Post by QPR Report on Jun 26, 2009 20:29:09 GMT
G-D, I remember the Watney Cup 
The Guardian/Scott Murray
The Joy of Six: Extinct football competitionsFrom Soccer Six at the G-Mex to the cup that gave the world the penalty shootout, here are half-a-dozen quirky events we miss
1) Soccer Six
Modern six-a-side football, represented by those Masters tournaments on Sky, throws up many a question. OK, just two: "Who is he?", and the more baroque: "He played for Liverpool in the 1980s? Are you quite sure? Or simply taking the mickey?" Anyway, what goes around comes around, because Britain's first punt at a major six-a-side tournament back in 1982, the Austin-Rover Soccer Six, raised the same queries. As now, audiences didn't have a bloody clue who was out there playing: restricted to teams from the Midlands, it was a total farce, with Derby, Coventry, Birmingham, Notts County, Leicester, WBA, Wolves and Nottingham Forest all sending along teams of unknown reserves and apprentices.
In fairness, though, it was a trial run, and the following year the winners, Birmingham City, joined Arsenal, Everton, Ipswich Town, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest, Southampton and Swansea City at the 7,600-seater Birmingham NEC for a kickabout in the newly-minted Atari Soccer Six. "Heading, trapping, dribbling, chipping and tackling – they're all there!" rah-rahed Football League cheerleader Graham Kelly, dressed in a tight gymslip and waving his pom-po … OK, no he wasn't, and apologies for the mental image.
The tournament was a sell-out, give or take the odd batch of tickets handed out free to kids. Birmingham retained their trophy and the popularity of the tournament grew: by the end of the decade it had turned into a four-day pre-Christmas beano at the Manchester G-Mex, with the final transmitted live on BBC Sportsnight.
It was different, without being self-consciously showy, giving the nation its first glimpse of Paul Merson; rehabilitating Jan Molby after his stint in the slammer; showcasing preposterously strong Nottingham Forest squads (Hans Segers, Johnny Metgod, Neil Webb, Franz Carr, Nigel Clough and Ian Bowyer was the 1986 vintage); and providing the likes of Charlton's Mickey Bennett (player of the year as they won in 1988) and Luton Town's Sean Farrell (who scored the opener in the Hatters' 4-0 trouncing of Liverpool in the 1990 final) with career highs.
But TV money talks, and with English clubs back in Europe and more live league matches being televised, interest eventually waned in tellyland, and the tournament was quietly cancelled in 1991. It's never been forgotten, though.
2) Coronation CupGiven Scotland and England's international rivalry is the oldest in the world, dating back to 1878 – on the football pitch, anyway – it's odd that the two countries have never managed to get a serious Anglo-Scottish championship off the ground. A British League Cup was held in 1902 to raise money for the first Ibrox disaster; it was won by Celtic. The 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow was commemorated by a trophy bearing its name; again, it was won by Celtic. And Celtic would do very well out of these trophies, also winning the 1953 Coronation Cup, a forelock-tugging affair to celebrate the ascent of Lizzie.
The Coronation Cup is our favourite of this lot, simply for the reaction of the Guardian at the time. At the quarter-final stage, big wins by Manchester United and Newcastle, over Rangers and Aberdeen respectively, were reported in a big two-column box; the Hampden final, between the English duo's semi-final vanquishers Celtic and Hibernian, got two lines in a round-up article, beneath the latest score of a lawn tennis match in Ireland.
Serious efforts would be made in the early 1970s, when the Texaco Cup drew together teams from the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland who had failed to qualify for Europe. But after a promising start, the English teams dominated and crowds dwindled. It would be replaced in 1975-76 by the Anglo-Scottish Cup, which for six years would achieve nothing of note – although Brian Clough considered Nottingham Forest's triumph in 1977 to be the most important trophy he ever landed at the City Ground, as it taught his players how to win, laying the foundations for glory at home and in Europe.
