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HISTORY OF SAINTS
Rich Harper a.k.a. Rick Throbber is co-founder of Cardiff Saints. He contributes this unofficial history of Saints.
Bird's-eye view of St Mary's Stadium
Southampton Football Club was founded in 1885, and was put together by members of St Mary's Church Young Men's Association, and was originally known as Southampton Saint Mary's hence the club's famous nickname, "The Saints". It was not a "gay" thing despite what you think.
The club was started in order to play in the Sunday Parks Local Pub league, but were severely hampered by the fact that no one actually played football for their local pubs in Sunday leagues, so that buggered that idea.
Saints didn't actually move to the Dell until 1898, but at this time were one of the most successful Southern clubs going. In the six-year period after the move, they finished runners-up in the FA Cup Final twice, losing to Bury and Sheffield United, but they were Champions of the Southern League no less than 3 times up to 1904.
Saints went on to join the Football League in 1920, starting in Division 3, and gaining promotion to Division 2 the same year.
Saints stayed in this division for 31 years though during the war, a bomb landed on the pitch at The Dell and home games were played for a time at (gulp) Fratton Park, land of the dead.
The season of 1953 saw Saints relegated back into Division 3 where they stayed until 1960, when they got back into Division 2 again, and under the guidance of Ted Bates, Saints gained promotion into the old First Division in 1966.
Saints and Ted stayed in the First Division for 7 years, during which time they became famous for two players, Ron Davies the Welsh international, and Terry Paine, of the huge sideburns.
As Ted Bates came up for retirement, the club looked around for a successor to his throne, and they settled on former Guardsman Lawrie Mcmenemy, from Grimsby Town. When he took over, Saints were fifth in the league, but they took a dramatic turn in form and ended up having to win their last match of the season, away to Everton, which they won 3:1, but results elsewhere condemned them to a short stay back in Division 2 again.
Rumours were abounding about Lawrie and Saints legend Terry Paine not getting along and it was not long before Paine moved on to Hereford United. Many believed that Saints would gain automatic promotion, but it was a couple of years before a dull draw at the Dell against Tottenham gained promotion once more.
In between, came Saints' crowning moment - the legendary 1:0 defeat of Manchester United in the 1976 FA Cup Final, when a through pass by Jim McCalliog put Bobby Stokes through and his shot beat Alex Stepney to stun United fans into absolute silence. McMenemy had introduced the policy of bringing back old wise heads to mix in with youth, and it paid rich dividends and was the start of a purple patch in Saints history that saw a long procession of legendary stars come and play on the South Coast. That FA Cup side included Peter Rodrigues, Jim McCalliog and ex-Chelsea idol Peter Osgood.
In 1979 Saints returned to Wembley where they took on Brian Clough's Nottingham Forest in the League Cup Final, where they lost 3:2.
McMenemy pulled off one of the biggest coups in the football world when he brought in ex-Liverpool favourite, Kevin Keegan from Hamburg. He joined players like Alan Ball, Peter Shilton, Joe Jordan and Ted MacDougall amongst many other big-name players who played for Saints under McMenemy.
Saints finished runners-up to Liverpool in 1983/4 after topping the table at one stage, but the Merseyside club had games in hand and eventually overtook Saints, who qualified for Europe in two successive seasons.
In 1985 Saints lost out in the FA Cup semi-final to Everton after a breathtaking display by Neville Southall in the Everton goal, and the following year they lost out to Merseyside again as Liverpool won over two legs in the League Cup semi-final. McMenemy left Saints and was replaced by ex-player Chris Nicholl, who achieved marginal success as the club started to fall into a decline.
The club's youth policy was the envy of many other clubs and brought a long line of illustrious youngsters to many honours, sadly most of them moved on to other clubs to gain them though. The Wallace brothers, Alan Shearer and Matthew Le Tissier were products of Saints' youth system.
Nicholl was sacked for not emulating the success of Lawrie McMenemy and was replaced by ex-Reading manager, Ian Branfoot, who had achieved nominal success at the Berkshire club, which was famous for producing Kerry Dixon, and prolific scorer Trevor Senior. His style of football owed more to hoof and hope than style, and over the next couple of years our quality players were sold to make way for mediocrity. Who can forget the talents of Terry Hurlock, the Glasgow Rangers hardman, who may have lacked class and style, but more than made up for it in violence.
As Saints began to go into freefall, the fans deserted the club in droves, and a vicious hate campaign was waged against the Geordie Branfoot, who eventually resigned after crowd levels reached record lows and fears for his family's safety.
