Memories of the 1965 Cup Final
30 Oct 2013 08:00 am, by Gandalf
If you can imagine how excited a 12 year old could be when being told that his uncle had got tickets for the 1965 Cup Final and that he was taking me. Well, then add that he had also got tickets for the Challenge Cup Final, which that year was Hunslet v Wigan, AND we would be staying in London for the whole week, a place that I had never been, I was close to passing out with delight.
We only had a few days notice, so it went fairly quickly. I had been going to both Elland Road and Parkside on a fairly regular basis, but I had never travelled to an Away game. Setting off at Midnight on the Friday night, the journey to London, by bus, seemed to take forever. There was no M1 then, and the bus stopped at places that I recognised from the football scores on a Saturday - Sheffield, Nottingham, Leicester, Northampton, Luton.
The bus was full, and when we stopped nobody got on or off, so I could never figure out why we stopped at all these places, but eventually we arrived at Victoria Coach Station. The place was swarming with Leeds and Liverpool scarves. My mum had embroidered all the names of the players onto my scarf - I always remember she couldn't fit Johanneson onto it, so he became just Albert. It was also my first encounter with a broad Scouse accent, which sounded so much different to the Beatles - I couldn't understand a word.
The next excitement was the journey on the Tube to Wembley - everybody crammed in, both Leeds and Liverpool, and it seemed to take an age before we arrived at Wembley Park station. Then it was the long walk down Wembley Way, and the first sight of the famous twin towers. We were nearing the time to get in the ground for the build up, and to be honest, having stayed up all night on the journey down, I was beginning to get very tired.
However, in we went, and found a perch at the tunnel end. The pre-match entertainment started, and we were singing along with Abide With Me, and then the players were introduced to the Queen, before finally the match itself. To be honest, I think all the players were as tired as I was. Casting back in my memory, I cannot remember a single good chance in the 90 minutes. Both defences were on top, and the Bremner / Collins axis was not functioning as it usually did. It was just my luck that the first final to ever go to extra time was this one.
Liverpool started the brighter in extra time, and they quickly took the lead. Roger Byrne overlapped down the left, and crossed a perfect ball for Roger Hunt to slam it into the net. Remarkably, Byrne had played since early in the second half with a broken collar bone - no substitutes in those days. I was pretty distraught, playing as we were, I never thought that we could come back from that.
As usual, I underestimated the Mighty Whites. Albert (as he is now known) slung over a looping cross, Big Jack nodded the ball down, and Little Billy crashed in his trademark half volley, which flew into the top corner of the net. The Leeds fans erupted, and I was bundled over in the mayhem. Several friendly hands lifted me up and dusted me down.
Sadly, it wasn't to be. Both teams were visibly tiring on the sapping Wembley turf, but with seven minutes to go, Liverpool launched another attack on the Leeds goal. Callaghan made a lung bursting run down the right, and floated over a cross. Ian St John threw himself at the ball and fired a perfect diving header past the stranded Gary Sprake. There was no coming back from this one. Liverpool had won the cup, and I was devastated. I didn't want to hang around to see Liverpool raise the cup, but my uncle said we would be disrespecting the Queen - different times, eh ?.
We cheered the Leeds lads as they collected their losers medals, and gave them a rousing reception as they trudged dejectedly down the tunnel - Billy looking as though he wouldn't make it as far as the dressing room. We gave a more muted, but still very fair, round of applause to the Liverpool players as they came past us with the Cup, then at last my uncle said that we could leave, and try and find our lodging. I remember nothing after getting back on the Tube - I was immediately asleep. I was awoken back at Victoria Station, from where we walked to our B&B in Pimlico, which sounded like somewhere in Yugoslavia to me, but was actually a very nice area close to the river. All I remember of that night was that the bed was very comfortable.
I woke with a feeling that I was going to get to know well in the coming years. That sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that meant we had lost again.
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