March 10 – Wycombe’s Ceefax Cup Hero

POOR old Ceefax. Spare a thought for the pixelated old medium, for it was once the king of text-based instant news, sport and football scores. For many a football fan, each morning started with a cup of tea and a quick check of Ceefax page 302 to see what was happening. These days of course the internet has largely stolen teletext’s thunder, relegated it to the bench of news services.

But in 2001 Ceefax played a key role in one of the most bizarre stories from the world of football, when it helped a lowly Second Division team beat a Premiership club in an FA Cup quarter-final.

To set the scene, Wycombe Wanderers, managed by 1988 FA Cup winner Lawrie Sanchez, had beaten Sanchez’s old club Wimbledon to secure a place in the FA Cup quarter-finals. Their opponents were Peter Taylor’s Leicester City and it was the biggest game in the history of the club. The only problem was all of Wycombe’s strikers got themselves injured before the big match, away at Leicester’s Filbert Street ground.

This vexed Lawrie who, as David Brent would say, started to think outside the box and enquired as to the availability of some big names in the game for a one-off appearance for the Chairboys. Ian Wright was asked but injury prevented him from playing, and even Gianluca Vialli – at a loose end after being sacked by Chelsea – was sounded out but politely declined.

What to try next? Sanchez asked his press officer to put out an SOS on the club website asking anyone who thought they could play at that level, and who wasn’t cup-tied to get in touch. Enter a journalist from Ceefax, who spotted the plea and published the story on Ceefax.

It was spotted by the agent of little-known striker Roy Essandoh who had played for Motherwell for a time and spent a few years playing in Finland for VPS Vaasa. Sanchez signed him up on a week-to-week contract and tried him in a reserve match and then a first team game against Port Vale. According to Sanchez: “He did ok. He didn’t set the world alight but he wasn’t the worst centre forward you’d ever seen.” he had done enough to warrant a place on the bench for the big game at Leicester, on this day in 2001.

Paul McCarthy put the visitors into a shock lead but Muzzy Izzet soon equalised for Leicester. With the score tied at 1-1 and 20 minutes left to play Sanchez sent on Stuart Castledine and Essandoh, telling them both to try to keep the ball away from Leicester to secure a draw.

Minutes later Sanchez was sent off for arguing with the referee and was forced to watch the remainder of the match on a tiny television monitor in the bowels of the Filbert Street stadium.

In injury time Wycombe got a free-kick and after the initial ball into the box was parried by Leicester keeper Simon Royce, it was punted back in. “Next thing I know, the ball’s right in front of me,” Essandoh said, and he rose highest to nod in a famous and extremely unlikely winner. The Wanderers fans went crazy in the stands while Lawrie Sanchez was doing likewise in the small room he had been consigned to.

“I thought ‘I don’t believe this – it’s awesome’,” Essandoh said after the match – the man plucked from obscurity and elevated to hero status. “Crazy, isn’t it?” He said. Perhaps Motty has been right all along – maybe the FA Cup still is magic.

He said afterwards: “It was like surreal. You watch the FA Cup all the time and you would like it to be you. But even before the game it’s not the sort of thing you expect to do. You think it will be someone else. Then you do it and it’s the sort of thing you want to do every week.”

But the magic had to end sometime and Wycombe were put out by eventual winners Liverpool, narrowly losing the semi-final at Villa Park.

As for Essandoh, he remained with the club for the rest of the season but failed to win a contract and thereafter embarked on a journeyman’s tour of lower-league and non-league clubs. He turned out for Barnet, Cambridge City, Grays Athletic, Billericay Town, Gravesend & Northfleet and Kettering Town before signing for Conference South club Bishop’s Stortford in 2006 where he now plays his football.

He might not be in the big time anymore, but he does have one helluva story.

That’s all for today sports fans, have a look at what else was happening on this day in football here, and pop back tomorrow for more from us. Until then…