When Burton Albion of the Northern Premier League were drawn against Division One side Leicester City in the third round of the FA Cup in 1985, it appeared to be a romantic tie: a David v Goliath clash that the part-timers of Burton in the spotlight and in the hunt for an upset. It had all of the ingredients required for a third round classic but, sadly, the tie ended up making headlines for different reasons.
Neil Warnock’s Burton team took hope from the memory of Leicester’s surprising defeat to Harlow Town in the Cup in 1980. Leicester had drawn with the Athenian Premier League side at Filbert Street, before suffering a 1-0 defeat in the replay. Leicester defender Tommy Williams had played in that tie and did not want to suffer another embarrassment against Burton. “We realise we are on a hiding to nothing,” said Williams. “We were terrible that night at Harlow and it would have been no injustice if they had won by three or four clear goals. So some of us know what to expect. That’s why we are going out against Burton determined not to let it happen again.”
Burton had already disposed of Wootton Blue Cross, Stevenage Borough, Willenhall Town, Wycombe Wanderers, Staines Town and Aldershot on their way to reaching the third round for the first time since 1956, but their adventure was expected to end against Leicester. They had been hammered 7-0 by Charlton at this stage 29 years before and Burton suffered another thrashing when they met Leicester on the 5 January 1985. However, this time there were outside influences to take into account.
Midlands brewery company Ind Coope, sponsors of both teams, provided both sets of players with an even greater incentive to progress to the fourth round; a barrel of best bitter, containing 288 pints of beer. Come the end of the match, Burton keeper Paul Evans must have felt like he had drunk the lot. Burton had been holding their own before the incident. Gary Lineker had opened the scoring after 16 minutes before an equaliser from David Vaughan sent the Burton fans into raptures. Then things took a turn for the worse.
Throughout the match – which had been moved to the Baseball Ground in Derby for safety reasons – Burton keeper Evans had been showered with missiles while patrolling his area. “Someone threw a can in the goalmouth just after the start,” Evans recalled after the match. “So I picked it up. It was full of sand.” There was more to come. “There were a lot of coins being thrown and one of them hit me. Then I was hit by something else and I went down.”
Evans was struck by a block of wood thrown from the stands, believed to be a part of the seating, and players gathering around the stricken keeper with concerned looks on their faces. “I didn’t quite pass out and eventually I managed to get up. I felt very nauseated and kept trying to throw up.” In fact, Evans was sick on the pitch and continued to vomit at half-time.
Eventually struggling to his feet, Evans then conceded two goals, not that he knew much about them. “I can’t remember the second and third goals at all. Someone told me they were headers.” Having already used their one permitted substitute, Burton were reluctant to go down to 10 men, but they had a big decision to make at half-time.
Referee Brian Hill extended the break by five minutes to give Evans time to recover. “I was weak at the knees,” Evans said. “A doctor told me not to go out for the second half but by then I was beginning to feel a little better. I didn’t want to miss anything.” Evans made it out for the second half but three more goals gave Leicester a 6-1 win, Lineker’s hat-trick apparently putting Gordon Milne’s team into the fourth round.
“It should have been a gala occasion. Instead, it was a rather unpleasant day out,” wrote Simon Barnes in the Times, as rumours began to circulate that Burton would lodge a protest with the FA asking for a replay. After a two-hour meeting, Burton decided to appeal to the FA, with the club’s chairman, Bill Royall, making the 200-mile round trip through snow to deliver the protest letter to Lancaster Gate. “We know we are only little Burton but the principle is important,” said Warnock. “Whoever is playing, hooligans must not be allowed the opportunity of altering the course of a match.”
In 1974, the FA ordered Newcastle and Nottingham Forest to replay their fifth-round tie after crowd trouble and Uefa had recently ruled that the Cup-Winners’ Cup tie between Celtic and Rapid Vienna should be played again due to a missile allegedly striking a Rapid player. So there was hope for the non-league team. Six days after the original match, Burton’s case was heard.
Leicester secretary Alan Bennett made his feelings clear on the matter. “Of the 6,000 tickets sold behind the goal, only 1,828 were issued by Leicester. The rest were sold at the gate on the day to anyone. There were incidents earlier in the match when Leicester fans behind the goal were hit by missiles from the stand above. The feeling was that the culprits were Derby people.” Derby officials hit back but the most important opinion would be that of the FA committee.
The FA came down in favour of Burton, ordering a replay to be played at the Baseball Ground behind closed doors. “The clear message from the decision is that the FA will not draw back from actions strong enough to prove that crowd trouble must not pay,” FA secretary Ted Croker announced after the hearing. Leicester were less than happy but had to accept the decision. “The team and our genuine supporters are victims of idiots and to call them only idiots is to treat them kindly,” said Milne.
The Foxes found an unlikely ally in the Burton goalkeeper. “My sympathies are with Leicester. I think they deserve the tie on the basis of the first result,” said Evans, admirably, after the hearing. Evans, his manager and team-mates now had another chance, but it brought another headache: could they get time off work to play in the replay? “I’ve got lorry drivers, shopkeepers, solicitors and all sorts of working lads who will have to get the day off,” said Warnock. “But we’ll have 11 out there and that’s the important thing.” Warnock, who was also working as a chiropodist in Sheffield, had to cancel a number of bookings, a situation that wasn’t improved when the replay scheduled for Monday 14 January was called off due to snow.
The £35-a-week part-timers now had to sort out leave from work for a second time, as the fixture was moved to the Wednesday afternoon at Highfield Road in Coventry due to the unavailability of the Baseball Ground. Finally, the replay went ahead, in front of 200 or so people, made up of club representatives, journalists and a few ball boys who had to stand and shiver on the empty, snow-covered terraces.
Paul Ramsey’s goal after four minutes settled the tie but Doug Newton and Stewart Mell went close for Burton. The match was a strange affair, played out in an eerie atmosphere. “It is unfair to ask teams to play in that environment and I wouldn’t like to think that any professional side will be asked to do that again,” said Milne after his team had progressed to a fourth-round date with Carlisle. “The crowd is part of the game and you can’t perform without them.”
“We did ourselves justice,” said Warnock as the saga reached its conclusion. “Without outside interference we got on with the game and showed a lot of guts and determination and quite a lot of skill. We are disappointed we lost but we were happy to prove that it would have been closer in the first match without intimidation.”
But the final word should come from Evans. “We went to the game to enjoy ourselves. But I was deprived of half an hour of a game I had been looking forward to.” And that is the saddest part of this sorry tale. A chapter that unfortunately could be added to many others in a season of violence that sent British football hurtling to rock bottom.
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