sport news Carlisle's season in the sun 50 years ago remains the game's greatest feat (and ... trends now
Bill Shankly called it football's 'greatest feat' and half a century on Carlisle United's promotion to the top tier still stands scrutiny.
Perhaps it was the scale of improbability, the audacity of such an unassuming club or the added drama of the false ending.
Whatever it was, the slide back into the EFL basement as the 50th anniversary looms has emotional resonance.
New American owners are promising investment and better times ahead, yet their first full season in control will begin far removed from the heady heights of April 1974.
That was a month when Cumbria first became a county, an amalgamation of Cumberland and Westmorland. Terry Jacks topped the charts with 'Seasons in the Sun', which proved prescient, and Carlisle ended their greatest campaign with a 2-0 win against Aston Villa.
Carlisle United are back in the bottom tier of the EFL after their relegation from League One
Their relegation falls 50 years after Carlisle were famously promoted to the First Division
The goals scored by Joe Laidlaw and Frank Clarke in front of nearly 12,500 at the Brunton Park.
'We thought we were up,' recalls John Gorman. 'We were hugging, lifting each other up. Celebrating on the pitch. Then we realised we weren't up and we had to wait for Orient.'
Carlisle finished in third and this was the first time three teams would be go up from the second tier of English football.
Until then it had been just the top two. This they knew well. They had finished third with no reward 1965/66, during the first spell under Alan Ashman, a manager who then left for West Bromwich Albion where he won the FA Cup, and Olympiacos in Greece, before returning to Carlisle in 1972.
Ashman worked in tandem with Dick Young, the long-serving coach and later director of the club. 'Alan left the training to Dick,' says Gorman, whose long career as a coach included spells as the assistant to Glenn Hoddle at England and Tottenham.
'Dick wanted pass, pass, pass, pass, pass. We were a push and run team. We would spend all our time working on skills, repetitive exercises, practising with two feet. Dick was one of the best. I based a lot of my coaching on what I had learned from him.
'Alan would spend most of the day in his office. He'd come out for 10 minutes in his big sheepskin coat, have a look at us and go back inside. We wondered what he did but he was signing players and building the team.'
Ashman built a good team, led by their inspirational young captain Bill Green in the heart of defence. Allan Ross was a legend in goal, amassing a record 466 Carlisle appearances. Peter Carr, bruising at right back. Gorman, an attacking force at left back.
There were Les O'Neill, Stan Ternent, Ray Train and Graham Winstanley. There was the versatile Chris Balderstone who, two months after that win against Villa was top scoring for Leicestershire in the Benson and Hedges Cup final at Lord's.
Two years later, Balderstone was facing down the West Indies pace attack on his Test debut. In between, in September 1975,