3) Anglo-Italian CupAlan Hardaker, the man who ran the Football League between 1951 and 1977, was no fan of European football. "Too many wogs and dagoes," he once charmlessly explained to the legendary football writer Brian Glanville. So it is with hilarious irony that his brainchild, the League Cup – dubbed Hardaker's Folly in its early-60s infancy – inadvertently caused the creation of two new continental pots.
In 1967, QPR had beaten West Brom in the League Cup final, but couldn't claim their place in the Fairs Cup because Uefa rules prevented the entry of third-tier teams. When another Third Division team won the same trophy two years later, Swindon beating Arsenal, the authorities decided to act. An Anglo-Italian League Cup was set up, with Swindon facing Coppa Italia winners AS Roma – whose team included midfielder Fabio Capello – and after a 2-1 loss in Rome, Town amazingly hammered the Italian giants 4-0 at the County Ground to lift the cup 5-2 on aggregate.
The whole affair was so popular that an Anglo-Italian Cup was inaugurated the following season. The winners of two six-team groups would contest a final: Swindon, Sheffield Wednesday, Middlesbrough, West Brom, Sunderland and Wolves made up an English group; Napoli, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina, Lazio and Vicenza the Italian one. In the final, Swindon ran riot against Napoli in the Sao Paolo stadiumm going 3-0 up after 63 minutes. And so did the home fans, throwing bottles, stones and entire concrete benches on to the pitch. The match was abandoned and Swindon won the cup by default.
Major brawls began to scar every other game, and the competition was finally set aside after Newcastle battled to glory in 1973. It was revived in 1992, for another four seasons of fist fighting – one match at Birmingham saw the ref end the day in hospital – before the whole sorry business was set aside.
4) Full Members CupThe 1990s version of the Anglo-Italian Cup was a replacement for the axed Full Members Cup, which in turn had been launched in 1985 to fill gaps in both calendar and pocket of clubs in the top two divisions in the wake of the Heysel ban. Unlike the Screen Sport Super Cup – an elite version for the six teams who would have qualified for Europe, considered so pointless that nobody could be bothered to complete it in the 1985-86 season, a disinterested Liverpool eventually beating an even more disintested Everton 7-2 over two legs at the start of the following campaign – the FMC threw up some classic tales.
The 1986 final was as quirky as football gets. Chelsea beat Manchester City by a preposterous 5-4 Wembley scoreline – the two teams having played huge matches in the league the day before. (Chelsea were chasing the title, City had the Manchester derby to contend with.) "If football's dying," said Chelsea boss John Hollins after his team had nearly let a 5-1 lead slip in the last 10 minutes, "I hope it's dying like that."
Two years later, Reading, in the business of being relegated from the Second Division, beat a Luton side about to win the League Cup against Arsenal by four goals to one. Crystal Palace repeated the scoreline against Everton in a tighter-than-it-sounds extra-time win in 1991, before Nottingham Forest pipped Southampton 3-2 a year later in a facsimile copy of the classic 1979 League Cup final.
At which point the competition was smothered to death. By what? By the advent of the Premier League, of course: it's ruined everything.
5) Watney CupThe Watney Mann Invitation Cup is football's main contribution to the Does Anyone Remember Spangles nostalgia industry. So crack open a seven-pint can of Red Barrel and raise your party glass to this singular tournament, a pre-season invitational jamboree contested by the two top-scoring teams from each of the Football League's four divisions (who hadn't qualified for Europe, naturally).
The tournament would only last four seasons, but the first, in 1969-70, was a classic. It was held just two short seasons after Manchester United had won the European Cup, and much like a Life On Mars-era party reveler six pints in, United would quickly lose their dignity as a result of Watneys. Having struggled past Third Division Reading on the first day of the tournament, winning 3-2, they could only draw 1-1 with Second Division Hull.
For the first time in English football, the game would be decided by the "Settling Rule". George Best took the very first spot kick – yes, it's a penalty shoot-out! – and scored. Denis Law, would you believe, became the first man to miss, Hull keeper Ian McKechnie denying him. Still, United would edge the shootout 4-3, the deciding kick being Chris Waddled over the bar by – keeping the surreal thread running til the very end – Hull keeper Ian McKechnie. United would wish they hadn't bothered to reach the final, because Brian Clough's Derby thrashed them 4-1.
