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| photo by Ian Wilson |
The year is 1971. The place, Villa Park. This was the 5th replay of Alvechurch and Oxford City's FA Cup 4th round tie. As Dave Stevens explained in an earlier post, The History of The FA Cup Replay, FA Cup replays would continue before the 90s when a penalty shootout decided the winner after the first replay. It took 11 hours of play over those 6 matches to decide the winner of this historic 4th round tie. The six matches were played at five different grounds over the span of 17 days:
- Saturday November 6th 1971 - FA Cup 4th Qualifying Round Alvechurch 2 - 2 Oxford City
- Tuesday November 9th 1971 - replay (aet) Oxford City 1 - 1 Alvechurch
- Monday November 15th 1971 - 2nd replay at St Andrews, Birmingham City FC (aet) Alvechurch 1 - 1 Oxford City
- Wednesday Nov 17th 1971 - 3rd replay at the Manor Ground, Oxford Un. FC (aet) Alvechurch 0 - 0 Oxford City
- Saturday November 20th 1971 - 4th replay at the Manor Ground, Oxford Un. FC (aet) Alvechurch 0 - 0 Oxford City
- Monday November 22nd 1971 - 5th replay at Villa Park, Aston Villa FC Alvechurch 1 - 0 Oxford City
Bobby Hope scored the winning goal at Villa Park. The goal came in the 588th minute. Jim Rosenthal described the goal: “Shocked that he had been given a chance of saving the attempt, (City goalkeeper) Peter Harris got his right hand to it, but the ball wriggled loose, hit him on the heel, and crawled like a scolded child just over the line.” Unfortunately I could not find a video of this historic goal.
Alvechurch had just won the longest FA Cup tie in history, a record that will never be broken. Two days later they faced Aldershot in the 5th round and would lost 4-2. This reminds me of the longest tennis match in history between John Isner and Nicolas Mahut. Isner defeated Mahut after 11+ hours of play, just like Alvechurch. Also like Alvechurch, Isner would go on to lose to Thiemo de Bakker in the next round.
