We have just passed the twenty-sixth anniversary of my favourite Palace game ever. Not only that, I would suggest it was the greatest FA Cup upset of all.
It is a day I can remember pretty well. Getting home in time to watch the end of the other semi-final, and watching Nick Faldo win the Masters in the evening.
It was a warm and sunny spring day and Villa Park was in fairly good condition. It was not the kind of day or pitch on which Cup upsets usually happen on.
Classic FA Cup upsets happen on cold, miserable days in January on boggy, rutted pitches, when it is hard for the better sides to show off their superior skills and talents.
Giant-killings do not happen on pitches looking like croquet lawns in April.
Giant-killers normally score one or two goals in low-scoring contests. These goals are either one-off worldies that a player might never score again, or goal-mouth scrambles.
Giant-killers do not usually score four goals like Palace did.
Granted, Cup upsets normally happen when teams from lower divisions beat teams from the top league. Even though Palace were in the First Division, the gulf between the two teams was vast, especially with Palace’s best player, Ian Wright, unavailable with a broken leg.
This was to be the last Liverpool side to win the league and they had shown the previous September that they could be scarily, frighteningly good. Let us move on from that game.
In the starting line-up for Liverpool that day were players that had won or would go on to win 493 international caps for their countries. If you add Steve Staunton, who came on as substitute for Ian Rush, that takes the number to 595.
Then let us look at where Palace signed their players from. There were two players in Palace’s side (John Salako and Richard Shaw) that had come through the ranks. Others in the side were signed from Bristol Rovers, Aylesbury United, Yeovil Town, Dulwich Hamlet, Leicester City reserves and two came from Crewe Alexandra.
Liverpool had picked up a couple of bargains in their side – Alan Hansen from Partick Thistle, Bruce Grobelaar from US football, Ian Rush from Wrexham, but most of their side – the likes of Ray Houghton, Steve McMahon, Peter Beardsley and John Barnes – were signed once they had established themselves as stars and international regulars.
They should have beaten us easily, and to be fair the first half was quite scary, as Liverpool were the stronger side and sliced our defence open for what was a classic Ian Rush goal.
The Liverpool celebrations of that first goal were polite and civilised, not over-doing it. It was to be the first of many in a comfortable win.
Liverpool’s other goals can be considered typical of those of a top side – a well-taken goal when the massed defence failed to deal with a clever free kick move, and a penalty sympathetically awarded after a clumsy challenge.
Palace’s goals were typical of a giant-killing side. What was extraordinary was that we scored four of them.
The turning point in the game, and I know you all know this, was John Pemberton’s interception and fifty yard run straight from the kick-off at the start of the second half.
The cross resulted in the first of several goal-mouth scrambles, with the ball skipping back and forth across the penalty area before Mark Bright nailed the finish. And unlike the Liverpool players’ calm and measured reaction to their first goal, the Palace players went nuts.
Palace turned the game on its head soon after when Liverpool failed to deal with a set piece – still a problem twenty-six years on – and Gary O’Reilly swept a second goal in. After that came McMahon’s equaliser, celebrated properly this time, and then John Barnes’ penalty to put Liverpool ahead.
Normal service had been restored. Liverpool were back on course for the win and the double.
Then came the ultimate giant-killers goal – the equaliser that would send the game into extra-time. A hoofed free kick (technical term) headed on by Geoff Thomas. Liverpool then flapped not once but twice heading the ball up in the air, allowing Andy Gray to jump in and head the ball over the line.
Then there was extra-time and that flick on at the near post and the header that transformed a limited, former non-league trundler into ‘Super Al’.
It was a goal that crowned the greatest FA Cup giant-killing act EVER.
