This weekend marks 40 years since York City recorded a famous FA Cup upset over Arsenal at Bootham Crescent.
Heading into the final minute of the game with neither team able to break the deadlock, Keith Houchen was fouled inside the box, and the referee pointed to the penalty spot – what happened next is still fondly remembered to this very day.
Houchen himself stepped up to take the spot-kick and placed it into the bottom left corner to spark delirium across the city of York, sending the Minstermen through to the Fifth Round and Arsenal out of the competition.
Paul Bowser, club historian, takes up the story about the audio recordings.
Many supporters will be familiar with the BBC ‘Match of the Day’ coverage of the Arsenal game and Keith Houchen’s famous penalty, along with the great John Motson’s accompanying commentary. Thousands of video cassette recorders must have clicked in York that evening, and footage can readily be found on YouTube.
But what of other media outlets back in 1985?
Locally, Radio York had match coverage live from Bootham Crescent and, later that evening, a sports summary programme.
Nationally, what is now BBC Radio 2 broadcast a genuinely iconic programme called ‘Sport on 2’ which covered games from all over the country on a Saturday afternoon until 6pm. Those of a certain vintage will wistfully recall it.
Post-Arsenal, I guess that arrived home just before 6pm, and tuned into ‘Sport on 2’ to capture the last few minutes on my cassette player for posterity, in the knowledge that City’s win was the headline of the day.
Luckily, I was able to quickly record presenter Mike Ingham’s familiar tones as he closed the show, followed by the added bonus of the penalty being described by the legendary Peter Jones – he truly was the voice of football on the radio back then. To finish, a few bars of the famous theme tune.
It was then a switch over to Radio York for the evening round-up, with the match commentary provided, I believe, by Bill Hanrahan. Whilst the MOTD coverage is slightly abridged in terms of run time, the Radio York commentary wonderfully captures the incident in full from disbelief to anticipation to acclaim.
Remarkably, the cassette tape still worked after 40 years, and I suspect that few, if any, will have heard these two pieces of commentary since that time – I know I hadn’t.
If you went to the game, or followed it on the radio, just close your eyes and be transported back to around 4.45pm on Saturday 26 January, 1985, and enjoy the memories flooding back….
