by Amy Lawrence
GILBERT MCINNES:
So here in Australia the game was being shown live on SBS TV. I was up very early in the morning to watch the game, hoping against hope. Unfortunately my one-year-old son was also awake. ‘It’s OK, I will take care of him,’ I tell my partner. ‘You can go back to sleep.’ What a good father I am!
PETER NORTON:
As it was a Friday night my girlfriend at the time was expecting to see me. I watched the game with her dad. We sat engrossed and tense, with my girlfriend completely marginalised.
CHRISTOPHER STONE:
I was 11 in 89. I was allowed to stay up late to watch the game. I remember my parents (who weren’t particularly enamoured with football) were interested because of what had happened to the Liverpool fans at Hillsborough. They also were quite keen on Liverpool winning for the same reason. It was the first time I had really wanted a team to win a match. I had been to nearly every FA Cup final since Man Utd beat Everton 1985 as my grandfather ran the line in a League Cup final in the 60s and got two free tickets until he died in the 90s.
STEVE KELL:
I had been to every game that season. I was able to make the original fixture but had something organised for 26 May that I could not get out of. I offered my ticket to a friend who was obviously delighted to go. The day before the match the planned thing I had was cancelled and so I could go to Anfield but my mate quite rightly told me to bugger off; he wasn’t handing the ticket back. I ended up in my local pub that night, and met my future wife. Destiny or what?
RICHARD STUBBS:
Reg Lewis, who scored both Arsenal goals in the 1950 FA Cup final against Liverpool, was my stepdad. By 1989 I was a teacher at Thomas Tallis School in south-east London and was also working at the youth centre every Friday evening. In those days it really was ‘in loco parentis’. Nothing much was on my mind that day except the game that night, and I had arranged with everyone that I would leave the youth centre at 7.30 p.m. so as to get home easily for the 8 p.m. start. At 7.30 a mother rang me up at the centre regarding her daughter Natalie, who very worryingly had not gone home that night. Natalie’s mum was in a terrible state. She begged for my help. Did I have any idea where she might be? I said, ‘Leave it with me and I will do what I can.’ I felt the most important game for years disappearing from me and felt awful. Amazingly I remembered something that I thought I heard briefly, in one ear, earlier in the day about ‘tonight’, ‘my house’, a boy’s name. Yes, Natalie was there! Her mum phoned me back full of relief and thanks. I got home in time to see the Gooners going to all corners of Anfield handing out wreaths respecting the loss and horrors of Hillsborough – what a genius, wonderful thought of Ken Friar to organise. Reg was his favourite player and I am sure that it is also down to Mr Friar that Reg is one of the legends at the stadium, with Patrick Vieira’s arm around him.
GRAEME HART:
In 1989 I was living back in Melbourne, Australia and received the Arsenal matchday programmes by mail subscription. The match was broadcast live on TV here early Saturday morning our time. I was watching by myself as the wife and kids were still sleeping. I looked through the programmes to see whether we recorded league runners-up in our list of honours as I thought that would be an achievement in itself.
TEN
A Night of Chilling Simplicity
BRIAN MOORE:fn1
So a night of chilling simplicity about it really. Arsenal must win by two goals to take the title. Anything less and it stays on Merseyside with Liverpool. And Arsenal, in their change strip of yellow, get the game under way, attacking the goal to our right. Just think, ten months of struggle in all conditions since last August and it’s all on the last 90 minutes now. And for the first time a huge TV audience will actually see a title decided in the Football League. I just hope you are going to be comfortable there on the very edge of your seats for the next hour and a half or so.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
Nothing surprises me at Liverpool because I’d been a player. I knew what it was like to go up there and usually lose. Most teams did lose there because they were so dominant. They had some fantastic players. But I had the little game plan. It had to be well organised. It had to be a disciplined performance. The first thing was the change of system to a three at the back. Then it was selling the idea to the players, trying to explain it to them and trying to build them up. Although some of it was probably a little bit of bullshit. ‘Listen, guys, we’ve got to go out there nice and solid. We’ve got to keep it 0–0. We mustn’t go out there thinking we’ve got to attack.’
The funny thing about it was, Liverpool never came at us. The first 20 minutes and we’re thinking, what’s happening here? They don’t want to come forward. We didn’t want to go forward. So it was stalemate. To be honest I thought, well, this is going nicely. This is fine.
ALAN SMITH:
There was always a great atmosphere at Anfield. It was doubly so that night. It was just charged. The emotion and passion of those first 20 minutes, 100 miles per hour, was frenetic. I remember getting fouled by Steve McMahon. I just got my toe there and he clipped me. Mickey Thomas was rampaging around like a mad man and Rocky was certainly fired up.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
I think it’s always a responsibility when you play for Arsenal, a George Graham team, to get involved from the off. You try and put teams to the sword straight away if you can. We always wanted to start fast. I might be built like it but I’m not really a physical person. I like to nick balls and try and win balls but not that way. I used to like watching Rocky smash into people. Ha ha ha. It was good to see him and Tony and Bouldy. Oh, they were immense.
