Flashback Friday - Ref Justice (and a dodgy perm)!
Newcastle United 0 Brighton & Hove Albion 1, FAC 3rd Round FAC Replay, St James’ Park, 12/Jan/1983, KO 7:30, Att: 32, 687.
Two for the price of one (you lucky things!) in your FA Cup Friday Flashback today as we try to exorcise the ghosts of Telford Mills. First up, Mick with his memories of the match, before Dave reveals the real reason we lost - KK’s perm gone wrong…
Newcastle United: Kevin Carr, John Anderson, Kenny Wharton, Mick Martin, Jeff Clarke, Steve Carney, Kevin Keegan, Neil McDonald, Imre Varadi, Terry McDemott, Chris Waddle.
Manager: Arthur Cox
Brighton & Hove Albion: Graham Moseley, Chris Ramsey, Graham Pearce, Steve Gatting, Gary Stevens, Jimmy Case, Peter Ward, Mike Robinson, Andy Ritchie, Giles Stille (subbed fir Neil Smille).
Manager: Jimmy Melia.
If you think of Kevin Keegan, the FA Cup and Newcastle United you might be forgiven for having two immediate thoughts.
The first is the 1974 FA Cup Final when in Bill Shankly’s last game as Liverpool manager, KK was part of a Reds team that took Newcastle United to the cleaners. The son of a Stanley pitman scored two in that shameful 3-0 defeat as poor old Joe Harvey’s side were humiliated by the Kopites.
But it’s not that game I’m thinking about.
Neither is it KK’s last ever game in the FA Cup when, with around 14,000 travelling Mags, he led a United team to Anfield for a Friday night televised 3rd round tie in which we were whipped 4-0 (there’s a theme emerging here isn’t there?), and such were the high standards Kevin had set for himself, he couldn’t con himself or the public he could play at his peak after being chased down to a ball by defender Mark Lawrenson. Kevin would retire as a player at the end of that season.
Younger readers might not know it, but before he was a miserable, crying faced pundit with a line in fake grievance, Lawrenson was an exceptionally good central defender and a key member of one of Europe’s top sides. But KK couldn’t accept anything other than being the best.
No, between the 1974 Wembley debacle and that Friday night in January 1984, there had been another FAC tie involving Newcastle United and Kevin Keegan. It was January 1983 and it was a third round FAC replay at SJP in Kevin’s first season at United.
The night has gone down in infamy and the name of the referee Trelford Mills is still spat out by older Mags with contempt.
We had done well at First Division Brighton on a claggy tattie patch of a pitch at their old Goldstone Ground and were probably the better side all round. Notwithstanding that, we had gone 1-0 down but got it back to 1-1 courtesy of Terry McDermott and brought the Seagulls back to SJP for the replay. Despite being from the lower division it’s fair to say we were favourites to go through.
St James’ Park was packed and throbbed with expectation that, with KK galvanising the whole club, we could go on a Cup run and put ourselves back into national consciousness after several years in the doldrums following relegation in ‘78.
But if you hadn’t understood Newcastle United’s propensity to take a well-aimed boot to the bollocks before kick-off then you did when the full time whistle blew and we were out of the FA Cup.
I made us the better side by a margin, though the south coast side had managed to resist our attacks, and after an hour we were starting to wonder where the goal would come from.
We didn’t have to wait long, because in the 62nd minute, on an extremely rare sojourn up the park at the Leazes End, Peter Ward found himself in our box with not much attention and poked the ball home after some, well, shite defending.
I remember standing towards the back of the scoreboard section packed like a sardine on the Gallowgate in absolute disbelief at how this could happen. I was a callow youth of 19 at the time convinced we would either equalise and put right this calumny … or the earth would fall off its axis. Worse than that was to follow to be honest.
We poured forward but fair play to Brighton who defended stoutly and we missed some good chances.
Then we scored. Pandemonium all around St James’ Park as a seething crowd roared its relief, but it was in vain as referee Trelford Mills had spotted something absolutely no-one else had, which was a hand-ball from Imre Varadi as he took down the ball from Mick Martin, turned, and shot home.
No-one I know could fathom Mills’ decision on the night and forty-two years later having looked at the You Tube footage I don’t know how many times, I still can’t see a hand-ball now. Bastard.
But more agony was to come as the clock ticked down.
Waddle crosses the ball into the box, there’s a challenge and KK is on hand to head home. To be fair the whistle does blow before Kevin scores … but again, Mills sees a foul in the build up absolutely no-one else has, and to a man and woman inside SJP we we’re frothing at the mouth with anger. Double bastard.
Full Time, we’re out and to describe the old ground as raging doesn’t do it anything like justice. I read years later Mills was advised to remain in his changing room until after midnight for his own safety and then was escorted over the Tyne to make his way back to his native Barnsley. I don’t think anyone was overplaying the risk to Mills’ life and limb in honesty.
Years later Mills gave an interview to the Northern Echo in which he boiled my piss further again by insisting he had been correct to disallow both goals and bemoan the absence of TV cameras which would have proven him correct. Bollocks, bollocks, and treble bollocks.
