“Double Glory“

Having clinched the league title on a remarkable night at White Hart Lane, Arsenal travelled to Wembley five days later to meet Liverpool in their first FA Cup Final for eighteen years, a repeat of the 1950 final against Liverpool. Arsenal prepared for their sixty-fourth game of a tumultuous season knowing that victory would give them the second Double of the modern era. Tickets were very hard to come by for a game all Arsenal fans wanted to see. These accounts come from some lucky enough to be there and others swept up in the excitement and euphoria that engulfed North London during that remarkable week in May.

Did you manage to get a ticket for the Final? If so how did you come by it? If not, where did you watch it?  What were your memories of the day and the occasion? 

TTG: Gutted not to have got into White Hart Lane, I had failed to collect enough programme coupons to qualify for a Cup Final ticket. On the Wednesday afternoon that week, I was at work when I took a phone call from the bloke who captained the office football team. As the season had ended I hadn’t expected to hear from him. 

He told me a senior inspector in the Manchester branch of Commercial Union had been given a ticket for his work as a referee in one of the Northern Leagues. He couldn’t use it and set out to find an Arsenal fan as being a Mancunian he wasn’t going to give it to a Scouser! I phoned him, he agreed to send it to me for face value and it was on my doormat the next day.  Serendipity had played a massive part! I had tried so hard to get to Tottenham because I wasn’t going to be able to get to Wembley. And then everything reversed! 

I had attended the two recent League Cup Finals one of which was anti-climactic and the other profoundly depressing. This was a completely different occasion. There was Community Singing led by a man who mounted a huge platform. ‘Abide with me’ was sung to the echo.   I had shared the tube with hundreds of very good-natured Scallies, none of whom had tickets and all of whom intended to get in. I stood at the Arsenal end at the opposite end to the tunnel where there was a wonderful atmosphere, heavy with tension but celebratory. As the team ran towards us we chanted, “Champions! Champions!” and it was true, not just a chant of encouragement! You were aware that this was a truly historic moment in the history of our club. I just hoped the players wanted to win as much as I did. I need not have worried. 

TW: My Cup Final ticket arrived the day after the title win. I was a couple of programme coupons short so I bought them in the Arsenal shop in Avenell Road but they had an ‘invalid’ stamp on the coupons. My science teacher showed me how to get the ‘invalid’ stamp off without harming the coupon with Milton …best science lesson ever!! 

North Bank Ned: Raucous, as to be expected from a room full of undergraduates and post-grads next to an unclosed bar. Liverpool supporters were a majority, followed by supporters of other northern clubs who were cheering for us because they didn’t want Liverpool to win, followed by supporters of other London clubs who were cheering for Liverpool because they didn’t want us to win and then there was me!

Clock End Rider: Main memories of the day are the shouts from all around the flats where we lived at the end.  And then all the kids in the flats playing football and everyone being Charlie George. 

Bodrum Gooneress:  I watched live on the TV.  I recall it was a hot sunny day as curiously most Cup Final days seem to be.

What were your strongest memories of the match? Did you abandon hope when we went behind? What can you remember of Charlie George’s goal? 

North Bank Ned: It was a surprisingly good game of football, given what was at stake. You never want to go behind in any game but extra time in a Cup Final might be the one exception. The old Wembley pitch was huge, and as legs tire the spaces open up even more. Charlie George found himself a massive one. Of course, the abiding memory is of him on his back after scoring but it looked a goal from the moment Raddy played him in.

TTG: It wasn’t a classic Final but we were so much better than them. We had dominated the play with George Graham playing elegantly in midfield. Arsenal attacked towards us in the first half and Ray Kennedy almost scored early on. I remember Bob Wilson making a good double save from their left-back, Alec Lindsay, from a free-kick just before half-time. In the second half we came close several times and Ray Kennedy hit the post and missed a couple of sitters. The game went to extra time with us well on top and then I remember Heighway getting wide and beating Bob at the near post just in front of the Arsenal hordes. Bob had not made a mistake all season but that was definitely one that he would have expected to save. Two minutes later Brian Hall, was clean through and ‘had to score’ but Bob smothered the ball. Redemption didn’t take long! I was reconciling myself to defeat when George Graham chased a speculative ball forward and seemed to stroke it past Clemence. We had no clue that it was really Eddie Kelly’s goal.  Hope soared and as the second half went on we got stronger as they seemed to fade. 