STEVE BOULD:
I think they had quite a big dislike of us. I think we’d been touted all season in the press as being the new guys in town.
ALAN SMITH:
As players we could sense, I could certainly sense, that they were just caught between two stools a little bit. I mean, to think that you could go out and lose a match 1–0. It’s not an easy psychological thing for any footballer. So they didn’t quite know how to approach the task. Do we push on? Play our normal game? Try and get a goal? Might leave ourselves open. Or do we just sit back a little bit? I think they did sit back a bit and that helped us.
DAVE HUTCHINSON:
I hoped that my reputation was as a referee that let it flow. It wasn’t over-fussy. Having said that, I’m just conscious that I blew the whistle an awful lot in the first half but the players responded well to me. As a referee my instinct told me that I’d got two teams there who despite what was at stake shared great respect between the clubs and between the two groups of players.
MICHAEL THOMAS:
That first ten minutes we could have scored. From my cross Bouldy headed it and I thought it was in and someone hit it off the line. We knew we were in the game. We knew it was going to be a long game. If we started on the back foot then it would be all about Liverpool coming on to us. We thought it best to take the game to them.
STEVE BOULD:
Was it from a corner? It couldn’t have been from open play because George would have shot me if I had been that high up the pitch in open play. Steve Nicol cleared it off the line. Thank God really, because I think had we gone in at half-time 1–0 up, I think it probably would have changed the course of history. I think we might have had a little bit of a panic up, and I think they probably would have changed their shape and their system a little bit. Nil-nil helped us all round.
ALAN SMITH:
Apart from Bouldy’s header there wasn’t much at all. Ian Rush came off, did his thigh. We thought, ooh, that’s good news, but then of course Peter Beardsley trots on. He wasn’t a bad player. Ha ha.
PERRY GROVES:
As a sub I was watching on the bench, talking to Hayesey. It was packed. Usually it would just be the subs but we had everyone and his aunty in there. Normally first half, whether it’s home or away, George would be in the directors’ box. He liked to get an aerial view of how the team wa
s set up and the team shape and if he ever came down halfway through the first half you knew someone was going to get a rollicking. But he was in the dugout for the whole game. There were no technical areas then. You could go basically where you like. If he wanted to run down the touchline and have a word with Nigel Winterburn he could have gone and done it but he stayed in his dugout, sometimes leaning over to shout and scream and point a bit, otherwise passing a message through Theo. I wouldn’t say that we were really comfortable but it wasn’t as if we were being bombarded. There was no panic.
STEVE BOULD:
They weren’t the Liverpool that we all expected. I think they were nervous, all the ground was nervous, and also I think the Hillsborough factor might have affected them too. It was a difficult time for football but I think it was part of the deal too.
TONY ADAMS:
I can’t remember a single thing really about the first half. It was uneventful. You set your stall out. Boring, boring Arsenal. You’re not going to score in the first 45 minutes. We were bloody good at that.
BRIAN MOORE:
The mood of the game is still very much intact. There’s still everything to play for. Remember Arsenal need to win by two but we’ve come to an interval where it’s Liverpool nil Arsenal nil.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
Half-time. I said to the boys, that’s OK, now we’ll try and grow into the game. We’ll start going forward a bit more and a bit more and hopefully we’ll get one. Then they’re nervous and we’ll get another one and we’ll finish up with three. I actually thought we’d win three-nothing! Whether they believed that or not is another story.
DAVID O’LEARY:
George Graham gave as good a half-time speech as any manager ever could. George believed chances will come. Whether you’ll take them is another thing but the chances will come. George is a great scriptwriter. He really is.
PAUL MERSON:
I remember sitting there like, what? I was thinking, he’s on what I’m on, isn’t he? Apart from Bouldy’s header we never ever looked like scoring in a month of Sundays. At half-time George was like: ‘Brilliant. Outstanding.’ And I was thinking, we ain’t touched the ball yet. We’ve got to win the game 2–0. What’s brilliant about this?
MICHAEL THOMAS:
George knows how to keep you calm. Come on, boys. Don’t worry about it. Come on. Sit down. Relax. Take your drink. Be quiet. It’s all sorted. The plan’s going well. Nil-nil. Don’t worry. We got them. Just keep doing what you’re doing.
ALAN SMITH:
At half-time I think a few of us felt a bit disappointed. Gaffer says brilliant, lads. That’s what I wanted. I wanted you to keep a clean sheet. It’s all going according to plan. All I want you to do now is push on a bit. Lee, Nigel, I want you to push up the pitch. Get some crosses into the box to Smudge and Merse and just let’s be a bit more adventurous. But again we went out thinking, OK, the gaffer thinks everything is going well. Going according to plan. Let’s do it.
