It's A Cup Final Knockout 1977
British Domestic Series

Presenters:
Stuart Hall
Eddie Waring

Referees:
Arthur Ellis
Mike Swann

Production Credits:

Games Arranger: Paul Trerise; Designer: Mel Bibby; Producer: Cecil Korer; Director: Geoff Wilson

A BBC Manchester Production

Key: Domestic Special ● = Winner of Special   ▲ = Promoted to Position / ▼ = Demoted to Position

GB

It's A Cup Final Knockout 1977

FA Cup Final Special

Event Staged: Sunday 15th May 1977 from 4.45pm
Venue: South Liverpool F.C. Football Ground (Holly Park),
Garston, Liverpool, Merseyside, England

Transmission:
BBC1 (GB): Saturday 21st May 1977, 12.30-1.15pm (as part of Cup Final Grandstand)

Celebrity Supporters (non-participating):
Past and present players (Pat Crerand, Dixie Dean, Joe Mercer, Ian St. John, Nobby Styles) and celebrity supporters (Keith Chegwin, Ken Dodd, Elizabeth Estensen, Nerys Hughes, Mollie Sugden)

Teams: Liverpool F.C. v. Manchester United F.C.

Team Members included:
Liverpool F.C. - John Chadwick (Team Coach), Jim Denham (Team Captain), Abbel Hamid Bouzib, Maggie Boyle, Frank Chadwick, Billy Davies, Barbara Denham, David Gill, John Green, Ron Hancock, Alison Pedder, Phil Pindar, Sue Power, Margaret Pringle, Ray Solomon, Billy Sullivan, Colin Sullivan, Keith Tweddle, Lynn Yates;

Manchester United F.C. - David Smith (Team Manager), Tony Blair, Dave Bradbury, Phil Burslem, Cliff Butler, Trevor Butler, Yvonne Butler, Clare George, Joyce Goldstone, Lesley Peters, Alan Redfern, Mark Redfern, Mike Royle, Anne Smith, Pete Solski, Paul Wilcox, Jane Williams, Terry Williams.

Games (Official Titles): Cylinder Roll (non-competitive), Rotary Goal, Sack Squeeze, Smooth Dresser, Roll-Up Race, A Mere Trifle, Box Burst, Tweedle and Giants Football (replacement game);
Unused Games: Trouser Twins and Kleptomania;
Reserve Game: Hop to Swap (not used).

Game Results and Standings

Result

 Team

Points

Final Scoreboard

1st
2nd

 Manchester United F.C. ●
 Liverpool F.C.

12
11

The Host Town

Garston, Merseyside

Garston, a district with its southern border on the River Mersey, is located in the south of the city of Liverpool in the county of Merseyside.

In medieval times, Garston was home to a group of Benedictine monks with the first recorded mention of settlement being the Church of St. Michael in 1235. By the 19th century, the area had become a small village, one of the eight townships forming the parish of Childwall.

A small dock was first built at Garston in 1793 for Blackburne’s Saltworks, which still stands today. Garston's growth accelerated rapidly in the 1840s, when in 1846, the area's first dock was constructed and opened, under the auspices of the St. Helens and Runcorn Gap Railway Company. The ‘Old Dock’ was followed twenty years later by a second, the ‘North Dock’. In 1902, Garston was incorporated into the City of Liverpool and a third and final dock, Stalbridge, was opened in 1907.

Today, Garston is a major shipping and container port, second only to Liverpool Docks in the north-west. Although inside the city of Liverpool, Garston Docks is not a part of the Port of Liverpool and is regarded as a separate port. Much of the area is also residential, housing being mainly in Victorian terraces with some semi-detached homes around Liverpool South Parkway. It is partnered with the nearby district of Speke in a series of redevelopment and regeneration schemes, which have succeeded in reversing recent trends in dereliction and unemployment. Garston is regularly quoted as one of Liverpool's 'up and coming' areas because of this, and house prices have continued to rise.

Garston is home to Liverpool South Parkway railway station, a major interchange station operating trains at regular intervals not only to the city centre, but to Southport, Manchester and Birmingham.

Many notable people have hailed from Garston including Liverpool footballer John Aldridge, television personality Les Dennis, singer/songwriter Billy Fury (1940-1983), trade union leader Jack Jones (1913-2009), actor Rita Tushingham and Brookside actor and presenter Simon O'Brien.

The Venue

South Liverpool F.C. Football Ground (Holly Park)

The venue for this competition was Holly Park, the home ground of South Liverpool Football Club, located on Woolton Road in Garston.

The history of the club, known locally simply as South, dates back to 1897 when the club were originally called African Royal F.C. They played their games at Grafton Street and in 1911, they joined the Lancashire Combination League Second Division. For the 1912-13 season, the team were promoted to the First Division, but the competition was suspended following the outbreak of World War I in 1914. After the war, and under the influence of William James Sawyer (1870-1940), the club changed its name to South Liverpool. It played its games at Grafton Street for two more seasons before relocating to Dingle Street in Wallasey, on the Wirral peninsula, in 1921. It was at this time the club’s name was changed to New Brighton A.F.C. New Brighton assumed South Liverpool's official Lancashire F.A. registration, most of the club's staff, all of its debts (reportedly around £200), and the team's place in the Lancashire Combination for 1921-22. Therefore, New Brighton F.C. was a legal continuation of South Liverpool F.C. and the club no longer ‘existed’.

