes called 100 Great Sporting Moments, culled from five decades’ worth of archive. Along with Gareth Edwards’ try for the Barbarians against the All Blacks in 1973, the Hereford-Newcastle clip was the one that plugged gaps in the BBC schedules the most often.