NIGEL WINTERBURN:
George thought they might panic and the mood would change if we got a goal, and another would follow. It was as if he’d already seen the game. It was absolutely incredible. How a manager can stand there at half-time and tell you what’s going to happen and make you believe it, it’s absolutely sensational. You’ve just got to go with it, haven’t you? You’ve just got to go with it and give everything and hope it’s going to happen.
BRIAN MOORE:
And welcome back to Anfield. In the next 45 minutes the championship of the First Division of the Barclays Football League will be decided. Ian Rush saying at half-time the first 15 minutes of this second half could well be crucial. Arsenal, you can be sure now, will be searching even more diligently for that crucial opening goal …
NIALL QUINN:
We were right near the front in row 1 behind the goal we were shooting into in the second half. The most vivid memory I have is Bruce Grobbelaar spotted us and he kept coming around and joking with us. He was known as a clown and he was laughing at us and pulling funny faces at us. It was all a bit unusual.
TONY ADAMS:
Rocky wins the free-kick and gets up with his gritted teeth and fist pumping. Oh my God. Shiver down my spine. We might have been young but we weren’t boys. You know, we were men. We stood up and fought and they were brave guys and Rocky was like that. I love him and we were kids together and grew up together and you mess about together and get a bond and you’re on the pitch together and you get close, don’t you? He was a fighter. Maybe too much at times. Had to calm him down on a few occasions.
ALAN SMITH:
That was him. It was those gleaming eyes. Those pearly white teeth. Come on, lads. Come on.
DAVE HUTCHINSON:
It was an indirect free-kick I gave and that’s critical. I gave a free-kick for an obstruction as we called it in those days.
GEORGE GRAHAM:
I don’t think there was any other team in the country at that time that worked more on set-pieces than we did. It always amazes me that some of the top clubs do not work a lot on set-pieces even nowadays. But we did it. Adams, Bould on the near post for corner kicks. Magnificent. Even when the opposition knew what we were doing we would add a little bit more to it. It worked superbly. It was a lovely inswinging delivery, where the goalkeeper can’t come for it because it’s too wide and at the last moment maybe he should have come.
ALAN SMITH:
We’d practised that free-kick so much in training and it had never worked in a match. Nigel swings it in with his left foot. Then me, Bouldy and Tony are lined up. Tony’s supposed to peel round the back. We had practised it so much in training and you think, oh, gaffer, this never works. Are you sure? Tony just ignored what he was supposed to do and just flung himself at the ball, created a distraction, but Nigel delivered a great one in with that trusty left foot.
BRIAN MOORE:
Winterburn and Richardson behind it … Adams has made a darting little run in there … And Smith! And Arsenal have scored!
TONY ADAMS:
My decoy run let Alan touch it. I think I touched it as well. I was convinced. I said to Alan, I think I touched it. He said, no you didn’t. I said I did. That’s my goal but I’ll let you have it. I was so full of shit in those days. As if it mattered but I’m sure I touched it. It was a good run. I wanted to take some credit. It was my decoy run that let you in, Alan. That was it. He’s one of the best headers of the ball in the game, Alan, and he won two Golden Boots. Really underestimated and it’s embarrassing to say that because he’s definitely not underestimated by me. A fantastic centre-forward.
ALAN SMITH:
I snuck in. I was supposed to make that little dart and I lost my man and got my head to the ball. I just remember it coming in and me just helping it on and not changing the direction of the ball but getting a really solid touch. Grobbelaar had no chance because I managed to get it right in the corner. I followed through, bumped into Steve Staunton and swivelled round to go to the crowd. Ah! Our section going absolutely ballistic. Oh my God.
PENNY SMITH:
I knew straight away it was a goal because Alan was right in front of me, that side of the goal. I saw it clearly come off the side of his head. People were all going mad. I felt very sick, and actually it turned out a week later I was actually pregnant with Jess. I thought that was just nerves at the time.
JOHN LUKIC:
When he scored I’ve got 20,000 Scousers behind me and I wasn’t one to celebrate goals anyway because I was too transfixed in the game but I could’ve heard a pin drop in the Kop when the goal went in.
DAVE HUTCHINSON:
The ball went into the goalmouth and finished up in the net. I thought Alan Smith had touched it. A direct free-kick means the side who are taking the free-kick can score by kicking the ball directly into the goal. If it’s an indirect free-kick then the ball has to be played or touched by another player before it enters the net and that’s why it was critical that Smithy’s nose was b
ig enough just to touch the ball. I couldn’t see any reason why it should be disallowed but about seven or eight Liverpool players did.