On Saturday evening at the Green Dragon Hotel, a handsome Georgian building little more than a goal-kick from Hereford’s mighty cathedral, 80 people will gather for a dinner to celebrate the 50th anniversary of one of the greatest days in the city’s long history.
It will be exactly half a century since — with less than 10 minutes to go in an FA Cup third-round replay against First Division Newcastle United — a 28-year-old joiner from a Yorkshire pit village joined the footballing immortals with a 35-yard piledriver that was anointed Goal of the Season.
‘No goalkeeper in the world would have stopped that,’ cried Match of the Day’s young commentator, John Motson, on secondment to BBC television from his radio job.
50 years ago Hereford famously knocked Newcastle out of the FA Cup when substitute Ricky George scored for Hereford in the first period of extra time
Ronnie Radford’s unforgettable strike thundered past the diving Willie McFaul into the back of the Newcastle net, cancelling out Malcolm Macdonald’s goal only three minutes earlier.
The tie was then settled when substitute Ricky George scored for Hereford in the first period of extra time, completing perhaps the most remarkable feat of giant-killing in football’s oldest and most famous cup competition.
Southern League Hereford, for whom only player-manager Colin Addison worked full-time, weren’t done yet.
George's goal completed perhaps the most remarkable feat of giant-killing in football’s oldest and most famous cup competition
The 2-1 victory earned them a fourth-round tie only four days later at home to another top-tier club, West Ham United, which they drew 0-0.
At Upton Park five days after that, they finally succumbed. A Geoff Hurst hat-trick, less than six years after the one that sent the whole nation into delirium, broke Hereford hearts.
At the Green Dragon on Saturday, the men involved in Hereford United’s epic Cup run will tell their stories while highlights of the Newcastle game run on a loop on wall-mounted TV screens.
One of the guests, Bobby Moncur, might be less interested than most in watching them.
A Scotland international, he was the Magpies captain that day and remains the last Newcastle skipper to lift any major silverware, the 1969 Fairs Cup.
‘Oh, but I’m big enough to recognise Hereford’s achievement,’ he said. ‘I have a lot of respect for what they managed to do to us.
'It was a horrendous pitch but that’s not an excuse, it just wasn’t our day. With due respect to Hereford, we felt afterwards as if we’d disgraced Newcastle United.
‘On the way back, about an hour into the journey, I remember our manager Joe Harvey stopped the bus, then got out and was physically sick.
'None of