Then THE goal. Radford passed to Charlie and I remember standing behind the goal as he took aim and drilled it past Clemence. It was a split-second but that moment when it was clear that it was scorching   past Clemence, who never got near it, is etched in my memory even now. It was a sensational way to win a match like that.

The last few minutes were both tense and glorious in equal measure. Our fans sang, “We shall not be moved” and you were aware that the mood seemed to transmit itself to the team. That Arsenal team were such tough competitors they would not be denied.   I was watching the referee Norman Burtenshaw at the end. As he blew his whistle he sank exhausted to the turf and raised his arms in triumph. Nowadays social media would have annihilated him. 

Bodrum Gooneress: I recall it was a hot sunny day (and ever since I always associate Cup Final days with glorious May sunshine) and the French windows were open on to the garden.  I remember the run up to the Final with Jimmy Hill launching a campaign to find a song for the Arsenal team to counter Liverpool’s ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ and coming up with the song ‘Good Old Arsenal’.  I remember sensing embarrassment that Jimmy Hill, who had no association with ‘my’ club, Arsenal, came up with the rather soulless ditty of ‘Good Old Arsenal’.  In fairness, it has persisted until this day but how we could have done with the latter-day celebration of ‘She Wore’ back in those days.

Gooner since 54: It was a really hot and humid day, and the liquid consumption levels prior to the game were astronomical. Some of our more enterprising mates had brought along small containers which everyone used to pee in. These were then taken down to the front of the terraces and emptied into the gutter!

The game itself was very tense. We were definitely the better team overall against a Liverpool side in a rebuilding phase, but it was difficult to tell how much the exertions and subsequent celebrations of the title-winning match at Spurs the previous Monday were having on us. The longer the game went on with no score, I could sense the tension building in my Dad. I knew how much winning and celebrating with me meant to him, and I have to admit some of that anxiety transferred to me.

There was definitely a sombre air among us when the game ended scoreless and extra time beckoned. All the Gunners round us had suffered the misery of 68/69, and the loss in extra time to Swindon was foremost in all our minds. Would the boys’ legs last another thirty minutes? It was a hot muggy day, they must be out on their feet?

Liverpool had had a relaxing week with only the Cup to focus on. These were among the worries being voiced as we waited for extra-time to begin. No sooner had we gathered our collective spirits for the final half hour, when as if in slow motion Steve Heighway broke down the wing right in front of us, got close to the byline and fizzed a shot through the smallest of gaps at Bob Wilson’s near post to put Liverpool one-nil in front. It was like a knife to the heart. All around us, people were completely stunned. All our worst fears were being realized.

Was this to be our 3rd Wembley defeat in a row? My Dad stood completely motionless his face drained of all colour, his hands shaking. I put my arms around him and I clearly remember saying, “There’s still plenty of time left Dad, it’s not over yet”. To this day I don’t know whether I truly believed that or whether I was just saying it to give him comfort.

After the shock of the goal, someone rallied the troops and we all began cheering again, but it has to be said, talking to all our mates after the game they all admitted it was more in hope than expectation. But then joy of joys! Suddenly we had equalized. It took us a few seconds to realise it because it was at the opposite end to where we were standing and it was such a messy goal. We didn’t even know who had scored, just a shot through a jumble of bodies and as if in slow motion the ball ended up in the net. Well, did we go berserk or what? There were bodies going every which way, shouting/screaming at the top of our lungs, hats/scarves flying through the air. It was absolute bedlam. I thought Dad was going to have a heart attack!

What you have to remember is that about 90% of the people around us were shut out of the Lane on the previous Monday night, all stranded somewhere en route due to the almighty traffic problems, so they missed seeing their beloved team win the title on that momentous night. This Cup Final was their final shot at seeing history being made. Not only winning the Cup, but completing the Double, which would put us in the records books for ever. And we would all be able to say, “We were there!”

They say that supporters can win matches for their team by sheer force of will and what I can only describe as ‘vocal bedlam’. The noise levels after we equalized seemed to me to have gone up several notches. You could not hear yourself think. All around us was just noise like you had never heard before, people screaming themselves hoarse, roaring the team on. It was an incredible experience to be in the centre of that incredible ‘force’.