6) Mitropa CupThe Mitropa Cup was devised by Hugo Meisl, the great thinker behind Austria's Wunderteam of the 1930s, in his day job as an administrator at the Austrian FA. Launched in 1927, it was contested by two club sides apiece from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia; by 1929 Italian teams had replaced Yugoslavian ones. The brand-new home-and-away format set the template for the later European Cup – though with Europe's four national powerhouses of the time represented, you could argue that was effectively what the Mitropa was anyway.
There would be some amazing summit meetings. In the 1927 final Sparta Prague thrashed Rapid Vienna 6-2 at home, before losing 2-1 away, their reward for a hard-tackling performance the first-ever trophy – plus a hail of rotten fruit, bottles and stones from the stands. In 1932 Bologna were awarded the trophy by default after their semi-final win. In the other tie, Slavia Prague won their home leg against Juventus 4-0, but quickly fell 2-0 behind in the return. Slavia having taken to timewasting, the crowd took to rioting. Both teams hid in the changing rooms, refusing to play, and were disqualified. And in the 1933 final, the famous Paper Man, Matthias Sindelar, scored a last-minute Ryan Giggs-style meandering run to win the trophy for FK Austria, arguably his crowning glory.
There were no English or Scottish teams present, of course, but a marker was set in 1934 when a strong Manchester City side travelled to Prague and were trounced 5-1 by a Sparta side on the cusp of winning the 1935 Mitropa Cup. Organisers of the tournament hoped British teams would deign to enter, but they never did, and the break-up of Europe after the second world war, followed by the creation of the European Cup, did for the Mitropa. It staggered on, but by 1980 had become a cup for lower-division teams. Which lead to the incongruous sight of a down-on-their-uppers AC Milan winning it in 1982.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/jun/26/joy-of-six-extinct-football-competitions
The Guardian/Scott Murray
The Joy of Six: Extinct football competitionsFrom Soccer Six at the G-Mex to the cup that gave the world the penalty shootout, here are half-a-dozen quirky events we miss
1) Soccer Six
Modern six-a-side football, represented by those Masters tournaments on Sky, throws up many a question. OK, just two: "Who is he?", and the more baroque: "He played for Liverpool in the 1980s? Are you quite sure? Or simply taking the mickey?" Anyway, what goes around comes around, because Britain's first punt at a major six-a-side tournament back in 1982, the Austin-Rover Soccer Six, raised the same queries. As now, audiences didn't have a bloody clue who was out there playing: restricted to teams from the Midlands, it was a total farce, with Derby, Coventry, Birmingham, Notts County, Leicester, WBA, Wolves and Nottingham Forest all sending along teams of unknown reserves and apprentices.
In fairness, though, it was a trial run, and the following year the winners, Birmingham City, joined Arsenal, Everton, Ipswich Town, Manchester City, Nottingham Forest, Southampton and Swansea City at the 7,600-seater Birmingham NEC for a kickabout in the newly-minted Atari Soccer Six. "Heading, trapping, dribbling, chipping and tackling – they're all there!" rah-rahed Football League cheerleader Graham Kelly, dressed in a tight gymslip and waving his pom-po … OK, no he wasn't, and apologies for the mental image.
The tournament was a sell-out, give or take the odd batch of tickets handed out free to kids. Birmingham retained their trophy and the popularity of the tournament grew: by the end of the decade it had turned into a four-day pre-Christmas beano at the Manchester G-Mex, with the final transmitted live on BBC Sportsnight.
It was different, without being self-consciously showy, giving the nation its first glimpse of Paul Merson; rehabilitating Jan Molby after his stint in the slammer; showcasing preposterously strong Nottingham Forest squads (Hans Segers, Johnny Metgod, Neil Webb, Franz Carr, Nigel Clough and Ian Bowyer was the 1986 vintage); and providing the likes of Charlton's Mickey Bennett (player of the year as they won in 1988) and Luton Town's Sean Farrell (who scored the opener in the Hatters' 4-0 trouncing of Liverpool in the 1990 final) with career highs.
