EVERTON 2 CITY 2
FA Cup 6th Round
7th March 1981
Attendance 52,791
Scorers
City Gow(45), Power(84)
Everton Eastoe(42), Ross(48 pen)
Ref Peter Willis
City Corrigan, Ranson, Caton, McDonald, Reid, Tueart, Power, Gow, MacKenzie, Hutchison, Reeves – sub Henry(unused)
Everton McDonagh, Gidman, Ratcliffe, Wright, Lyons, McMahon, Ross, Eastoe, Varadi, Hartford, O’Keefe – sub Stanley(75)
EASTOE PUTS EVERTON 1-0 UP
GERRY GOW GRABS AN EQUALISER JUST BEFORE HALF-TIME
EVERTON’S IMRE VARADI IS BROUGHT DOWN IN THE BOX AND TREVOR ROSS CONVERTS THE PENALTY TO PUT EVERTON BACK INTO THE LEAD
PAUL POWER’S EQUALISER TAKES THE GAME TO A REPLAY
An incident packed cup tie on a A Goodison gluepot saw Everton twice surrender a lead in what amounted to the beginning of the end for manager Gordon Lee.
The Blues struggled to find their pattern as a crowd of over 52,000 saw Lee’s men falter in their bid to win a place in the last four and Paul Powers late leveller gave City a second bite of the cherry. To make matters worse, a young Kevin Ratcliffe was given his marching orders by referee Peter Willis in the closing minutes following a confrontation with Tommy Hutchison. City squandered a couple of good opportunities before Peter Eastoe put Everton in front with their first really well engineered attack of the game three minutes before the break. But City went into the interval on level terms after Gerry Gow produced an opportunist equaliser.
Everton regained their lead five minutes into the second period when Trevor Ross scored from the penalty spot, a week after missing from the spot during the Blues’ 3-2 league win at Crystal Palace. it was then that Everton should have booked their passage into the semi-finals but missed two good chances to stretch their lead. Imre Varadi stumbled and fired wide of an open goal alter latching on to a poor back pass and rounding Joe Corrigan and then Eastoe narrowly failed to score after being teed up by a clever header from Eamonn O’Keefe.
City failed to give up the ghost and grabbed an equaliser five minutes from time with Power finding a beautiful finish after good approach play by Steve Mackenzie and Kevin Reeves.
EXTRACT FROM ‘CLASSIC ENCOUNTER’ IN THE EVERTON PROGRAMME 30TH SEPTEMBER 2006
STATS FROM THE MATCH FROM THE CITY REPLAY PROGRAMME
Got into the street end at 3/4 time…l remember the city equaliser like it was yesterday…biggest away support lve seen at goodison (other than a derby) the city fans went nuts…l remember a young Kevin Radcliffe losing the plot in the corner flag head butting tommy Hutchinson…then we got stuffed on the replay…we had a good chance to win the cup that year…but as usual everton fluffed their lines
I was in the Lower Bullens near the Park End for that game. I was all of 13 years of age and the photos show really well what a frantic, intense match it was.
Being close to the away end I remember the hostility between the fans as much as the match…it was a bit more vocal than last Saturday’s Covid-dampened affair.
We weren’t great that season but I thought our name was on the Cup after knocking out Arsenal, Liverpool and Southampton – all strong sides back in 1981 – but it wasn’t to be.
City were a bit too good and experienced for us what with the likes of Tueart, Gow, Hutchinson and Paul Power in their team.
Bitter-sweet memories of yesteryear.
One of the all time great cup ties.