/ 23 February 2001

A miracle on Merseyside

When Tranmere Rovers sent their Mersey rivals Everton and then Southampton crashing out of the FA Cup, it was not only the latest in a long line of giant-killings, but a reminder that loyalty and passion, not sponsorship and TV deals, are what make football ‘the beautiful game’

Kevin Sampson

Many Tranmere Rovers supporters are still pinching themselves after their shock 4-3 win over Southampton in an FA Cup fifth round replay this week. A month ago the Mersey minnows headed upriver, with some trepidation, to face local giants Everton of the Premier League.

Tranmere are the team from Birkenhead, on the “other side” of the Mersey, plying their meagre trade in the shadows of the Cammel Laird shipyards. Like Lairds, the Rovers keep cheating extinction by a whisker. And they keep doing it in style, as those present at Goodison Park on January 27 will readily attest.

Fair enough, Everton are giants who have been having a good old snooze lately. So sleepy, in fact, that they’ve fought more relegation battles than title tussles in recent years. Nonetheless, with a squad packed full of internationals, the Toffees would have been expecting to dispatch Rovers with some comfort.

Not so. With 15 minutes of the tie still remaining, Rovers were 3-0 up, cruising, conjuring up a brand of football that was more Cruyff than Crewe Alexandra and, frankly, playing Everton off the pitch. Goodison Park was empty except for 6 000 delirious Tranmere fans chanting “Can we play you every week?” and a smattering of Evertonians who stayed behind to applaud the opposition off the pitch.

It was fairytale stuff, ranking alongside the Herefords and Colchesters and all the other great giant-killing acts that have burnished the FA Cup’s legend over the years and the legend continued after Tranmere held Southampton to a scoreless draw on Saturday.

Over the past decade, Tranmere have made a habit of upsetting the big boys. They are always referred to as Merseyside’s third team, often prefaced with patronising tags such as “plucky” Rovers or “brave little Tranmere”. Yet since Gazza watered the pitch in Italia 90, and in so doing helped change the face and the price of modern football, plucky little Tranmere have accounted for some exotic scalps. Aston Villa, Chelsea, Coventry, Leeds, Newcastle, Sunderland and West Ham have all gone the same way as Everton. Beaten, and beaten well.

If ever a team reflected the values of their manager it is Tranmere. John Aldridge has been at Prenton Park since 1991, but prior to that made his name as a goal poacher of the highest efficacy for Liverpool, Real Sociedad in Spain, and for the Republic of Ireland. Everywhere he played, Aldridge scored goals. His record of 430 goals in 743 competitive games (not including internationals) is a strike ratio that comfortably eclipses those of current hotshots such as Andy Cole, Michael Owen and Kevin Phillips. In recent years, only Ian Wright and Robbie Fowler come close to Aldridge’s goals-per-game efficiency.

Aldridge played with a mixture of courage, technique and passion that is the hallmark of the team he manages today. He still berates the referee as vehemently as ever he did as a player, still patrols the touchline as if he’s looking to beat the offside trap. Living in the shadow of Merseyside’s affluent big two, and with Gold Trafford a mere 30 minutes’ drive away, Aldridge has fashioned a competitive, progressive team out of an unfashionable club. He’s produced a team that local fans feel proud to support and one that they can identify with. The spirit and work ethic and the sheer, dogged anti-fashion stance of Tranmere Rovers seem to be the major reference points to the 8 000 diehards who regularly pass over the sophistication of Anfield and Goodison to take up their places at Prenton Park.

Tranmere have no Paolos, Vladimirs or Thierrys they have Andys, Steves, Ians and Daves. The fans seem to like Tranmere’s no-frills range, and in turn bring their own slightly down-home brand of support to the picnic. This season, for instance, Tranmere are struggling against relegation, bottom in division one, yet the fans fail to invoke their right to slate the team and call for the manager’s head. Perversely, they seem to try to encourage them instead, as though they were all in the fight together.

Last season, Aldridge, his team and their supporters were rewarded for their faith with an appearance at Wembley in the final of the Worthington Cup, where they were narrowly beaten by Leicester City. Tranmere were a game away from European qualification. It might have been they, not Liverpool, who played in Rome. The beaten finalists returned to a welcoming multitude outside Birkenhead Town Hall, the fans once again proud of their humble heroes. The future, if not dazzling, was at least shining on dipped headlights.

It was not ever so. On May 8 1987 Tranmere played a match against Exeter City that was to prove historic. The arithmetic was simple. Tranmere had to win in order to stay in the Football League. Depending on results, either Tranmere, Burnley or Lincoln City would drop into non-league football an outcome that had already sounded the death knell for clubs such as Accrington Stanley, Bradford Park Avenue and Barrow, all unable to continue trading on the reduced revenues of minor league football. Tranmere were favourites to go down. Their support that season had dwindled to a core of 2 000 regulars, morale was low and expectations were nil.