But TV money talks, and with English clubs back in Europe and more live league matches being televised, interest eventually waned in tellyland, and the tournament was quietly cancelled in 1991. It's never been forgotten, though.
2) Coronation CupGiven Scotland and England's international rivalry is the oldest in the world, dating back to 1878 – on the football pitch, anyway – it's odd that the two countries have never managed to get a serious Anglo-Scottish championship off the ground. A British League Cup was held in 1902 to raise money for the first Ibrox disaster; it was won by Celtic. The 1938 Empire Exhibition in Glasgow was commemorated by a trophy bearing its name; again, it was won by Celtic. And Celtic would do very well out of these trophies, also winning the 1953 Coronation Cup, a forelock-tugging affair to celebrate the ascent of Lizzie.
The Coronation Cup is our favourite of this lot, simply for the reaction of the Guardian at the time. At the quarter-final stage, big wins by Manchester United and Newcastle, over Rangers and Aberdeen respectively, were reported in a big two-column box; the Hampden final, between the English duo's semi-final vanquishers Celtic and Hibernian, got two lines in a round-up article, beneath the latest score of a lawn tennis match in Ireland.
Serious efforts would be made in the early 1970s, when the Texaco Cup drew together teams from the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland who had failed to qualify for Europe. But after a promising start, the English teams dominated and crowds dwindled. It would be replaced in 1975-76 by the Anglo-Scottish Cup, which for six years would achieve nothing of note – although Brian Clough considered Nottingham Forest's triumph in 1977 to be the most important trophy he ever landed at the City Ground, as it taught his players how to win, laying the foundations for glory at home and in Europe.
3) Anglo-Italian CupAlan Hardaker, the man who ran the Football League between 1951 and 1977, was no fan of European football. "Too many wogs and dagoes," he once charmlessly explained to the legendary football writer Brian Glanville. So it is with hilarious irony that his brainchild, the League Cup – dubbed Hardaker's Folly in its early-60s infancy – inadvertently caused the creation of two new continental pots.
In 1967, QPR had beaten West Brom in the League Cup final, but couldn't claim their place in the Fairs Cup because Uefa rules prevented the entry of third-tier teams. When another Third Division team won the same trophy two years later, Swindon beating Arsenal, the authorities decided to act. An Anglo-Italian League Cup was set up, with Swindon facing Coppa Italia winners AS Roma – whose team included midfielder Fabio Capello – and after a 2-1 loss in Rome, Town amazingly hammered the Italian giants 4-0 at the County Ground to lift the cup 5-2 on aggregate.
The whole affair was so popular that an Anglo-Italian Cup was inaugurated the following season. The winners of two six-team groups would contest a final: Swindon, Sheffield Wednesday, Middlesbrough, West Brom, Sunderland and Wolves made up an English group; Napoli, Juventus, Roma, Fiorentina, Lazio and Vicenza the Italian one. In the final, Swindon ran riot against Napoli in the Sao Paolo stadiumm going 3-0 up after 63 minutes. And so did the home fans, throwing bottles, stones and entire concrete benches on to the pitch. The match was abandoned and Swindon won the cup by default.
Major brawls began to scar every other game, and the competition was finally set aside after Newcastle battled to glory in 1973. It was revived in 1992, for another four seasons of fist fighting – one match at Birmingham saw the ref end the day in hospital – before the whole sorry business was set aside.
4) Full Members CupThe 1990s version of the Anglo-Italian Cup was a replacement for the axed Full Members Cup, which in turn had been launched in 1985 to fill gaps in both calendar and pocket of clubs in the top two divisions in the wake of the Heysel ban. Unlike the Screen Sport Super Cup – an elite version for the six teams who would have qualified for Europe, considered so pointless that nobody could be bothered to complete it in the 1985-86 season, a disinterested Liverpool eventually beating an even more disintested Everton 7-2 over two legs at the start of the following campaign – the FMC threw up some classic tales.
