Five minutes that will live forever
ALONG they came, three in five minutes, like FA Cup final goals. Writers, quarrying for the private thoughts of an FA Cup hero. It’s two decades since anyone bothered calling Alan Sunderland about the 1979 final, but that’s fine by the son of south Yorkshire.
He’s 51 now, but can still draw a vividly colourful image of the day he stumbled, somehow, onto - he can’t explain how - one of the most glorious moments in Arsenal history.
Not that’s he a slave to sentiment. Only when the calls came after the respective semi-finals this year did he recognise the whiff of one last pay-day.
“It’s a small village in Malta where I live, so they know who I am, but it’s done, isn’t it?” Sunderland muses in his still-thick accent.
“I don’t miss the game,” he explains. “I don’t like crowds. It’s not that I’m claustrophobic, but I feel uncomfortable in the midst of a lot of people. Anyway, the legs are gone and if I can’t do what I want to do with the ball, I just don’t bother.
“A lot of ex-players sign up for these veteran tournaments, but I feel like a fish out of water on a pitch, a block of wood. You have that experience in your head and you know what you want to do, but you can’t. It’s embarrassing.
“I was pretty skilful, that would have been my biggest asset. You know the legs will go with age, but you never think that the ability with a ball will go too. But it does.”
Ah, but the memories don’t. It’s debatable if football cost Sunderland his family in England - he went to sell his apartment in Malta a decade ago, and never came back - but he only has positive memories of cup final day 26 years ago.
“I was in a daze for a while afterwards,” he says. “Actually, I sprained my ankle in the last few seconds of the game, and it meant I couldn’t dance that night at the celebrations. I just sat there drinking with a loose sock over my foot.”
If Sunderland has any regrets, it’s that his Arsenal side didn’t capitalise on their undoubted ability. It was a side with a disproportionately large number of Irishmen (six played in the 79 final), but in Jennings, Brady, Rix, Stapleton, O’Leary and Sunderland, they had all the necessary ingredients for further success.
The following, harrowing season, Arsenal went back to Wembley and lost a cup final to West Ham, and four days later lost a Cup Winners Cup Final on penalties to Mario Kempes and Valencia. Shattered, they returned home and failed to even make the UEFA Cup, collapsing 5-0 to Middlesbrough in their final league game. It rankles with Sunderland.
“People might forget that in the 1980 cup semi- final, we beat Liverpool after four incredible games - and they were the best side in Europe at the time.
“The second best was Juventus, and after drawing 1-1 with them at Highbury in the first leg of the European Cup Winners Cup semi-final, we beat them 1-0 in Turin (for anoraks Paul Vaessen got the goal). No-one ever beat Juve at home in those days.”
This week, the man from the News of the World came to Sunderland’s Maltese village of Mellieha with his chequebook. Today, he’ll be in Cardiff, courtesy of BBC television. And he’ll tell it over again, one last time.
Maybe, this will be the day he’ll get to describe it just right. A last minute winner in the cup final at Wembley, after throwing away a 2-0 lead with five minutes left. You try.
“Everything went into a dream-like state. That’s all I can say. It was five minutes of numbness. I told someone else it was like switching to auto-pilot, and that’s the best description I can come up with.
“You had no time to digest what was happening. Then I’ve just found myself on the far post, where strikers should be, and Rix swings over a cross from the left. The keeper missed it, misjudged it really.”
“We were all a bit shell-shocked after their second goal,” reflects Liam Brady in a masterful moment of understatement.
“We kicked off (after United made it 2-2), I got a lay-off from Frank Stapleton and decided to attack. Things began to open up. There were two or three United players around me, I could have just kept possession but it was just instinctive to go forward.
“I got past them and suddenly I was on the edge of the box. I saw Graham so I played it to him on the left and he put over a great cross.”
Over to Rix: “I remember thinking about what (coach) Don Howe had always told me, that the closer you get to the byline the more you have to think about eliminating the keeper with your cross. I knew I had to get it over him and tried to hit an area, but I never picked ‘Sundy’ out. I just dinked it over and thought ‘that’s not bad’, then I saw him arriving on the back post and all hell breaks loose.”
Though it was never a classic final, it would rightfully claim to be the classic finale. BBC summariser Lawrie McMenemy summed up United’s agony. “It was like being sentenced to death, being reprieved at the last minute - then walking from the courtroom and being run over by a bus.”
Explains Sunderland: “We’d lost to Ipswich the year before in the final. They out-battled us from the off.”
A Brian Talbot goal had eventually seen off Liverpool in the semi at Coventry’s Highfield Road. Though the Arsenal of the early 70s earned the ‘1-0 to the Arsenal’ tag, the squad which reached three finals from 78-80 knew how to hold onto a slim lead better than most.
“We always felt if we went a goal in front, we were going to be very hard to peg back. So when we went before half-time, there was that feeling of ‘okay, we’ve righted the wrongs of last year’.
If United’s bizarre last-ditch comeback left Sunderland stunned, it doesn’t offer much comfort to Joe Jordan either, who was party to the mayhem. He will also work for the BBC today in Cardiff, though he won’t enjoy it as much as Sunderland. “It will rekindle the worst memories of my career,” he sighs.
“I lost a European Cup final with Leeds, and that was devastating to see a great team miss out on a prize they deserved for everything they had done over the years. There was a terrible bitterness in Paris because we felt we had been cheated by the referee.
“We looked into the eyes of Bayern Munich and that told us they knew it too. But it was different after losing to Arsenal. There was nobody to blame but ourselves.
“Arsenal were beaten. They just needed a little push and it was ours. But we did the most unforgivable thing professionals can do. We took our eyes off the ball for a few seconds, we thought about what we had done, not what we had to do. I have still not seen a single frame of film from that game. It would be like watching an old nightmare come back to life.”
There were always goals in Stapleton and Sunderland, the original footballing SAS.
“It was definitely a telepathic thing - neither of us was blistering fast, but we always fancied ourselves to pinch a goal - even if Brady and Rix were closed down, we’d always manufacture a one-two on the edge of the box.
“Frank worked very hard at his game. You could see he recognised from an early stage he was in a privileged position. He didn’t over-drink, he was a serious guy. In fact, all the Irish lads took care of themselves, and made the best of what they had - it was always Ireland versus the rest at training on Friday.”
Signed from Wolves for £220,000 in 1977, Sunderland spent seven years at Highbury, playing in three cup finals and a Cup Winners’ Cup Final. He left for Ipswich in 1984, but someone talked him into buying a pub. “I had four years as a publican in Ipswich but I was drinking myself to death,” he said. “I needed to get away, and I finished up in Malta.”
And a new life. “I watch Arsenal on the TV. I went out with some friends last week and watched the 7-0 win over Everton. What a team they looked that night. No other team are capable of the one-touch football Arsenal play when they’re on top of their game.”
Occasionally, he’ll coach Maltese children - if they ask. “I’ve got a cockatiel called Rooney - I bought it to keep my dog company, but the dog died. It’s a lovely bird but it can be a bit noisy. Rooney seemed an appropriate name.”
Hopefully, not today.
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