I have absolutely no doubt in my mind that, notwithstanding the lift the team got from the equalizer, the noise we generated carried them home to victory. I swear time stood still for a second as, in the second half of extra time, right in front of us, Charlie arrowed his shot at the Liverpool goal. When the ball hit the back of the net, cue more bedlam on the terraces as history was about to happen.

When the final whistle went grown men were reduced to tears, complete strangers were hugging each other. It was a sea of pure joy, and a father weeping unashamedly finally got to embrace his son on the Wembley terraces where he had stood alone 21 years before.

Here’s a video clip with the highlights of the game: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6nO8hCbqG4

TW: What a game at Wembley Charlie, Charlie, born is the king of Highbury!!! I went to Trafalgar Square after Wembley to get in the fountains …brilliant, brilliant memories!!

RC: The Cup Final itself came at the wrong time in my life as I was booked to work when the game was being played. I was working on the railway and had only been in the job for two months so had no holiday entitlement and I was too afraid to go sick. So, I resigned myself to missing the game. Not only was I not to be at Wembley, but it would also be the first F.A. Cup final that I would miss on TV since 1957. A small transistor radio about my person was the only solution and I listened intently as the captains, Frank McLintock and Tommy Smith, proudly led their teams out onto the pitch accompanied by the match officials led by referee Norman Burtenshaw! What? I always knew the powers that be had it in for us!

My driver on our locomotive, looked at me as I if I was possessed by demons. I offered a garbled explanation, but he didn’t follow football and I had decided probably preferred flower arranging. Although he was probably married with seven kids, to my mind any bloke that didn’t follow football was devoid of a normal persona. As the game progressed Peter Jones, one of the BBC radio commentators described to me and Mr. Disinterested the events as they unfolded. All along I was bemoaning the fact that I had to listen on this tinny, little yellow transistor radio. Mr. D assured me he would have gone sick if it was that important. I told him he wasn’t helping.  The game lingered on goalless, but with many exciting moments as both teams had come close on several occasions.

Even Mr. D was taking notice now as we shunted from one side of the station to another. We moved trains out of the arrivals platforms to make way for trains coming in as we heard of close shots and great saves. Then, just to make things that little bit worse my nemesis, Norman from Great Yarmouth, had clearly and deliberately contrived an extra thirty minutes of suffering only to compound the misery further with a goal for Liverpool. I could envisage him smirking at me as Steve Heighway, who had arrived to sensational effect at the start of the season, but seemed to have remained hidden until the moment he threaded the ball between Bob Wilson and his near post to put us a goal down. But when George Graham miskicked the ball from Eddie Kelly’s foot to equalize, my jumping and shouting on the shunting engine was only heard by Mr. D who didn’t seem to appreciate it at all. In between train movements we would be sent into the headshunt at the north end of the station to await our next call. Most people remember where they heard the news that President Kennedy had been shot or when they heard that Diana had been killed or the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre. Charlie George’s famous pile driver for me was celebrated in the headshunt at Kings Cross Station only half a mile from Charlie’s home down the Caledonian Road. It was the following day before I actually saw it on TV but who could ever forget the moment that sealed the double?

Bodrum Gooneress:  I recall the feeling of despair when Steve Heighway managed to squeeze his shot past Bob Wilson’s near post.  I also recall feeling devastated for Frank McLintock.  Much had been made in the days and weeks building up to the Final about how he had been on the losing side at Wembley four times.  Poor me and poor Frank!  Was it to be a case of fifth time unlucky?  I was in a slightly better position than Frank – this was to be my first FA Cup Final other than recalling watching Chelsea v Leeds on TV the previous year. I’d almost managed to feel sorry for Leeds’ loss in the Replay until family loyalties and good sense prevailed.

What were your feelings at the end? Did you manage to lord it over friends and opposition fans for long afterwards?

TTG: I looked for Frank McLintock after the whistle and saw everyone running towards him. His Wembley jinx had been overcome in glorious fashion. I felt so incredibly pleased for him but also immensely proud to be a supporter of a club not just this good but this hard and durable and able to win whatever confronted them.