The 1986 final was as quirky as football gets. Chelsea beat Manchester City by a preposterous 5-4 Wembley scoreline – the two teams having played huge matches in the league the day before. (Chelsea were chasing the title, City had the Manchester derby to contend with.) "If football's dying," said Chelsea boss John Hollins after his team had nearly let a 5-1 lead slip in the last 10 minutes, "I hope it's dying like that."
Two years later, Reading, in the business of being relegated from the Second Division, beat a Luton side about to win the League Cup against Arsenal by four goals to one. Crystal Palace repeated the scoreline against Everton in a tighter-than-it-sounds extra-time win in 1991, before Nottingham Forest pipped Southampton 3-2 a year later in a facsimile copy of the classic 1979 League Cup final.
At which point the competition was smothered to death. By what? By the advent of the Premier League, of course: it's ruined everything.
5) Watney CupThe Watney Mann Invitation Cup is football's main contribution to the Does Anyone Remember Spangles nostalgia industry. So crack open a seven-pint can of Red Barrel and raise your party glass to this singular tournament, a pre-season invitational jamboree contested by the two top-scoring teams from each of the Football League's four divisions (who hadn't qualified for Europe, naturally).
The tournament would only last four seasons, but the first, in 1969-70, was a classic. It was held just two short seasons after Manchester United had won the European Cup, and much like a Life On Mars-era party reveler six pints in, United would quickly lose their dignity as a result of Watneys. Having struggled past Third Division Reading on the first day of the tournament, winning 3-2, they could only draw 1-1 with Second Division Hull.
For the first time in English football, the game would be decided by the "Settling Rule". George Best took the very first spot kick – yes, it's a penalty shoot-out! – and scored. Denis Law, would you believe, became the first man to miss, Hull keeper Ian McKechnie denying him. Still, United would edge the shootout 4-3, the deciding kick being Chris Waddled over the bar by – keeping the surreal thread running til the very end – Hull keeper Ian McKechnie. United would wish they hadn't bothered to reach the final, because Brian Clough's Derby thrashed them 4-1.
6) Mitropa CupThe Mitropa Cup was devised by Hugo Meisl, the great thinker behind Austria's Wunderteam of the 1930s, in his day job as an administrator at the Austrian FA. Launched in 1927, it was contested by two club sides apiece from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Yugoslavia; by 1929 Italian teams had replaced Yugoslavian ones. The brand-new home-and-away format set the template for the later European Cup – though with Europe's four national powerhouses of the time represented, you could argue that was effectively what the Mitropa was anyway.
There would be some amazing summit meetings. In the 1927 final Sparta Prague thrashed Rapid Vienna 6-2 at home, before losing 2-1 away, their reward for a hard-tackling performance the first-ever trophy – plus a hail of rotten fruit, bottles and stones from the stands. In 1932 Bologna were awarded the trophy by default after their semi-final win. In the other tie, Slavia Prague won their home leg against Juventus 4-0, but quickly fell 2-0 behind in the return. Slavia having taken to timewasting, the crowd took to rioting. Both teams hid in the changing rooms, refusing to play, and were disqualified. And in the 1933 final, the famous Paper Man, Matthias Sindelar, scored a last-minute Ryan Giggs-style meandering run to win the trophy for FK Austria, arguably his crowning glory.
There were no English or Scottish teams present, of course, but a marker was set in 1934 when a strong Manchester City side travelled to Prague and were trounced 5-1 by a Sparta side on the cusp of winning the 1935 Mitropa Cup. Organisers of the tournament hoped British teams would deign to enter, but they never did, and the break-up of Europe after the second world war, followed by the creation of the European Cup, did for the Mitropa. It staggered on, but by 1980 had become a cup for lower-division teams. Which lead to the incongruous sight of a down-on-their-uppers AC Milan winning it in 1982.
www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2009/jun/26/joy-of-six-extinct-football-competitions