The night and the disallowed goals were a keynote part of his schtick for him on the after-dinner speaking circuit, and I resented him earning money from talking about putting us out of the FA Cup so unjustly.
Typically, Brighton rode their luck and to be fair, with a half decent side and a mix of youth and experience they went all the way to Wembley. They met Man Utd who needed a replay to beat them.
Brighton had passed up a winning chance in the first game to win the Cup and the commentary of the miss … And Smith Must Score … came to be the name of the main Brighton fanzine for many years. I wanted them to lose. Bitter? You have no idea.
I think I’m over it now. Well, maybe. No bloody repeats on Sunday, though I’ll be on the Gallowgate again, thinking of one of the most piss boiling nights of my life following the Mags.
Michael Martin, @TFMick1892.bsky.social
Did Kevin Keegan’s perm really cost us the FA Cup?
Let us cast our minds back to the 12th of January 1983. The place: Number 8 Dock, Smith’s Ship Repairers, North Shields. And while the name of the ship escapes me, I do remember that it was almost bait time. Or as the posh people like to call it, lunch.
On the morning in question yours truly - a bang-average plumber - was balanced precariously twenty feet in the air on what can best be described as a pile of swaying scrap metal, held together by various clamps, rusty bolts and half a dozen well-worn planks.
Better known on building sites as scaffolding, although shipyard workers preferred to give this contraption a more romantic name: staging. Which is understandable, I suppose, since it really is a kind of stage. Climb aboard and you are suddenly akin to a performing artist. A circus act where you are swinging and swaying and attempting to maintain your balance while trying to avoid a bone-breaking tumble to the ship’s steel deck, twenty feet below.
The last thing on my mind at that precise moment was a trip to our beloved St. James’ Park. But that’s exactly what my mate Kev the Welder suggested, as soon as a leaking pipe threatening to flood the ship with almost as much water as a certain iceberg did to the Titanic had been repaired
Now fans with long memories, especially those who bear grudges, will recall why the 12th of January 1983 is synonymous with a certain conspiracy theory: when a relegation threatened Brighton & Hove Albion dumped the mighty Mags out of the FA Cup. The same Brighton who went on to lose the final 4 – 0 in a replay to Manchester United after the first game ended in a 0 – 0 draw.
Even though The Toon were in Division 2, expectations among Newcastle fans were high that night. We had earned a draw at Brighton’s former stadium, the Goldstone Ground.
Surely we only had to turn up to see the Toon send Brighton packing? But unlike the rest of our fans, I wasn’t feeling quite so confident.
The reason?
I knew the greatest player to ever wear the Black & White No. 7 shirt, our own Kevin Keegan had not enjoyed a perfect preparation for the game.
Unbeknown to the Toon Army, the long-running witch’s curse or whatever you want to call it, had come in to effect hours earlier, when my father-in-law, David Aston, a World Cup winning hairdresser, was working his curly whirly poodle perm magic at Kevin’s house near Morpeth.
Now the follically challenged may not realise this, but performing a perm on someone’s hair is no slap dash half-an-hour job. No sir! A decent perm takes at least a couple of hours. And so it came to pass my father-in-law and the mighty Kevin Keegan were halfway into this delicate operation when a phone call came through from manager, Arthur Cox.
Some unexpected sponsorship duties had cropped up at St. James’ Park and wor Kev was ordered to the ground without delay. This of course was a total disaster for Kevin because it meant he would have to play the game against Brighton with a hurriedly finished and not quite so perfect perm.
Mags with long memories will recall the referee in charge of the game was the infamous Trelford Mills. A barrel load of dodgy decisions went against Newcastle United that cold and frosty night including two disallowed goals. As the match went on and anger and frustration reached fever point, it became clear Trelford Mills had questions to answer.
He was either visually impaired, had a soft spot for Brighton, or had a crystal ball and hated Newcastle United because he knew one day we would be owned by PIF and become the richest club in the world. Sort of. Whatever the reason, it was a knife to the heart when Mills blew the whistle to end the game. Rightly or wrongly, Brighton had won 0 – 1.
The result was a travesty and meant fans would endure yet another trophy-less season.
Most remember United reaching the FA Cup final in 1999, losing to Manchester United 2 - 0. But the last time Newcastle won the FA Cup was 70 years ago, back in 1955 when we defeated Manchester City 3 – 1.
Sadly, my father-in-law will never see us win another cup. At the grand old age of 93 years, he died of a covid-related illness and moved to the special place in the sky where for all we know The Toon win the FA Cup every day of the week.
But back to that 3rd round FA Cup defeat in 1983. A multitude of thoughts were going through my head as I left the ground that night. Had our defeat been a continuation of the supposed witch’s curse over the club?
Maybe Kevin Keegan’s unfinished perm was the cause of us losing the match? Or had we had been unfairly dumped out the cup because of that truly awful referee, Trelford Mills?
I don’t know about you, but my money is on the latter.
Dave Cook
Life is funny. Little did I know while standing in the crowd that night cursing at Trelford Mills, that one day I would be writing a story about it. Alongside another furious fan, True Faith’s very own Michael Martin!