Thanks to large screens being installed at Anfield to relay the action from Goodison Park, a record-breaking 105,000 fans watched Everton triumph against Liverpool in an historic FA Cup fifth round tie some 55 years ago today.
On March 11, 1967, Pathe News produced a short film on how the experiment by ABC Television of relaying the live footage between the two grounds either side of Stanley Park was deemed a success.
Their engineers fought against gales of 45 miles per hour to erect eight 30ft by 40ft screens around Anfield, costing £500 each, with tickets for a 40,149 crowd at the Reds home selling out within 36 hours of going on sale.
Other than one of the screens being lifted for a few seconds by a gust of wind, the action from Goodison, where 64,851, including Howard Kendall who had joined the Blues the previous day, watched Alan Ball net the winner on the stroke of half-time, was viewed clearly, even if the outcome did not please Kopites.
One well-told tale from the day surrounds celebrity Liverpool fan Jimmy Tarbuck trudging out of Anfield after the full-time whistle with his usual gap-toothed grin wiped off his face by the result, only to be told by a fellow comedian: “Don’t worry Jimmy – it’s only a film!”
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The ECHO reported on how, after some initial teething problems, those watching at Anfield were given quite a show, declaring: “The cameras came on shortly after 6:30pm (it was a 7pm kick-off) and there was some good-humoured cheers when the picture proved extremely unreliable.
“However, things soon settled down to normal and the crowd were entertained by a brief film of last year’s FA Cup final ( Everton’s 3-2 comeback victory over Sheffield Wednesday after trailing 2-0).
“The cheers which greeted Everton’s three goals showed that plenty of their supporters had strayed across the park but the loudest applause of all was for the now famous incident when two supporters were removed by policemen (including pitch invader Eddie Cavanagh’s memorable removal of his jacket before being rugby tackled to the ground by an officer).
“This was followed up by a film of Liverpool’s Wembley triumph of 1965 (winning the FA Cup for the first time, beating Leeds United 2-1) which was naturally much to the liking of the crowd.”
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As often happens with so much at stake in these matches, the game itself failed to match the billing of the occasion with the winds that had impacted on Anfield’s big screens also hampering the football being played at Goodison.
The ECHO's Michael Charters was damning about the quality both on show that evening and in Merseyside Derbies in general.
He remarked: “I suppose it was too much to expect that Saturday night’s Cup ‘Derby’ would produce the epic everyone had hoped, the soccer spectacular everyone wanted to see.
“The pre-game ballyhoo blinded us all to the fact that we haven’t seen a really top-class Derby for years and the latest clash, with tension built up to an unprecedented pitch, was very much in the usual run.
“The electric atmosphere, the packed Goodison Park, the TV relay to Anfield, all made it one of the great occasions in Merseyside sporting history, but the football content was so inadequate that I felt sorry for the thousands of people who had struggled so hard to get a ticket, struggled through the traffic to get there, and had to watch a game ruined by a gale and the inability of both teams to sustain any sort of smooth attacking play.
“The reaction of the 64,000 crowd was the best possible illustration of what they thought of it.
“Apart from the tremendous din at the start and the end, the only time they were able to let themselves go was when Alan Ball, with superb opportunism, scored the goal that put Everton through to the quarter-finals.”
Although Charters scolded “even that developed from a mistake” as Liverpool’s Gordon Milne misjudged the pace of a back pass to his goalkeeper Tommy Lawrence, he conceded that the way Ball, who had been snapped up by the Blues in the aftermath of their 1-0 defeat to Liverpool, also at Goodison Park, in the Charity Shield the previous August, “cleverly hooked it past his chin into the net” was “a brilliantly-taken goal.”
Everton would lose their quarter-final at Nottingham Forest 3-2 but almost half a century later the aforementioned Lawrence, unlike Tarbuck, would be able to look back on this game with a smile when asked by a BBC reporter, unaware of his identity, whether he remembered it, replying: “I played in it.”