A memory of that summer was training in a park with some friends and watching groups of kids playing. Everyone who scored threw themselves on the floor like Charlie – the ultimate iconic celebration of a special goal!

North Bank Ned: It was joyous. The final had been played in a great spirit, and everyone watching it where we were — including the Scousers — was in good heart. More beer was consumed, I recall, lots more beer! The other plus was that you could tell any friends who had the misfortune of supporting the neighbours that there was no longer anything special about them doing the double.

Bodrum Gooneress:  I will never forget the elation I felt at Charlie George’s goal and his celebration.  I dashed out of the living room, through the French windows to celebrate with a lap of honour around the garden shouting and shrieking with delight.  Nobody had ever celebrated a goal in the way my hero Charlie George (one of my many heroes) had and we, and I, the lone female football player in the school playground, emulated it many times over.  

Both my primary and secondary schools were based in Wood Green, probably equidistant between White Hart Lane and Highbury.  Most kids in those days favoured Spurs due to them winning the Double in 1961.  Even then, I couldn’t quite understand what was wrong with them and how on earth they could support that dreadful lot in Tottenham.  Others since have labelled it as a form of ‘child abuse’.  

My mother who had put up all forms of resistance to me going to the Arsenal and indeed had banned me from going to the 1969 League Cup Final despite my brother getting a ticket for me (hindsight shows she was just protecting me!), took me along to the open top bus parade in Islington where seemingly more than 200,000 fans lined the streets to celebrate and get a view of the Cups and the team.   I think it just about made up for not having been at either of the matches. The colour and the spectacle seemed to turn my mother as well.  She always did like a good day out and the jubilation of that day seemed to break her final resistance to her tomboy daughter being an Arsenal fan resulting in her taking me to the odd match herself in the following years.

Looking back what were the strengths of that side? Has history treated them kindly? 

North Bank Ned: The 70-71 double team was a team that found its moment. For one glorious season, it was so much more than just the sum of its parts, as good as many of those parts became. Arguably, it underperformed ahead of the double and was broken up too quickly after it. In answer to an earlier question, I said we did not start the season with the best player in the league in any position but one of the top five in every position. By the end of the season, it would be fair to say we had one of the top two or three in every position on form, and in Frank McLintock an indisputable number one at centre-half. Alongside the underrated Peter Simpson (like Geordie Armstrong, criminally overlooked by England), Frank McLintock was the heart of a defence that was the team’s foundation: 29 goals conceded in 42 league matches speaks for itself. Peter Storey provided the midfield muscle with more skill than he was given credit. Yet it was Bertie Mee converting George Graham from a centre-forward to an inside-left and switching Raddy from the wing to the middle and bringing through the up and coming youngsters Charlie George and a Saka-aged Ray Kennedy that made the team gell. 

This had been several years in the making, and arguably two losing League Cups finals and a string of mid-table finishes in the league represented underperformance, even if the Fairs Cup win in 1970 gave a glimpse of the potential — and will to win. Regardless, in the double-winning year, it all came together, a crowning glory for a team that was not just difficult to score against but took the club back to English football’s top table after a long period away and we could dream of more titles and trophies. To quote Walt Whitman, “Oh, to be alive in such an age, when miracles are everywhere, and every inch of common air throbs a tremendous prophecy, of greater marvels yet to be”.

Bodrum Gooneress:  Of course, we have celebrated winning two doubles since but nothing quite compares with the first one.  When I look at that side now I look at it through my child’s tinted glasses.  They were all my heroes and I loved every single one of those players in a way I have never loved an Arsenal side quite as unconditionally since.  The strengths of that side were that they were all fighters and never gave up.  I’m not sure any of them were stars as such but, of course, Charlie George was special as it was often alluded to how he stepped down from the terraces to play for his local boyhood team.  A dream for all children.  And probably most adults.

At last the spectre of the Spurs’ Double winning side had been put to rest.  At last, I could walk past the house in a neighbouring road with a big smile on my face where a certain Cliff Jones lived.  Cliff Jones, who I was repeatedly being told was a member of the ‘double winning side’.  At least, we had corrected that piece of history and we were the latest club (and the second only ever) to have won The Double!