A charismatic local businessman, Peter Johnson, had just taken over as chair of the club from a well-meaning but remote American entrepreneur called Bruce Osterman, but Johnson’s five-year regeneration plan had barely begun. The ground capacity of Prenton Park was set at 7 000 that season 6 983 hardy souls crammed inside for this win-or-bust match, but their noise and optimism of the first half gave way to unbearable tension and, ultimately, strained silence as the match went into its last 10 minutes with the score still 0-0.

In the 84th minute a jobbing journeyman called Gary Williams trotted upfield. Until that moment, Williams was best known for his Michael Bolton barnet. Managing to combine a pate more bare than Bobby Charlton’s with a tightly permed, collar-length derriere, Williams laid the ghost of his slaphead mullet with a crashing header into the roof of the net. Tranmere stayed up. Lincoln went down. The rest is history.

Over successive seasons, though, Tranmere climbed from the old fourth division to the third and the second, ultimately beating Bolton 1-0 in the play-offs and gaining a place in division one. It was at this point that Tranmere pulled off perhaps their best piece of business ever.

For a paltry 250 000 a deal that turned out to be one of the cleverest and best-value signings in football manager John King brought former Liverpool goal ace John Aldridge back from his then club, Real Sociedad. That move was only the latest in a grand tradition of former Liverpool and Everton stars taking the ferry cross the Mersey to see out their careers at Prenton Park. Prior to “Aldo”, legendary figures from Bill Shankly’s golden era such as The Flying Pig (also known as goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence) and Ron “Rowdy” Yeats cut a dash in front of the Tranmere faithful. But Aldridge blasted any notions of his best days being behind him with both feet and with stunning regularity.

His signing was quickly followed by that of the mercurial Pat Nevin from Everton, seen by Pat Healey, who at 87 can remember Dixie Dean when he was a Tranmere player, as the most entertaining Tranmere player in his recall: “Oh, he was beautiful to watch. So clever. So audacious. Wee Pat Nevin on the wing…” The Everton connection has continued, with Gary Stevens bringing experience and stability at right back until recently, Kevin Sheedy joining as first-team coach and Paul Rideout, the man who delivered the FA Cup to Everton in 1995, being there to help knock them out six years later. Rideout scored a hat-trick against Southampton in the replay this week and another former Evertonian, Stuart Barlow, completed the scoring. But it was Aldridge, with 172 goals in 293 Tranmere games, who will be remembered as the cross-town transfer of all time.

Aldridge comes from a working-class Liverpool Irish background. He came to the top level of the game comparatively late, having served his apprenticeship at South Liverpool, Newport County and Oxford United. This grounding in non-league and lower division football, along with his tough Liverpudlian upbringing, means that Aldridge takes nothing for granted and expects the same no-nonsense attitude from his players: “I won’t stand for cowardice on any level,” he says. “I was always prepared to put my foot in, put my head in, even, and I demand that from anyone in my team.”

Aldridge’s period as manager (he took over from King in 1996) has coincided with great flux at the club. Chair Peter Johnson’s ambitions in football could not be met by lowly Tranmere and he departed for an ill-fated and unprofitable relationship with Everton. In his wake, different chairs and boards of directors came and went, while the club was left in financial turmoil and its future started to dim once again. Aldridge is sanguine about the experience: “It’s been a tremendous learning curve for me. I’ve seen it all, and seen it from all sides. I’ve probably been through more in these five years than most managers experience in a lifetime. It’s not that often that a manager sees off three chairmen!”

Aldridge’s current chair wears a Chanel suit and, until two years ago, was a very successful financial lawyer specialising in investment banking in the City of London. Lorraine Rogers had an affinity with Tranmere Rovers, but saw her initial involvement as a short-term, Red Adair-style specialist mission to stabilise the ailing club: “Peter Johnson asked me if I could help. My initial reaction was no, football is not a sensible business, it doesn’t follow usual business principles and procedures. It’s too emotional and irrational. I told Peter I’d go and see if I could make the numbers work and we’d take it from there. And then Tranmere Rovers got to me. I got the bug.”

People all over the world talk of their “love” for their club, but this is what happens, and clearly it happened with Rogers. You don’t exchange vows or gold rings, but your relationship with the team you love, be that Barcelona or Bucchie Thistle, is for life.

Healey is resolute not just about Tranmere, but about the last vestiges of a Corinthian spirit still discernible in league football. “There’s still a sportsmanship here. There’s a decency. I think the stakes are too high in the Premiership now. I don’t know if I’d want to see Tranmere up there. It might spoil what we have here.”

Rogers is not so sure. “I’m ambitious. I’ve never been very good for settling for anything I always want the best. Beating Everton and Southampton only gives you a taste for how far you could take a club like Tranmere.” The day after the Everton victory, she popped into her local supermarket for a loaf of bread. To her supreme embarrassment, the busy shop came to a sudden hush as people stopped and stared, then burst into spontaneous applause.

If Tranmere continue their giant-slaying saga, Rogers might have to acquire a Gary Williams wig and tackle her grocery shopping incognito.