Sporting Bygones: Old Trafford heroics of Leeds shows Cup still retains magic

It is hard to recall who won the Cup three or four years ago but the roll of honour from the Fifties through to the Seventies is an unforgettable litany; some of the matches from that era – and many of the players – are as fresh today as they were then.

The Stanley Matthews Cup final of 1953 – Coronation Year – made a massive impact on a young mind and for other reasons than the fact that the great man ("not a patch on Tom Finney," we were constantly told) had at last won the elusive medal.

There was the misfortune suffered by Bolton Wanderers in having to play for most of the second half carrying the injured Eric Bell (no substitutes then); there was a hat-trick – the first and so far only one in a Wembley FA Cup final – for Stan Mortensen; the winning goal was scored by a South African – Bill Perry; and we had actually been to Blackpool (albeit only on a day trip) so there was a tenuous link.

The magic of the Cup was established and if the glamour of '53 was not quite matched 12 months later – when West Bromwich Albion denied Preston's Finney his "Matthews moment" with a 3-2 victory – the excitement the following year was almost unbearable.

This was the year of Arthur Bottom, the season in which York City – again, we had paid a visit so were totally behind them – almost became the first team from the Third Division (long before the marketing men dreamed up today's misnomers) to reach the final.

York had beaten Blackpool 2-0 in the third round and followed up by overcoming Bishop Auckland, in those days regular winners of the FA Amateur Cup, by 3-1, Tottenham (3-1) and Notts County (1-0) with Bottom scoring seven of their goals. In the austere Fifties there was a schoolboy laugh to be had from seeing his name in all the headlines.

York eventually fell to Newcastle United in a semi-final replay at Roker Park after drawing at Hillsborough but the thrills were not yet over. A neighbour had rented a tiny TV so the final against Manchester City was to be the first one seen "live" – previous finals had only been glimpsed via cinema newsreels.

As it happened, we were a few minutes late for kick-off and so missed Jackie Milburn's glancing header which sent Newcastle on their way to a 3-1 victory, fielding two players who would later be great favourites when they spent their latter years in Yorkshire – Jimmy Scoular at Bradford Park Avenue and Len White at Huddersfield Town – while goalkeeper Ronnie Simpson defied the years by starring in 1967 when Celtic became the first British winners of the European Cup.

Manchester City returned to Wembley the following year with Don Revie playing as a withdrawn centre-forward – after the style of Hungary's Nandor Hidegkuti in the team which had twice humiliated England a few years earlier – and were comfortable winners over Birmingham City in a match forever remembered as Bert Trautmann's finest hour.

City's goalkeeper broke his neck diving for the ball at the feet of a Birmingham forward but played on – still no substitutes – with the only outward sign of his distress an occasional rub of the nape under his polo-necked sweater. The former German prisoner of war remains an icon for City fans to this day.

Then there was Peter McFarland's one-man demolition job on the Busby Babes in Aston Villa's colours, a remarkably similar display by Nat Lofthouse the following year as Bolton made up for their disappointment against Blackpool by beating a make-shift Manchester United under the care of Jimmy Murphy, Matt Busby still being in hospital in Munich after the disaster which wrecked his great creation.

Every year the Cup final was a great occasion, the first Saturday in May (the Rugby League Challenge Cup final always a week later) was given over to football; the allotment, cricket, working over, shopping and visiting relatives were all put to one side for the special day.

So it continued, Tottenham beating Leicester City to become the first team in the 20th century to complete the double then returning 12 months on to see off Burnley 3-1 with goals from three of the greats – Jimmy Greaves, Bobby Smith and Danny Blanchflower.

But there was more to the Cup than newspapers and TV. An introduction to the competition in person came in 1957 with the visit of Peterborough United – then a non-league club – to Leeds Road to face Huddersfield Town who included the 16-year-old Denis Law in their ranks.

One car from Peterborough carried the boast "We'll make it Shuddersfield" but Town won comfortably 3-1, Law scoring his first FA Cup goal. Remarkably, a crowd of 48,735 watched the game and when Town were beaten 2-1 by Burnley two weeks later over 55,000 crammed into Leeds Road. There was no doubting the lure of the Cup in those days.

Just a few years later Bradford City enjoyed one of their best Cup runs before they, too, found Burnley too good. The first game – on a mud-heap of a pitch which would today have been declared unplayable – ended at 2-2, City's yeoman right-back Tom Flockett whistling a long-range shot just over the bar in the dying minutes, and a replay at Turf Moor was required.

Our street ran into the A650 then and by tea-time on the evening of the second match traffic heading for Burnley – fully 20 miles away – was queuing in thick fog before our eyes. Over 53,000 saw Burnley progress but thousands more never made it to Turf Moor, giving up the ghost at Keighley, Cowling, Laneshawbridge or Colne, turning round and heading for home through a real Pennine pea-souper.

One rather later FA Cup match remains crystal clear. It was the replay of the 1970 final between Leeds United and Chelsea after Eddie Gray had tormented David Webb at Wembley but Gary Sprake's fallibility had allowed the London club to escape with a 2-2 draw.

The replay was at Old Trafford and the crawl over the moors to Manchester was filled with laughter and optimism; the return, which seemed to take two hours longer – no M62 then – was funereal. The same Webb had scored Chelsea's extra-time winner and another dream had ended for Leeds.

For many Leeds fans the pain of that evening was only exorcised in January, when their team went to Old Trafford and outplayed Manchester United in a match which proved, even to those of us whose best football moments were long ago, that the FA Cup retains its unique place in the English game.