Enjoy our latest Take 5 as our match reporter and Tweetmeister Gareth Evans offers up a neat summary of our play off exploits over the years, as we enter play off campaign number 6.
Not only County’s season, but also this column, now getting an extended lease of life, then?
Well – as historical luck would have it – the Hatters have been involved in a neat quintet of previous play-off shake-ups. So, ahead of facing Chorley on Wednesday (and, hopefully, further opponents on the two Sundays following), let us ‘Take Five’ to remember the good, the bad and the ugly…
- 1. Division Four (finished fourth), 1990: Semi-final v Chesterfield.
County’s first full season under Danny Bergara’s management can be viewed as one that heralded a real change for the better – which properly materialised later in the 1990s. But the club’s initial play-off experience was decidedly one to forget, as a 4-0 thumping away at Chesterfield was followed, three days later, by a 2-0 reverse at Edgeley Park. Calvin Plummer was the player to… erm, sink County with four of those six goals for the ‘Spireites’ over two legs of a tie that the Hatters, immediately following victory at Halifax on the season-proper’s final day, had jubilantly thought they would avoid. Unfortunately, back in those olden times before live social media updates, rumours among the crowd on The Shay pitch that automatic-promotion rivals Southend had failed to beat Peterborough turned out to be false ones.
- 2. Division Three (finished fifth), 1992: Semi-final v Stoke City; Final v Peterborough United.
A year after going up from Division Four automatically, the Hatters proved themselves almost ‘too sexy for the Third’. And this time around, they made a far better fist of things at the play-off semi-final stage than the team of two years earlier had done against Chesterfield. Stoke captain Carl Beeston, by contrast, made rather an unsavoury fist of things in the first leg – earning a red card after an altercation with a certain Jim Gannon, before watching from the Edgeley Park sidelines as Peter Ward’s free-kick gave County a one-goal lead to take to the old Victoria Ground. And there one almost immediately became two, as Chris Beaumont’s first-minute strike rendered a late goal by Mark Stein little more than a (S)toke-n consolation for the ‘Potters’.
In the final at Wembley (as was), future Hatter Ken Charlery’s early second-half header against the County crossbar was controversially adjudged by Referee Martin Bodenham to have crossed the line for Peterborough. And although Kevin Francis, who had already had an effort disallowed, got County back on terms three minutes from the end, the ‘Posh’ countered in the dying stages – with Charlery’s second goal gaining his side a back-to-back promotion, while denying the Hatters one.
- 3. (New) Division Two (finished sixth), 1993: Semi-final v Port Vale.
County bounced back from the last-minute heartbreak of 1992 to reach the play-offs again in the re-named third tier 12 months later. And having played Stoke three times over six days the previous season – with their Wembley meeting in the Autoglass Final (won 1-0 by the Potters) following hot on the heels of the play-off matches – the Hatters, rather remarkably, got to do likewise with the other Potteries club, Port Vale, at the end of 1992/93. On this occasion, however, the play-offs were first up – with a one-all draw at EP, in which Gannon converted a fifth-minute penalty, being followed by a single-goal defeat at Vale Park. The subsequent Autoglass encounter was also lost, as County’s with Stoke had been, by a one-goal margin – although a stirring performance by the Twelfth Man representatives did much to inspire a fightback from two down, and a Francis consolation-header, against ‘Vale’.
- 4. (New) Division Two (finished fourth), 1994: Semi-final v York City; Final v Burnley.
The Hatters completed a hat-trick of successive third-tier play-off appearances in 1994. Just one player troubled the scorers over 180 minutes of County’s semi-final against York – with a late Beaumont goal at EP taking his side to a second final in two years, after goalkeeper John Keeley had performed heroics in the first leg to keep the ‘Minstermen’ at bay during a rainy Sunday afternoon at Bootham Crescent.
And so to the final against Burnley – which is better best forgotten, despite Beaumont’s diving header that gave County the lead inside two minutes. Within another 11, the Hatters – having completed their campaign with the best disciplinary record in the Second Division – were reduced to ten men following Michael Wallace’s dismissal by referee David Elleray; a quarter of an hour after that, Burnley equalised; Beaumont saw red around the hour-mark; and 25 minutes from time, a deflected goal against the nine remaining Hatters saw the ‘Clarets’ over the line, and County left with the unwanted record of being the first team to have two players sent off at the ‘old’ Wembley.
5. League Two (finished fourth), 2008: Semi-final V Wycombe Wanderers; Final V Rochdale.
So far, then, some ‘bad’ and, in terms of the Burnley debacle, more than a touch of ‘ugly’. Not, ultimately, a shedload of ‘good’, and, when Autoglass Finals are factored in, four Wembley defeats.
It turned out that what the Hatters needed was a 14-year break from end-of-season eliminators and the replacement of England’s national stadium – as they made it fifth time lucky in terms of both play-off and Wembley appearances, following their top-four finish, with Gannon now as manager, in the Football League’s basement tier.
County fell behind in the first half of the semi-final on a scorching afternoon at Wycombe, before levelling thanks to Stephen Gleeson’s thunderbolt of a 25-yard volley eight minutes from time. And seven minutes into the second leg, Liam Dickinson settled nerves by running with the ball from the EP halfway-line to slot home the only goal of the game.
Dickinson was on target for the final, too – scoring what turned out to be the winner, by the odd goal in five, at the ‘new’ Wembley in the rebuilt venue’s first full season. Opponents Rochdale, celebrating their centenary, went ahead, before a Nathan Stanton own goal, an Anthony Pilkington header and then Dickinson put the Hatters in control – notwithstanding a nervy finish prompted by a second for ‘Dale’ 13 minutes from time – and up into League One.