Ex-England legend Alan Ball returned once again as manager, as Matthew Le Tissier flourished under his managership, but once again a long hard struggle for survival ensued. Saints avoided relegation, and somehow finished 10th, their highest position for many years and their highest until 2 seasons ago when they finished 8th, in the Premiership as the League is now known.
During the close season, Francis Lee took over the reins at Manchester City who asked Saints for permission to speak with his mate Ball with a view to the squeaky-voiced shorty taking over at Maine Road. Rumours of a falling out between Ball and McMenemy, who was Saints Director of Football, came to light and Ball, supposedly flabbergasted by the Saints Board's reaction, decided to leave the club.
He was replaced by former Youth Manager Dave Merrington, who managed the club for one year, and another season of struggle it was too. Notable in fact for a 3:1 win over Manchester United at The Dell and a Manager Of The Month award for Merrington meant that Saints could perhaps look forward to some stability in the next season, but....
Things turned sour for long-time club servant Merrington as his wife was taken seriously ill with a brain tumour, and whilst she was recuperating, the club sacked him after 20 odd years at the club in various capacities. Once again rumours abounded of McMenemy interfering in team matters, but Lawrie brought in Graeme Souness, in another notable coup. Souness had a reputation as a hardman on the field and achieved great success as manager of Glasgow Rangers after he packed in playing. Headhunted by Liverpool, he was unable to repeat the great success he achieved at Ibrox. Eventually resigning, he did manage to win the FA Cup with the Anfield club.
Souness had a reputation of being a big spender, so it was interesting to see how things would go when the purse strings were pulled tight, as successive increases in safety measures reduced the Dell capacity to 15,241, and with that, the club's spending power declined. He brought in Israeli international Eyal Berkovic, and Norwegian players Egil Ostenstad and Claus Lundekvam, before breaking the club's transfer record as Ulrich Van Gobbel joined from Galatasaray, Souness' previous club.
That season Saints hammered Manchester United 6:3 with 3 goals from Ostenstad to kickstart his Premiership career. Berkovic in midfield was the provider of some devastating passing and creativity, which the club still lacks since he moved on. Unfortunately the orgasmic highs of that win were followed by the utter despair of a 7:1 hammering the following week at the hands of Everton.
Saints once again survived another season of struggle, and only avoided relegation on the last day of the season with a 1:0 defeat by Aston Villa, after a Richard Dryden own goal gave Villa the lead.
During this period Saints' board decided the time was right to float on the stock market, and a search was carried out for a company which was already floated with which Saints could merge in order to gain the stock market listing which would have taken 2 years otherwise. Secure Retirement and Rupert Lowe were that company, and in a reverse takeover Southampton and Secure Retirement became Southampton Leisure Holdings and Guy Askham, a local Southampton luminary, stood down as chairman in order for Rupert Lowe to take the helm.
Souness and McMenemy had a meeting with Lowe with a view to procuring cash with which to strengthen the team, and when he didn't get the amount he wanted, Souness resigned, leaving the club in turmoil once again. In the wake of Souness' resignation, fans in a local phone-in accused Lawrie McMenemy of interfering once again, accusations which hurt Lawrie so much that he also resigned.
Fans bombarded Lowe with abuse as he promised to "get the right man" and that man was the Stockport County manager Dave Jones who had come to the Dell with Stockport in the quarter-finals of the League Cup and beat Saints 2:1, then narrowly lost out to Middlesbrough in the semi-finals, although they beat them away too.
Jones brought in Paul Jones, the Stockport keeper and Lee Todd, and they joined new boy Kevin Davies, Souness' parting shot, a £750,000 buy from Chesterfield.
1 win in 9 games left Saints rooted to the bottom of the table and Jones was forced to get the old chequebook out and he brought in Coventry City's ex-England man Kevin Richardson, along with the equine Carlton Palmer and ex-Owls striker David Hirst to bolster the front line. This was followed later in the season by the purchase of John Beresford from Newcastle who made a big impact with Saints fans.
Under Jones Saints finished 12th, with notable wins against Manchester United and Chelsea at the Dell and away to Liverpool. Jones was awarded the Manager's Manager award for achieving this in his first season on a shoestring.
Disaster struck Dave Jones when false allegations were made about him sexually abusing boys at a home when he was a social worker, and Saints gave him gardening leave to "prepare his case". In return he gave Rupert Lowe a pearler of a shiner, though Lowe has always maintained he got it playing hockey. Yeah right.
