It was exactly 32 years ago today that one of the most memorable encounters between Southampton & Portsmouth Football Club's took place.
When the draw was made on the Monday lunchtime after the 3rd round as was traditional back then, it was the first time that both clubs had been drawn together in the FA Cup for 78 years, indeed fixtures between the two clubs had been rare in the previous 18 years since Saints had been promoted to the top flight and amounted to four games in the two seasons the clubs had been in the old second division together in 74/75 & 75/76 season, given that in that second season Saints had gone on to win the cup this draw was seen as a good omen in the red half of Hampshire.
Everyone was in overdrive in the build up to the game, the local papers, the local TV, Hampshire Constabulary & of course the two sets of supporters themselves.
Both teams were in a purple patch, Pompey after being relegated in 1976 to the third division were finally back to their spiritual home in the second division and then manager Bobby Campbell had assembled the most attractive Pompey side in 30 years with the likes of Alan Biley, Mark Hateley, Kevin Dillon & Neil Webb and Pompey fans who in those three decades had suffered mainly dejection now felt they had a side that could take on their neighbours who in contrast had pretty much dominated the Hampshire football pecking order.
Indeed the Saints side of this season is generally regarded as the best ever Saints side and would eventually finish second in the table, falling just short of overhauling eventual winners and team of the 80's Liverpool.
The Saints side almost picked itself
Shilton
Mills Agboola, Wright, Dennis
Holmes, Williams, Armstrong
Wallace, Worthington, Moran
This was Saints strongest line up although it has to be said that earlier in the week Brian Clough had done Saints a favour by agreeing to rearrange Saints game against Nottingham Forest so that Steve Williams could serve a one match ban and be available for this game, then the FA Cup was clearly Saints priority, Saints lost 1-0 and lost the title to Liverpool by 3 points.
Pre match Pompey fans were confident, they were their usual selves that Pompey were the greatest team on the South Coast and Saints were just pretenders, all the pre match bragging was done by Pompey and their players whilst Saints kept their own counsel, quietly confident about the task ahead.
Around 10,000 Saints supporters were officially in the 36,000 attendance, packed into the terracing behind the Milton End goal also under the South Stand and a block of seats in the North Stand, many other Saints supporters had obtained tickets by other means in home areas, despite what pompey fans might say.
The atmosphere was vitriolic, Pompey fans rained bananas and racist abuse at Saints players Danny Wallace & Reuben Agboola and coins at the other players, something that would cost them dearly come the dying seconds of the game.
The game itself was an anti climax, both sides looked tense and Saints were content to keep the Pompey team subdued with the only moment of danger coming in the 87th minute when Alan Biley had a glorious chance but volleyed well over and into the Fratton End.
Minutes later cam the games first decisive moment, Mark Dennis went to take a throw in before the mass of Pompey fans in the North Stand and was hit by a coin, nothing new in ths game, several other Saints players had already been hit as had both linesmen, Mark Dennis was one of the hardest players in the league at the time yet he went down.
The game was delayed Dennis was treated and the game resumed as the 90th minute came up on the clock behind the Saints fans.
Pompey fans were now confident of a draw, they thought their work done, they had thrown bananas, hit a scummer with a coin and now they were going to invade Southampton a few days later, but this delay for Dennis's injury would come back to haunt them.
With the chant of "Southampton Southampton Here We Come" ringing from the home terraces and a minute gone of injury time (no boards back then) Frank Worthington found David Armstrong on the right, there looked no danger, but Armstrong put in one of those crosses that you just can't defend, behind the back four and just too far out for the keeper, perhaps Alan Knight in the Pompey goal thought that it would pass harmlessly across the goal area for a goal kick, but then suddenly Steve Moran loomed at the back post and fired home to send a third of the ground nto raptures and the majority into stunned silence.
Behind the stricken Knight and the ball in the net were thousands of Saints fans going crazy, on the North Stand terrace was one Pompey fan who seconds earlier had probably been the hero of those around him and now was being pointed at by his fellow Pompey fans as the man who was responsible for the injury time in which the goal was scored, if that coin had not been thrown then history would have been quite different.
"The coin that could be heard across Hampshire"
The game restarted and then immediately finished, both sets of fans unable to believe what they had seen for different reasons.
Lawrie McMenemy summed it up when he said he had never seen a team so gutted as the Pompey side at the end,
"we're in the 5th round, picked up £4.50 in change and two lbs of Bananas" he quipped.
After the game it was carnage, Police in the main kept both sets of fans apart and there was little fighting between the two groups en masse, however Pompey fans went on the rampage in their own City doing £20,000 worth of damage that included 16 plate glass windows smashed, 6 police vehicles damaged, 18 people needing hospital treatment, Pubs trashed and 59 arrests.
Ultimately though it was not so much a tale of two Cities but a tale of two people and how they slept that night, the first Steve Moran would have fell into his bed wit his mind replaying perhaps the most memorable goal of his career over and over, whilst the second would have been unable to sleep much as he too replayed the goal and wished that he had kept his coin in his pocket.