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Only County Visit:	Saturday 5th December 1987
Competition:	FA Cup – (Round 2)
Result:	Runcorn 0 – 1 Stockport County
Attendance:	3,102
Away Trip:	44
Away Day:	154
County Line-up	1 Chris Marples; 2 Steve Bullock; 3 Neil Bailey; 4 Les Robinson; 5 Ian Scott; 6 Bill Williams; 7 Andy Hodkinson; 8 Bob Colville; 9 Frank Worthington; 10 Asa Hartford; 11 Alan Birch
Scorer:	Bob Colville
Manager:	Asa Hartford
County Visits:	1

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THE GREAT ENTERTAINER ON THE BANKS OF THE MERSEY

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Amongst them a couple to each of the Old Show Ground and the Racecourse.  It was becoming a familiar path around the depths of the Football League. Murphy had gone and the magic he had shown in rescuing County from the drop the previous season was being reproduced over at Sincil Bank as they looked for an immediate return from the Conference.  He’d certainly seen something in the players he had at EP as the summer saw him persuading Trevor Matthewson; Phil Brown; Dave Mossman; and Mark Sertori to join him.  He didn’t stop there, later coming back for Clive Evans.

Asa Hartford had replaced Murphy in the EP hot-seat and had to effectively replace half of the team.  He had his own experience at the highest level to contribute on the field and brought in Steve Bullock, (from Oldham) and an inspired signing of Bill Williams. 

He came from Rochdale and only played part-time, preferring the financial certainty of a day-job in his decorating business. But he was more than a good footballer, and eventually moved to Manchester City for what was reported as £50,000 only to return a matter of weeks later, on a free, with but a single appearance under his belt at Maine Road.  He ended up with 260 appearances for County with one them being the Autoglass final against Port Vale in 1993. County wore a specially designed shirt for that game, the only occasion they used it. 

On my cricket travels later that summer I saw Williams at Littleborough, who were playing my beloved Ashton.  He was proudly sporting the self same shirt that afternoon!! There were other arrivals shortly after the start of the season as Hartford looked to bolster his team.  Bob Colville arrived from Bury and was more than useful up front, but the jewel in the crown first appeared in a home game against Colchester at the end of November.

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The trip to Runcorn in the FA Cup came after County had finally beaten the Telford hoodoo.  After exiting to them twice in the previous 4 years they were drawn down at the Bucks Head in mid November 1987, and the old fears about another ignominious exit resurfaced.  We grabbed a draw down there and three days later won 2-0, thanks to strikes from Colville and an Andy Hodkinson penalty.  The draw gave us another banana-skin.  Runcorn were in the Conference at the time, and were pretty highly regarded at that level.  They had been promoted to the Conference, (the known as the Alliance Premier League), in 1981 and in their first ten seasons finished in the top eight on nine occasions, added to which they reached the Trophy final three times.  It certainly promised to be a difficult afternoon.

The game came a week after the Colchester match.  It had seen the County debut of one of the most entertaining, and certainly skilful, players I have ever had the privilege to witness.  By the time he pitched up at Edgeley he had played 738 games in the Football League scoring 228 times.  His (disgracefully) short England career amounted to 8 games with 2 goals.  But he was now in his 40^th year.  Could he still do it?

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Frank Worthington, (for it is he), could certainly still do it.  But then again he always could.  A footballer supreme in terms of skills and entertainment, he also came with a huge personality.  Limitations of space here don’t permit the many thousands of words which are really needed to describe what he brought to the game, and also what he did off it.  Suffice it to say that he had an impressive scoring record ,, on and off the pitch.  But it was the personality as well, and in his autobiography he bemoans the lack of characters in the game these days.

To quote him “There just don’t seem to be the characters about today. In my day there were big personalities at every club. I think back to people like Tony Currie, Alan Birchenall, Rodney Marsh, Mike Summerbee and Alan Hudson. The list is endless. I think there is too much money in the game now as well. I know it’s a short career but the superstars are greedy,”. 

He’s spot on there – take the names he mentioned – great footballers with a huge persona.  Yet between them they managed just 32 caps for England.  There’s something wrong with that.  Maybe managers don’t like the maverick individualists, but there is not a single reason why they shouldn’t have been the mainstays of the national team for years.  It’s even worse now where the ability to conform to a mechanical style of play seems to be a pre-requisite, and where England caps are handed out like those plastic toys from cornflake packets.

He only spent 5 months at County, playing 20 games and scoring eight times, but in 55 years of watching he has been the greatest entertainer.  Some may argue about Best, and of course it’s all subjective, but he only played the three games.  And no travelling under the deal done with him.  With Worthington I had not only had the privilege of seeing him at Edgeley but also places like Hereford.  It’s a fair bet the speccies at Edgar Street felt privileged as well.

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Canal Street, Runcorn, was his second appearance.  It was a place I’d been to a couple of times before, when in search of a game on a Monday evening.  Stood on the banks of the Mersey close to where the Manchester Ship Canal joins it, there was a panoramic view from the end the County faithful were stationed.  In the distance there were cooling station towers across the estuary and much more impressively the Runcorn Bridge.  Not that there was much to be seen that day – the game was played in a mist swirling in from the river, and as the night closed in the far goal was almost lost from sight.  At the far end was a reasonable bit of terrace for a non-league ground, behind which stood, if I remember correctly a social club, with a seating area to the right from my view. 

It wasn’t the sort of ground that we were used to, and undoubtedly was somewhat of a unique experience for Worthington.  But these sort of arenas were to become the norm 24 years later.  The game itself was a cagey affair and the record books show that it was settled by a single goal, as Bob Colville struck pretty late on.

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It provided an event rarer than hen’s teeth in those days – a 3^rd Round appearance – the first for 9 years, since defeat in the much postponed game at Wrexham mentioned in Away Trip 32, and only the second for 17 years which saw us go down to Hull after a replay.  The draw occasioned much excitement when we were presented with a home tie against Leyton, and the optimistic, or more accurately the dreamers, started talking about being in the 4^th Round. 

It would have been the first time since 1965 when the team bottom of the whole League went to the mighty Liverpool and earned a sensational draw which from the accounts of those who were there, (and sadly at the age of 9 I wasn’t allowed to be among them), could have been a win.  County went down in the replay at a packed EP with over 24,000 watching.  Now that would have been an experience … if I’d got parental permission to go!!  The tie against Leyton came early in the New Year and the dreams were dashed.

It was the first County visit to Canal Street, and it turned out to be the last.  It is no more.  From being a power in non-league Runcorn went on a downward spiral.  The main stand was gutted by fire and the roof blew off another stand.  The Linnets fortunes on the field matched those off it, and in May 2001 the last ever match was played at Canal Street.  It is now the Linnets Park housing estate.

April 2020

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VISITS

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Day	Date	Competition	Tier / Round	Opponents	Res	F	A	Crowd	Away Day
Sat	05/12/87	FA Cup	Round 2	Runcorn	W	1	0	3,102	154

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ON MY JOURNEY WITH COUNTY AROUND 180 GROUNDS

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Previously – MOLINEUX Next stop – SEAMER ROAD