So the scene was set and ex-England manager Glenn Hoddle, the Messiah himself was set for a return to football as he took over the reins at Southampton. Hoddle's only notable success in the transfer market was Tahar El Khalej, whom he bought for a fiver from Benfica. His other notable signings were, er, Imants Bleidelis (two hearts to his Latvian mates, too crap to the rest of us), Uwe "goal machine" Rosler and Mark "where's the treatment room" Draper.
Hoddle managed to guide Saints to 8th in the league as they prepared for the momentous move to St Mary's from the Dell. He then buggered off to South Africa for a week, where it just so happened that Spurs' Chairman Daniel Levy was too. Hoddle then buggered off to North London to his bigger club, his boyhood dream, his spiritual home, where his prowess in the transfer market continued unabated.
Hoddle left one legacy at Southampton, and that was to change the mindset from survival being an achievement to survival not being good enough.
Stuart Gray was appointed as caretaker manager, and then given the job full time after a final run-in to the last games at the Dell which saw a fantastic 3:2 win over Arsenal. The last ever league goal at the Dell was scored in the final minute by Matt Le Tissier, a moment that sent streams of tears running down the faces of the fans. You couldn't have scripted that. Well, actually, I suppose you could.
The last ever goal at the Dell was scored by Uwe Rosler in a friendly against Brighton. Rosler had finally found his level.
It was Gray who was in charge when the first match was played at the state-of-the-art stadium that is St Mary's. That was a 4:3 defeat by Spanish La Liga side Espanyol. (They couldn't afford Barcelona.)
Saints' record transfer fee was smashed by Stuart Gray as he signed Rory Delap from Derby County for £4 million. He then spent £3.25 million on one Agustin Delgado, a striker from Ecuador. When I say striker, I mean he spends most of his time on strike. Technically he was signed by his successor, but the deal was Gray's. He has scored 2 goals though, not a bad return at over £1.5 million per goal in 2 seasons. At least we signed Rosler for nothing.
Gray's time as manager was ill-fated and short-lived. It was a shambles and after 9 games he was sacked and replaced by ex-Coventry City manager, Gordon Strachan. Strachan was a legendary figure in the midfields of some of the best British club sides of the 80's - Aberdeen, Manchester United and Leeds United.
Strachan quickly realised that his charges were a bunch of fat bastards and set about a harsh training routine to make them fitter. The results were tremendous. Saints became difficult to beat.
From relegation certainties under Gray, Saints prospered under Strachan and in his second season, they began a cup run that culminated in an FA Cup Final appearance for the first time in 27 years. Saints met Arsenal, but sadly lost 1:0. Though the team was depleted by injuries, many feel that a 6:1 thrashing by Arsenal at Highbury just a week or so before the final was the psychological blow that lost the final. Saints didn't play well until the last 10 minutes when they were denied an equaliser by a fantastic save by Seaman from Ormerod's turn and shot, then had a Beattie header cleared off the line by Ashley Cole. The ref was a wanker too which didn't help. Saints had a goal disallowed for offside in the first half.
Saints were rewarded for their efforts by winning a place in the UEFA Cup, but sadly, their first opponents were Steaua Bucharest, a team with a good pedigree in European competition. Saints drew 1:1 in the home leg after conceding a disastrous away goal and though they peppered the Bucharest goal, they were unable to score an away goal themselves and went out at the first hurdle.
Strachan then decided he was to quit the team at the end of the season, but for whatever reason, he left early and the spectre of Glenn Hoddle loomed large to replace him. He said he had unfinished business. The fans said "bollocks have you" and didn't want him. Rupert Lowe decided he didn't want to be dictated to and would make the right choice for the club as the anti-Hoddle protests neared hysterical proportions.
Lowe's decision was made for him when Hoddle decided he didn't have the full support of the board (or the fans you idiot!) and he withdrew his application. The job was given to Paul Sturrock who had guided Plymouth Argyle from the depths of despair in Division 3, to the top spot in Division 2.
Sturrock is a risk, he has had a few matches to whet his appetite in the Premier League and notched up notable wins against Liverpool and Spurs. We now await with baited breath his dealings in the transfer market and his ability to take Saints from where Strachan left off to a higher level.
The future should be bright for Southampton, as the youth policy which was abandoned by the club in the 80's has been reintroduced in the Acadamy of Excellence. Young players like Wayne Bridge came through the academy, and there is an array of exciting young talented players coming through the ranks. Two young Frenchmen have acquitted themselves with distinction, Yoann Folly in midfield and Leandre Griffit in attack with 2 goals in 4 appearances thus far.
The move to St Mary's has given the club financial stability and with virtually every match selling out, the club has grown much stronger under the guidance of Chairman Rupert Lowe and MD Andrew Cowen.
Rick Throbber
1st July 2004
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