The second South Liverpool F.C. was formed by a group of local businessmen in 1934 following the acquisition of Holly Park, in the south of the city. The club joined the Lancashire Combination with immediate impact, winning it three years running, in 1937, 1938 and 1939. The team were also crowned Welsh Cup winners in 1939 after beating Cardiff City 2-1. The club applied regularly for election to the Football League. The idea was to have another leading club in the Liverpool area. Even in 1939, however, after South Liverpool won four trophies, the club only attracted 5 votes at the Football League AGM election - way behind the two re-elected Third Division North clubs, Accrington Stanley (29 votes) and Hartlepools (38). Incidentally, even further behind South Liverpool in that election was Wigan Athletic, a club that attracted no votes at all but which has since been accepted, rising as high as the Football Association's Premier League. In all, South Liverpool applied to join the Football League on ten occasions, always without success.

Hostilities were again to intervene in the club’s history with the outbreak of World War II in 1939. The club joined the Western Section of the Cheshire County League for one season before war stopped the competition. The club's greatest team were disbanded, and South Liverpool did not compete again until 1946, after which the career of the club was divided equally between the Cheshire League and the Lancashire Combination. In September 1949, Holly Park hosted the first match in the UK to be played under "permanent" floodlights, a friendly against a Nigerian XI (the first Nigerian side to tour the UK). The final score was 2-2, with the official attendance recorded as 13,007. The match was covered for BBC Overseas Service (now World Service) by Kenneth Wolstenholme, who would later earn fame for his “They think it’s all over. It is now” commentary on the FIFA World Cup Final of 1966. After a season in the Second Division of the Lancashire Combination, South Liverpool were promoted to the First Division at the first attempt, but were relegated back to the Second Division in 1960 after finishing in bottom place. South Liverpool gained promotion again in 1962 and won the Lancashire Combination First Division championship in 1966. The club had also been relatively successful in the FA Cup, reaching the first round eight times and the second round twice, though the only time they achieved a "giant-killing" feat was when they defeated Halifax Town in 1964-65.

Under the managerial skills of Alan Hampson the club’s second greatest team was formed and they swept to the 1966 Combination title. In 1967, the 40-year-old Hungarian born football legend Ferenc Puskás (1927-2006) guested for the club in a fundraising friendly match at Holly Park which attracted a sell-out crowd of 10,000. As one of the more successful non-League clubs in northern England, South Liverpool was invited to join the newly formed Northern Premier League in 1968. However, this was to be the final time the club would see success and stayed out of the limelight for the next 20 years.

Following a fire in 1989 at the clubhouse, which had proved to be a very profitable asset, the club had to move and shared a ground with Bootle F.C. at Bucks Park. The club remained in the Northern Premier League until 1991, when the South Liverpool Athletic & Association Football Club Co. Ltd., the limited company which owned the club and the old ground, encountered financial problems, forcing it into liquidation, leading eventually to their being sold off. The old Holly Park ground is now the site of the impressive Liverpool South Parkway station which opened in 2006, but sadly no trace of the old ground exists on the site, apart from one road named Holly Farm Road close by!

Returning Teams and Competitors

Eleven members of this victorious Manchester United Supporters team - Dave Bradbury, Phil Burslem, Cliff Butler, Trevor Butler, Yvonne Butler, Clare George, Joyce Goldstone, Anne Smith, Paul Wilcox, Jane Williams and Terry Williams - had participated in the It’s A Cup Final Knockout programme in 1976 when Manchester United had also beaten Southampton by 14-12.

Additional Information

The recording of the 1977 It's A Knockout domestic series took a brief break between Heat 5 on Sunday 8th May (at Camberley, Surrey) and Heat 6 on Sunday 22nd May (at St. Albans, Hertfordshire). This was to allow for the recording of this special Cup Final edition of It's A Knockout on Sunday 15th May.

Manchester United F.C.'s win in It's A Cup Final Knockout was repeated in the 1974 F.A. Cup Final at Wembley Stadium. The match, which kicked off at 3.00pm on Saturday 21st May, was won 2-1 by Manchester United, with all the goals coming in five second half minutes. Stuart Pearson opened the scoring for Manchester United in the 51st minute, only for Jimmy Case to equalise for Liverpool in the 53rd, with Manchester United's Jimmy Greenhoff scoring the winner in the 55th. Liverpool, fresh from winning the First Division title, would rue their F.A. Cup Final defeat, but four days later they picked themselves up and won their first European Cup by beating Borussia Mönchengladbach by 3-1.

Made in Colour • This programme exists in the BBC Archives

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