Emley’s unforgettable FA Cup Third Round tie at Premier League West Ham United does not need much of an introduction.
Frank Lampard put West Ham ahead after four minutes, but instead of collapsing Ronnie Glavin’s heroes fought back and Paul David’s thunderous second half equalising header almost gave Harry Redknapp a heart attack.
Despite Lampard, Rio Ferdinand, Eyal Berkovic in their side and the fact there was five leagues difference between the sides, the village club had the Premier League giants on the ropes until John Hartson scored the late winner.
Mark ‘Willy’ Wilson was an early replacement for the injured Neil Lacey and he reminisces about the famous Cup tie, including his heavy challenge on David Unsworth which riled the home fans.
In the latest ‘My Greatest Game’ he also talks about his relationship with his mentor Glavin.
You can also read Rob Tonks’ memories of playing for Emley at West Ham HERE and Steve Nicholson’s account of the second round replay with Lincoln City HERE.
West Ham United (Lampard 4, Hartson 82) 2-1 Emley AFC (David 56) – Saturday 3rd January 1998
The Teams
West Ham United: Craig Forrest, Tim Breacker (Samassi Abou 67), Steve Potts, David Unsworth, Rio Ferdinand, Ian Pearce, Stan Lazaridis, Frank Lampard, Eyal Berkovic, Paul Kitson, John Hartson. Subs unused: Keith Rowland, Bernard Lama, Iain Dowie, Paolo Alves.
Emley AFC: Chris Marples, Mickey Thompson, Steve Nicholson, Neil Lacey (Mark Wilson 5 (Nick Wood 89), Simon Jones, Paul David, Ian Banks, Dean Calcutt (Rob Tonks 82), Michael Reynolds, Glynn Hurst, Deiniol Graham. Subs unused: Ray Dennis, Paul Hutson.
Referee: Jeff Winter
Attendance: 18,629
“Harry Redknapp was a true gentleman. He came in the dressing room after the game to say that we had worked our socks off and he came in again very later on when there was only a few of us left in there. There was this fridge full of Lucozade bottles and it was bursting from the seams. I thought ‘**** this, I’m having them all, I won’t need to go to the supermarket to buy them for weeks’. Lucozade wasn’t the cheapest drink around in those days either. As I’m loading my bag up, the door swings open and Harry Redknapp bursts in and catches me red handed. I was totally banged to rights, it was a fair cop, but in my Barnsley accent I went ‘am I reyt to have them Harry’? He started laughing and he went ‘you deserve more than that lad, you’ve run your socks off and kicked lumps out of my boys’. The shirt I got at the end was Paulo Alves who was one of the unused subs and I went ‘who the **** is Paulo Alves because I’ve got his shirt and I’ve never heard of him’? He just laughed as if to say ‘he’s not stopping here long’.
“The best place to actually start is the first game at Lincoln (in the second round). We should have won and we deserved to have won, but the referee just kept playing and playing until they scored. Ian Banks (who was injured) was on crutches at the time and he came onto the pitch with steam coming out his ears and he threw both his crutches in front of the referee in disgust because of the 11 minutes of added time. He was raging. I went in the dressing room and my emotions got the better of me because it was like a Gazza moment as I knew I was suspended for the replay. I couldn’t keep it in and obviously I wasn’t part of the 3-3 replay. I was there and I was just so pleased that we won.
“During the day after my home phone just kept ringing. Calendar, Look North, everyone, all-sorts of papers were ringing. The media attention was just crazy. Calendar even came to me and filmed me digging a hole at work. I went on Look North too. I was portrayed as a bit of a throwback from Paul Walsh in some papers. I loved the media attention though.
“Ronnie had us training five nights a week before the game. He was a stickler for fitness, shadow play, tactical work, set-pieces, but we had a group of lads who were on board with it. I had a love/hate relationship with him, but I have the upmost respect for him. He gave me chance after chance after chance and he took me to every club he managed. He ate, drank, slept football and he wanted success. He had a system and he wanted players who would give him everything and commitment. We had them. We had robust players and we had a team of everything, if that is the right way to say it. It had quality, pace, guile, trickery, physicality, height, experience, fitness, raw talent. It had everything. Ronnie’s saying used to be ‘I can make a bad player into a good player and a good player into a great player’. He had certain philosophies and he could see if a player was on his game or not in the first five minutes. I was so proud when he came my 1000th game. I rang him and just asked him if he would do me the honour. Even though we had our heated arguments, he was like a father figure to me in the football world. His advice helped me greatly and he had that belief in me that I could get better. He knew when I crossed that white line that I would give everything for him which I did and Ronnie was my best manager.
“Four coaches went down to West Ham and we were on a coach with no radio or Telly. It was like they had put all the rift-raft in the last coach in case we destroyed it. I’m laughing when I say that, but that’s the way it felt. They treated us well in the Tower Thistle Hotel before and after. Everything was done professionally. You’ll have seen the shirts which they had made and allowed us to keep.