TTG: Nobody can believe nowadays that a squad of seventeen players played 64 games that season and landed two trophies. I loved that side because I trusted them, I had faith in them. I look at our current team and I expect us to self-destruct. You never expected that team to self- destruct or to lose heart or to let you down. The defence was brilliantly drilled but all of the defenders were footballers. The midfield was as hard as nails but you had great flair in Charlie George and George Graham and incredible industry and skill in Geordie Armstrong – surely the finest player never to play for England – and then upfront John Radford and Ray Kennedy who scored all season long and terrorised teams on the ground and in the air. 

I have had the privilege of getting to know several members of that side. Everyone I have got to know has embodied the things that make me proud to be associated with our great club. They are all gentlemen, people of character and integrity but in everyone I’ve met there is also an inner steel and resolve and the sort of toughness that you find in elite and successful sportsmen.

Has history treated them well? Not as well as I think it should but I’m outrageously biased. There was little build up to that success, no second or third league placings in past seasons and no great expectation of glory but it was a team for those times. Ironically through most of the sixties the press had criticised their soft centre and slipshod defending. Don Howe changed that. Arsenal had a discipline and organisation that made them formidable opponents. They met very hard, tough opponents who they played on poor pitches with very lenient referees. It was a team good enough to live with, and finish above, an exceptional Leeds team and with enough belief to weather those moments, particularly in the first semi-final against Stoke, when it seemed they were facing certain defeat.

In our preparation for this celebration I asked Bob Wilson if there was a temptation to let the preparation for the Final slip because they’d clinched the League. That’s a very 2021 thought isn’t it? He looked incredulous at the suggestion. It simply never crossed their minds. That’s why that magnificent side were Double winners!

My concerns that those newly-crowned champions running towards us before the match would not want to commit every sinew to trying to win the FA Cup on a glorious sunny afternoon at Wembley did them a huge disservice. Arsenal Football Club have had many wonderful teams for which we are eternally thankful. But Arsenal has never had a team more committed to winning than the team that took the field that day. They had multiple motivations: to erase the four-time heartbreak of Frank McLintock, their beloved captain, to equal (and we would say surpass!) the Double by our noisy neighbours and to fight with every fibre of their being for fans who had been starved of success until twelve months earlier.

Above all that team discovered, in that very special season, the way to win, the way to ensure that whatever difficulty, whatever adversity, whatever bad luck came their way they could overcome it. For those of us who were involved in that extraordinary week in May 1971 the final whistle at Wembley bestowed on The Arsenal Football Club a status that lifted our spirits in a very special way just as it still lifts us all now. It was a very special time and a very special achievement.

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THE CONVERSATION: EPISODE TWO

And again…the second part of the conversation, and the second part of our Double Celebration!

GHF.com are pleased to release this, especially considering the Arsenal events of these past couple weeks. Lift your spirits by watching the second episode of two video conversations with Bob Wilson and Pat Rice about Arsenal’s 1970-71 Double year, on the 50th Anniversary of our FA Cup win over Liverpool at Wembley. Remember to donate to Willow, or bid on the GHF.com Auction!

Click on the image below (or on the Youtube link below that) to watch

“Episode Two: Double Glory — The 1971 FA Cup Run”

Or, watch here: “Episode Two: Double Glory — The 1971 FA Cup Run“ (on Youtube). This is especially helpful if you’re having any loading issues with the link to the one the site is serving above.

Let us know what you think in the “drinks” section below!

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THE AUCTION: NOW ACCEPTING BIDS

We are also pleased to remind you that our auction of signed 1970-71 Double memorabilia is now open for bids! For full information, please visit The Double/Willow Auction tab above.

Just a taste…the lots offered are as follows:

Lot 1: A 1971 Cup Final replica shirt signed by Bob Wilson, Pat Rice, Frank McLintock, George Graham & Charlie George.

Lot 2: A 1971 Cup Final programme signed by Bob Wilson, Pat Rice, Frank McLintock, George Graham & Charlie George.

Lot 3: A second 1971 Cup Final programme signed by Bob Wilson, Pat Rice, Frank McLintock, George Graham & Charlie George.

Lot 4: Bob Wilson’s autobiography, ‘Behind the Network’ signed by Bob Wilson & Arsène Wenger.

All proceeds from the auction go to the Willow Foundation.

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