Vintage Ratboy footage marks anniversary of FA Cup giant killing

While Liverpool supporters will pay their respects at the Hillsborough Memorial game at Anfield tonight, today represents a very different kind of anniversary for Wimbledon fans.

It is 21 years to the day that the Dons caused one of the biggest upsets in English football history, by beating League Champions Liverpool in the 1988 FA Cup final. The Crazy Gang - whose members included Dennis Wise, Vinnie Jones and John Fashanu - proved too strong for the likes of Alan Hansen, John Barnes and Peter Beardsley on the day, coming out 1-0 winners thanks to a Lawrie Sanchez header. Unfortunately, the Wombles were denied the opportunity to compete in Europe, thanks to the ban on English teams caused by the actions of Liverpool supporters in the 1985 Heysel disaster.

It’s amazing to think that just eleven seasons earlier, top flight Wimbledon were a non league side. If such a fairytale rise through the leagues is ever to be repeated, it will probably be done by the club’s current incarnation, AFC Wimbledon. Started by fans when the original club was brutally murdered by Adam Crozier’s FA and sold to a Milton Keynes franchise in 2002, AFC will begin next season with the likes of Luton and Oxford Utd in the Blue Square Premier.

The video above is taken from the BBC’s coverage of the 1988 final (the last one to be screened on both the BBC and ITV), and shows Dennis Wise getting thoroughly embarrassed on the coach journey to Wembley. Say what you like about Wise and Vinnie Jones (who used to affectionately refer to his aforementioned colleague as ‘Ratboy’), but footballers simply aren’t as funny and honest as this when interviewed on camera any more.

These men just couldn’t stay away…

In the biblical tale of the Prodigal Son, a young man ventures to the big city to fill up on wine and hookers before going home to lead a normal domestic life as an accountant, or something. In some ways, it’s exactly the same tale as that of Shaun Wright-Phillips and Manchester City, only without the fatted calf, the hookers, the wine… the bible. But no matter.

This, along with Heskey’s suspected return to Liverpool, got The Spoiler to thinking, and by the time we’d polished off our lunchtime amuse bouche followed by soup, we’d pretty much compiled a team made up of returning players. All with varying degrees of success.

In goal, we went for everyone’s favourite drug-eating maniac, Mark Bosnich.

Just a question, not a declaration of war…

Alright, football fans, put the grenades down, and throw your machetes into a nearby hedge. The Spoiler knows the drill by now, your claws are out, and we can only apologise for the headline - we didn’t do it just to stir you into a frenzy of mouth frothing and blue language. We are not Liverpool fans (for the most part), we’re just looking at the facts. Perhaps once you’ve sobered up enough, you might find time to study them with us?

Firstly, Liverpool are the only Big Four team that no one ever wants to leave. Chelsea are struggling to keep Lampsie and Drog-drog interested, Hleb and Flamini couldn’t wait to scarper from North London, and even up in Manchester - supposedly home to the best team in Europe - Cristiano Ronaldo is champing at the bit to get away, and start afresh on a new set of local prostitutes. Probably Spanish ones.

Yet, over in the Merseyside city of Liverpool, no one can bear the thought of not coming home to Rafa Benitez’s warm womanly bosom, regardless of the fact that the city is about as far away from being a genuine European Capital of Culture as you can get (where next? Norwich?). Even Crouchie - a man with sophisticated tastes for things like oysters and Abbey Clancy - seemed reluctant to go south.