“Bizarrely the game nearly got called off because there was torrential rain and heavy wind. The pitch looked a luscious green, but that’s because they sprayed certain areas of it and then the rain came down.
“At lunchtime I was told I would not be starting. I didn’t play in the replay with Lincoln because I was suspended, but I had played in nearly every game that season. I didn’t realise my position was in doubt and I was my normal life and soul self. I then got dragged out of the team meeting on the Saturday lunchtime to be told the bad news. I said to him ‘why didn’t you tell me last night’ and Ronnie said ‘because you might have done something silly’. I said ‘yeah, I’d have smashed this hotel up’. I was fuming because playing against West Ham meant so much to me. The fee that each player got for playing against West Ham, I even said I’d give it back to the club because I just wanted to play in the biggest game of my career. But he did it for tactical reasons. I was just unfortunate to be left out. It was a team game and I always remember the director of football Peter Jackson, who knew I wasn’t going to be starting, saying ‘you never know, you never know, something might happen’. It did and unfortunately for Neil Lacey, his hamstring went after four minutes and I was on in place of him.
“But after I got told I wasn’t playing I wasn’t myself and everyone knew I wasn’t. I wouldn’t say I was sulking, but I was very disappointed inside. It is hard to put a smile on your face when it is the biggest game of your career in front of 18,000 and you’re not playing, especially after all the hype. When I did I come on that little bit of anger had built up in me and that’s why I kicked lumps out of everybody. I should have been sent off for the challenge on David Unsworth, but Jeff Winter deemed it as over over-enthusiasm during a big occasion. I can’t remember exactly what he said to me, but it was along the lines of ‘I don’t want to spoil your big day’ and he took on board all the hype. He became my favourite Premier League referee because the result could have been different if I had been sent off. It helped that Jeff Winter was a bit of a maverick referee. Even in this day and age, and with no VAR, I would have been sent off straight away.
“The West Ham fans were going mental over the tackle and there was one instance from a corner they were throwing coins at me, pennies, five pennies, 10ps, pound coins, you name it. It was like being in a Post Office or a Bank, there was so much money thrown at me. It was like I had won the Lottery. I laugh now, but I picked a coin up and your instinct is to throw it back. I saw Jeff Winter and he kinda shook his head and I started laughing and said ‘I’ll just put this in my pocket’, just to defuse the situation.
“We were 117 places behind West Ham in the Football Pyramid and no-one gave us a chance and to say we fell behind early, we held our own. We had a 20 minute spell where everything went for us. That’s every pass, every clearance. Long passes went to our men and we played some lovely football. I mean lovely football, passing from one side to the other. It was a windy day and Banga (Ian Banks) hit the bar and we had a succession of corners. I hit a shot towards the near post and the ‘keeper tipped it over the bar. We had momentum and it was just jubilation when we scored, heartbreak when they scored.
“Prior to Hartson scoring, we had them at four on two. The pass through hit Micky Reynolds on the back of the heel as he was running through. If it had evaded him, Deiniol Graham would have been through and who knows what would have happened then? A draw with how we performed would have been a fair result.
“We did a lap of honour at the end and all the West Ham fans stopped and clapped us off. I was wearing a shirt saying ‘By ‘eck who’s Emley’ and the photo of me wearing it after the game is in a commemorative FA Cup book. That’s another nice memory. I haven’t got the book, but I know about it because when I played for a Bradford Sunday side, a bloke who was a fan of the Sunday League team, brought it along because he had been in a charity shop and found this book. He opened the page and there I was! I haven’t still got the t-shirt though.
“I donated Paulo Alves’ shirt to Emley’s club and it is still in there. In return, the director of football Peter Jackson who was in contact with West Ham, rang them up and told them my Alves shirt had been stolen off my washing line during a spate of washing line robberies in Barnsley at the time. They sent me a Lampard shirt to replace it and I’ve still got it.
“We went in the players bar at Upton Park, but we didn’t stop long as we wanted to get back to where all the fans were. It was better to mingle with the fans because we were all close and I still am to this day.
“The club put a party on for us and me and Chris Marples were last ones to go to bed in the early hours of the morning and we had our ties tied round our heads charging around the hotel. Because of my hair I looked like Rambo. In the morning I had to do an interview with Trevor Brooking on 5Live. I was alright to be fair because I know how to conduct myself.
“When we got back to Emley there was another party and I wasn’t surprised that the village was waiting for us to return because of all the hype before. It was a great occasion for the community too. Everyone was in a win-win situation. All the pubs were busy.
“Nothing comes close in my career to the West Ham game. I have been lucky in my career to have had a lot of success in Non League football and it was topped off with representing England in the Veterans World Cup last year. 1000 games was a nice occasion, Cup Finals are a nice occasion, but at the top for me it is West Ham and then playing for England last year.”
Mark Wilson was interviewed by James Grayson