2004 – Let There Be Light
Moving to Altcar Road, the first game under our floodlights also brought our biggest defeat at that ground
Formby v Southport, Liverpool Senior Cup, 6 January 2004
6 Janury 2004 – Formby run out under their own floodlights for the first time.
A chilly January night in 2004 was a multiple landmark at Altcar Road. It was Formby FC’s first ever home game under floodlights, the highest attendance they would get in eleven seasons at the ground – and also the heaviest defeat.
The move to Altcar Road brought great optimism to Formby FC. The club’s home of over 80 years, Brows Lane, had served them well. At the end of The Village, the fact that it was easy to walk to meant people of all ages came to games.
For decades there had been crowds in the mid to high hundreds but as decent telly and increased mobility altered the concept of Saturday afternoons, attendances at non-league grounds dwindled. Being surrounded by houses made permission for floodlights hard to come by.
This, in turn, meant midweek cup games could never be played at home during the winter months, effectively barring the Squirrels from several competitions including, since 1994, the Liverpool Senior Cup.
Finally, at the turn of the century, Formby got the swimming pool it had long desired – to be built at Brows Lane. The Squirrels moved to Altcar Road on the far side of the bypass behind the Woodwards site.
Formby were in the lower division of the North West Counties Football League. They had won the league cup in 2001, and finished 2001-02 5th in the table, their best showing for a decade. But the new Altcar Road ground did not meet league standards in time for the 2002-03 and so the club was expelled, returning to the Liverpool County Combination that they had graduated from in 1968.
Over the year Formby had got Altcar Road in shape and were readmitted to the NWCFL for 2003-04. They finished 3rd and were promoted to the First Division. But despite the season’s league success, there was a cup tie that gave them the as big a spanking as they would ever get in their 263 games on the Altcar Road turf.
Part of the reason that the FA Cup, and cup football in general, occupies a special place in our hearts is because of the opportunities for giant killing. Everyone enjoys seeing an underdog do well and arrogance taken down a peg or two, but everyone also seeing enjoys watching masters given free rein to express their talent. In an age of increasingly scripted, laboured and polished entertainment, football offers genuine unpredictability. As the whistle blows you simply don’t know what will happen in the next ninety minutes, or even the next thirty seconds. The heady mix of hope and speculation makes our minds fizz with possibilities.
The crowd at Altcar Road for Formby v Southport, 6 January 2004
Nowhere is this mismatch of standards greater than the Liverpool Senior Cup, where lower division sides from the NWCFL mix not only with Northern Premier League sides like Marine and Skelmersdale United but with Liverpool and Everton. The two giants of Merseyside football have usually sent their youth or reserve sides, but even this means that the likes of Emiliano Insua turned out for the Reds at Brows Lane in 2009. With only three rounds before the final, it is a competition where anyone is justified in asking about the price of a case of Brasso.
With their new floodlights installed and ready for action, after an eight year absence from the competition, Formby were back in the Liverpool Senior Cup with a first round home tie against their neighbours Southport.
The Sandgrounders had just been relegated from the Conference, but were unarguably one of the Northern Premier League’s strongest sides when they came to Altcar Road on 6 January 2004. They brought a huge following with them and the 604 people who filed through the gate were the largest crowd that would ever attend an Altcar Road match.
The floodlights were regarded as a real step up for the club – commemorative enamel badges were on sale – and they were ceremonially switched on by local hero David Unsworth who was nearing the end of his 13 years with the then-holders of the Senior Cup, Everton.
Formby managers Peter Henerty and Mike Scott – who’d been on opposing sides as players in the 1985 Formby v Marine Senior Cup final – had started the year at the top of the table and so must have found it hard not to have felt a cheeky twinkle of confidence coming into the game. If they did, it was misplaced. Southport manager Liam Watson fielded his full strength first team side and it showed from the moment the whistle blew.
The Sandgrounders Man of the Match, Lee Ashcroft, had commanded transfer fees in excess of £2m in his career, whereas the Squirrels paid to play. However Formby never disgraced themselves in the game, but were undone by a whirlwind Southport side who scored four of their goals in the opening twenty minutes of the game and led 5-1 at the break.
Southport manager Liam Watson stands between Formby Managers Mike Scott and Peter Henerty, 6 January 2004
Carl Baker put the visitors into a seventh minute lead, but Formby responded in kind when Terry McDonald headed a Neal Smith cross in to equalise just four minutes later.
The level terms lasted a mere two minutes before Baker once again put Southport ahead after his shot was deflected in. Three minutes afterwards he sent in a cross from the right that Steve Daly fired home. Another two minutes passed and, just eighteen minutes into the game, Baker completed his hat trick with a shot that went in off the post to put the Sandgrounders 4-1 up. It must have already seemed like game over.
Formby’s heads didn’t drop, indeed Duncan Atkinson used his to head a shot but saw it crash off the Southport post. Southport’s fifth goal came with just five minutes of the half remaining when Daly outjumped the Formby defence to power home a header for his second goal of the game.
The Squirrels came out fighting and were a match for their opponents in the opening twenty minutes of the second half. However their defence gave way on 65 minutes when Daly completed the second hat-trick of the game after Ashcroft’s initial shot was parried into the striker’s path. Ashcroft topped his own fine display with a goal five minutes later when he scored with a spectacular drive that left Philips with no chance. Twenty minutes later the whistle blew to seal it 7-1.
Formby would never suffer a greater defeat at Altcar Road (though Trafford equalled it with a 6-0 victory in October 2007). Nobody else would put seven goals past them there, not even if you count games that went to penalties.
It was a landmark defeat but it wasn’t a case of being at the bottom where the only way is up. It had been a far from crushing evening. Nobody ever expected Formby to beat such mighty opposition from three divisions above, and a glamour tie with a huge crowd gave a great sense of occasion which was augmented by a tangible turnaround. They had got their floodlights and a future of midweek matches was theirs, a vital requirement for any club with ambition to scale the pyramid.
The previous year they’d rejoined the FA Vase, and the following year they would compete in the FA Cup again for the first time in over a decade. The exile from major cup competitions was over. With the league cup still warm from their hands in 2001, they pushed on up, won promotion and, for the first time in 16 years, began the next season in the top division of the North West Counties League.
