On August 18, 1973, Arsenal and Wolverhampton Wanderers faced off at Highbury for a chance of FA Cup glory - sort of.
Four months earlier, the two clubs had lost their respective FA Cup semi-finals, as we were defeated 2-1 by eventual winners Sunderland at Hillsborough, while Wolves were pipped 1-0 by Leeds United at Maine Road. Now, they were gearing up to play one another to decide who would secure third place in the 1972/73 FA Cup competition.
There were plenty of bizarre innovations in 1970s football, which also saw the era of the Watney Cup – a competition between the league’s highest scorers, and between 1970 and 1974, matches were played between the two losing FA Cup semi-finalists for the honour of being officially third or fourth in the world’s oldest knockout competition.
For the first two years, the play-off was held on the eve of the FA Cup final itself, at a separate London venue to Wembley, with the idea being that visiting supporters who were at a loose end in the capital for the evening would pop along. However, the games failed to fire the public imagination, perhaps because the teams’ supporters weren’t actually in town at the time.
The first play-off winners were Manchester United, who beat second division Watford 2-0 at Highbury the night before Chelsea took on Leeds at Wembley. In 1971 at Selhurst Park, Stoke City defeated Everton 3-2 in front of just over 5,000 fans. By 1972, the FA moved the date of the match to pre-season (Birmingham City beat Stoke on penalties), and in 1973 we hosted Wolves at Highbury. The match, played seven days before the league season began, received a decent billing.
The highlights were shown on ITV and on a beautiful sunny day, the crowd was 21,038 – hardly a disaster for what was the equivalent of a pre-season friendly. With a number of youngsters on show, including midfielders Brian Chambers and David Price, and defender Brendon Batson, Bertie Mee’s side made a bright start to the match, but fell behind when Scottish international Jim McCalliog beat goalkeeper Bob Wilson, who began his career with Wolves, at his near post after 17 minutes.
Northern Irish international Derek Dougan thumped Wolves into a 2-0 lead in the first half, before young forward Brian Hornsby hooked us back into contention after the break. The pace slowed towards the end of proceedings, but there was still time for Dougan to score again, giving Wolves a 3-1 win.
That afternoon gave an interesting glimpse into the Gunners’ route ahead, as a Gunners star of the future, Alan Sunderland, showed his array of skills for Wolves in midfield. He put pen to paper for Terry Neill’s Gunners in 1977 and began to play up front.
A week after the play-off, we began the 1973/74 league campaign in great style, with a 3-0 victory at Highbury against Manchester United in front of 51,501, but proved to be a false dawn though for a club in a state of flux. Arsenal’s defensive woes, as demonstrated in the Wolves match, were about to scupper their season, and we finished in 10th place.
After one more year of the FA Cup play–off match, it was quietly shelved. The results of the matches aren’t even available on the FA website, and all 22 participants in the play-off matches received a tankard for their trouble. The Arsenal players that I’ve spoken to from that era seem to have forgotten where they’ve put theirs.
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