Ronnie's Rocket

I mentioned last week in my "8 things you didn't know about me" post that I began my love affair with football as a Hereford United supporter when I was a small boy. And I remembered with special pride having witnessed one of the greatest moments in football history, that Ron Radford goal.

It might not look like that much on this little YouTube clip (taken from BBC 1's 'Match of the Day' programme), but trust me - it was a screamer: Ronnie was only just inside the Newcastle half when he started cantering forward, and was still well over 30 yards from goal when he met the wall pass and smacked it. But it gains so much from the context also: this was the greatest 'giant-killing' feat ever in the English FA Cup competition. Hereford at this point were still a non-league side, many of their players only part-timers; whereas Newcastle were one of the best 4 or 5 teams in the country, and were almost universally expected to win comfortably. This goal came - out of nothing - barely 5 minutes from the end of the game, a game in which we'd fallen behind quite early on, and in which, despite labouring valiantly and having most of the ball, we'd never really looked much like scoring. There might have been a few longer and/or harder shots over the years, but I don't think there have been any that were this crucial, that produced such an overwhelming explosion of emotion in the crowd.

It was a mere formality that this goal should win 'Match of the Day's Goal of the Season competition that year. At the end of the 1970s, it also won Goal of the Decade. It was shown on the BBC on FA Cup Final Day every year throughout the '70s; and well into the '80s, I think.

There's even a little China reference attached to this memory for me. My good friend Richard, who first enticed me out here in the early '90s when he was teaching at a small university in Hankou, professed ignorance of this classic football moment. I was sceptical, incredulous. He's a bit younger than me, but not that much: he must have remembered all of those Cup Final Day rundowns of "great moments in FA Cup history", always culminating in that Ron Radford goal.

We developed quite a little debate in our regular correspondence (approximately fortnightly, for most of the 4 years he spent in China - and real letters, too; ah, the days before e-mail!) as to which of us had the aberrant childhood experience or the faulty memory. He insisted this goal couldn't possibly be as momentous or well-known as I supposed. I berated him for having no knowledge of anything beyond the confines of his native Huddersfield.

Luckily, I was soon able to proffer some convincing evidence that my perception of this goal as a key cultural landmark of 1970s England was indeed correct. Nick Hornby's football-themed autobiography Fever Pitch came out at this time, and became a huge bestseller. Its gimmick was to draw parallels between Hornby's personal life and his experience of his beloved game of football. The book is almost entirely focused on his obsessive support of the Arsenal team. There are only three short chapters that are not about Arsenal: one is on Cambridge Utd (who Hornby briefly supported when a student), one is on the Brazilian national side,.... and one is on that Ron Radford goal. I sent Richard a copy in Hankou as a Christmas present that year. Even he now had to admit that this was probably the most famous goal of all time.

And I was there......