IN 1970, the purists received a shock to their system; football was about to be sponsored by none other than a brewery. While fans were accustomed to seeing advertising hoardings around the perimeter of stadiums, the step into brand names lending their name to competitions was still some way off. In 1970, Watney, that staple of any matchday experience in the 1960s and 1970s, emerged with a knockout tournament that boldly carried their name. The Watney Cup was launched in 1970 and featured eight teams from the Football League, two from each division. It would include the two highest scoring teams from each division that had not been promoted or qualified for European competition. The emphasis was on entertainment and fun, not quite “It’s a Knockout”, but it was supposed to be carefree, liberated and free of the shackles of defensive football.
It was a simple competition, but it also brought to English football the idea of a penalty shoot-out, the type of immediate gratification that would characterise tense occasions in the 1980s onwards. In 1970, it was a novelty and promised to add a degree of anxiety to the climax of a cup-tie. Today, this doesn’t seem especially ambitious or innovative, but it did show that somebody was thinking about ways to make football more appealing.
At the time, attendances in the Football League were quite healthy, with the top flight average 32,113 in 1969-70 and the overall average for the four divisions just under 15,000. But goals were becoming harder to come by and the average per game in the first division had dropped from just over three to 2.62 over the previous four years. There was a shift from 4-4-2 to 4-3-3 which was considered to be a more defensive formation and teams were becoming more influenced by the safety-first tactics of some mean-spirited European sides.
The media and the clubs urged the Watney Cup to be a success. Beer and football are natural partners so there was something casual and high spirited about the whole concept. In truth, these were pre-season friendlies with a bit of added spice. Hence, it wasn’t the oversized cup that caught the eye, but the fact that football was back after the summer in the form of a competitive pocket-sized knockabout. The crowds were encouraging, too, suggesting that spectators wanted games that meant something rather than pre-season friendlies with multiple substitutions and an absence of genuine physicality.
The eight teams in the first Watney Cup included Derby County and Manchester United from the first division, which must have made the organisers very relieved that the inaugural competition had a sprinkling of big stars to give greater credibility to their project. Manchester United may have been a fading force, but the holy trinity of George Best, Denis Law and Bobby Charlton were still in the team. Derby County had finished fourth in their first season back in the first division and they had the emerging talent of Brian Clough in charge. From the second division came Hull City and Sheffield United, while Fulham, the sole representatives from London, and Reading, the highest scorers among the eight in 1969-70 with 87 goals, were from the third division and Aldershot and Peterborough were standard bearers for the fourth.
The opening four games, on Saturday August 1, attracted 55,000, with both Derby and Manchester United playing away to Fulham and Reading respectively. Across the four grounds, the average increase on the home club’s gates in 1969-70 was 68%. There was, naturally, a novelty factor in pre-season cup-ties, but after the glorious 1970 World Cup there was a hunger to watch a match. There was plenty of entertainment, with 23 goals in four games, an average of 5.75 per game. The pre-match hype had promised goals and excitement and that was exactly what the fans got. At Craven Cottage, Fulham led 3-2 at half-time against Derby before losing 5-3 in extra time. “What fun and games there were all through, cheers to Watney for dreaming up their tournament,” said one newspaper.
At Elm Park, Reading, Manchester United scraped through by 3-2, with Charlton scoring twice. The watching press were quite frustrated with George Best: “He was marvellous, as usual, in possession, but irritatingly inaccurate when persuaded to part with the ball.” Aldershot hosted Sheffield United, with Tony Currie and Alan Woodward scoring two apiece in a 6-0 win for the Blades. At Peterborough, Ken Wagstaff and Chris Chilton also helped themselves to a brace as Hull won 4-0. The general consensus was that the Watney Cup had started well and had been richly entertaining.
In the following midweek, Derby hosted Sheffield United and a superb goal from John McGovern was enough to see the Rams through to the final. Manchester United were almost eliminated in 90 minutes as they trailed at Hull, but a header from Law kept them in the game. It went to extra time and then, for the first time in English football, to a penalty shoot-out. After 133 minutes of action, Alex Stepney tipped over a penalty kick by his counterpart, Ian McKechnie, and United were through to the final.
For the commercial appeal of the Watney Cup’s first year, Derby County versus Manchester United was arguably just what the brewer wanted. Derby were a team in the ascendancy, while United had been in steady decline since winning the European Cup in 1968. With one week to go before the start of the 1970-71 season, this was the ideal curtain raiser and it didn’t disappoint. United were, to quote one member of the press box, “feeble”, notably in defence. Derby scored their first goal after 20 minutes through Roy McFarland and made it 2-0 with an audacious Alan Hinton backheel on 24. Best, having an off-day, pulled a goal back for United, but by half-time it was 3-1, thanks to a soft header from Alan Durban. Finally, with 15 minutes to go, Dave Mackay added a fourth to the sound of “easy, easy” from the home supporters at the Baseball Ground.
As Dave Mackay lifted the trophy, United’s fans went on the rampage in Derby city centre. Before the game, 100 of them wrecked a hotel bar and later in the day a volley of bottles filled with mustard and ammonia resulted in 12 people being taken to hospital. In total, 47 fans were arrested. Needless to say, the newspapers made the most of the incidents, pointing to the return of football and crowd trouble with a simple, “it’s back”.
This didn’t tarnish the enthusiasm everyone seemed to have for the Watney Cup, but the competition lasted just four seasons. Colchester enjoyed their triumph in 1971, beating West Bromwich Albion, and subsequently, Bristol Rovers and Stoke City won the cup in 1972 and 1973 respectively.
It was, however, the shape of things to come although real commercialisation didn’t truly gather momentum until the 1980s. Watney is a name from brewing’s past in many ways, a victim of greater competition and a more diverse industry. The infamous Watney’s Red Barrel, a much-maligned beer, disappeared in the late 1970s as the campaign for real ale (CAMRA) became more popular and active.
But Watney deserve credit for dipping football’s toes into the occasionally murky world of corporate influence. The door was well and truly opened and sponsorship is now a vital part of the game. Today, with cigarettes no longer permitted as major sponsors, the gambling sector has become persona non grata, although the rise of nation states as owners and sponsors is the new battle in town. Little did we know it at the time, but the Watney Cup created a positive story for sponsorship and football.
GAME OF THE PEOPLE 