Today I'm going back 40 years to 1982 and the League (Milk) Cup Final between Liverpool and Spurs. I've been lucky enough to attend eight League Cup Finals but this one was my first and was also my first ever visit to Wembley (you know, the old one with the twin towers). As was the case for most big games at the old Wembley, the attendance was 100,000.
Spurs, as was the fashion back in the day, had a highly effective twin strike force comprising Garth Crooks and Steve Archibald. Archibald in particular even had his own song as the Spurs fans nicked the song used in British Airways advertising and sang "We'll take more care of you, Archibald, Archibald". Spurs had signed Archibald from Aberdeen in 1980 and in four years at Tottenham he scored 77 goals in 189 appearances before moving onwards and upwards to Barcelona, signed by Terry Venables. He would go on to help Barcelona win La Liga for the first time in eleven years and then took Barca to the 1986 European Cup Final (lost on penalties to Steaua Bucharest). Archibald was also capped 27 times by Scotland scoring four goals for his country including a goal against New Zealand in Malaga at the 1982 World Cup
Spurs were in great form going into the game having been unbeaten in 16 matches and the match video suggests that it was Liverpool's tactic to rough them up a little. Looking back at the match video (attached to my blog), some of the challenges in the early part of the game were, shall we say, eye watering and I can't imagine them going unpunished these days! After 11 minutes, from a scruffy passage of play, Steve Archibald took care of Liverpool (see what I did there?) poking the ball past Grobbelaar to give Spurs the lead. It was a lead that Tottenham would keep until there were just four minutes remaining when Ronnie Whelan lashed home a Liverpool equaliser. On the day in the stadium, you could almost feel the disappointment amongst the Spurs fans. It was as if they knew that their chance had gone. Liverpool, at the time, were a machine and now they had that most precious of commodities in football: momentum. Indeed Liverpool almost won the game in normal time when Ray Clemence saved from Ian Rush at the second attempt but the game went to extra time at 1-1. In the 111th minute a very young looking Whelan struck again following a mistake by Ardiles which was pounced on by Dalglish and squared for Whelan to fire home. To put a seal on the game, Ian Rush stabbed in Liverpool's third in two minutes from time. Liverpool had won 3-1.
All that was left was for Liverpool's captain, former Spurs youth team player, Graeme Souness to go up the 39 steps to collect not one Cup but two! In addition to the usual three handled League Cup trophy, the competition's new sponsors, the Milk Marketing Board had commissioned a brand new trophy which was used for the period of their sponsorship, known as "the Milk Cup". Such a shame that it wasn't a bottle or a carton don't you think? In fact I recall that it was something of a surprise that the Final was even called the Milk Cup Final that season as the sponsorship name hadn't been mentioned at all during previous rounds. With neither side appearing with shirt advertising either it was definitely early days for sponsorship in English football with honest to goodness milk rather than alcohol and not a betting company in sight!
CRB Match No. 160
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