Micky Stephens needed only to glance around the President’s Lounge to conjure up memories of the most celebrated day in Sutton United’s history. The function suites at Gander Green Lane are littered with reminders of that afternoon back in early 1989 when Coventry, part of the furniture in the top flight and FA Cup winners two seasons previously, had subsided in this corner of south London. Crane his neck and he could spy himself, fresher faced and sporting a fuller head of hair, wheeling away in celebration after one of his trademark set pieces in some of the photos or framed newspaper cuttings mounted on the wall.
It was the non-league team’s prowess at dead-ball situations which did for the likes of Brian Kilcline, Trevor Peake and Steve Ogrizovic that day. Yet, rather than linger on those gloriously panicked scenes in the Coventry six-yard box, Stephens’ mind drifted back to the morning’s preparations on Collingwood Road Rec, flanking the stadium, that Saturday 28 years ago.
“The manager had taken us out on to the park to go over the set plays one last time, but the state of the pitch was dreadful,” he said. “It was probably in better condition than the one we’d play the Cup tie on later in the day, but it was still horrific. Nothing went right. I prided myself on being able to put a ball on a sixpence, but I was kicking bits of mud up in the air, the ball was flying everywhere, people were making all the wrong runs.
“It was absolutely ridiculous so, in the end, the gaffer Barrie Williams snapped, called us in, said ‘Scrap this’ and we all trooped off inside. It wasn’t nerves. It was the conditions. And, to be honest, we all knew the drills, where to put the ball, which ones to use and at which times. We had one we called the ‘cluster’ where everybody congregated around the near post then, on a signal, ran in different directions and ended up in a designated position. It was just chaos. Coventry weren’t a small side but our spy, Dave Wall, thought we could get some joy at set plays. I’d just clip it in for Nigel Golley, all 6ft 6in of him, to flick on. Tony [Rains] got on the first, Matthew [Hanlan] the second. But we had others up our sleeves, moves we could have hit them with.”
Stephens will never tire of talk of that giddy occasion, when the side for whom he played 552 times toppled a team from the elite 2-1. These days he is seeking to help the current side forge new history at this club. Sutton host Leeds on Sunday and their tight little stadium is sold out for only the third appearance in the FA Cup fourth round of their 119-year history. Their local rivals AFC Wimbledon were ousted at the previous stage in a replay. Stephens, as assistant manager, will spend his afternoon quietly pinpointing weaknesses in a Championship defence and offering the manager, Paul Doswell, and the head coach Ian Baird, a former Leeds player, his observations on the bench.
The National League side train twice a week and confront opponents who have won seven of their last nine games and sit third in the second tier. Yet, just as the dreadful conditions had served as a leveller against John Sillett’s Coventry, so Garry Monk’s Leeds will be wary. The pristine 3G pitch, such a hub for local community sports clubs since it was laid in 2015 courtesy of a £500,000 loan from Doswell, the managing director of a successful development company, can still trip up visitors whether it be with footwear or the bounce of the ball. Leeds, the theory goes, may be prioritising promotion ahead of a lengthy Cup run, and Sutton are not a team of wide-eyed amateurs.
They boast Craig Eastmond, who played for Arsenal in the Champions League, and Nicky Bailey, who once joined Middlesbrough for £1.4m. Their ranks are laced with Football League experience. “As a general trend, the level of football at National League level is higher now,” said Stephens. “We all had ‘real’ jobs back in my day. I worked up at NatWest Bank in the City, and was up at 6am in the week ready for my nine to five. I’d turn up for training on Tuesday and Thursday evenings in my work clothes, absolutely exhausted. The other lads did the same. But we had good players who knew the non-league game. That tie with Coventry was our chance to show we could match professional players. There was no fear in our team.
“We’d had a couple of tasters, taking Boro to a replay up at Ayresome Park [courtesy of Stephens setting up Mark Golley for an equaliser in the first game] the year before, knocking Peterborough and Aldershot out. I reckon the Coventry lads turned up and saw the pitch in such a state, then walked into their changing room which was the size of a telephone box, and cold, and thought: ‘Whoah, hang on a minute. This could be a tough old afternoon.’ Everything fell into place that day. Our little moment in the sun.”
Stephens grew up a Chelsea fan, accompanying his father to home games and standing on a wooden orange crate in the Shed End to see over the crowds, yet his association with Sutton goes back to 1976 when, as a 16-year-old, he was invited to train with the club by Ted Powell. The youngster ended his first session “being sick on the sidelines”, such was the step up from schools’ football to senior level. Keith Blunt handed him a first-team debut at 17, the teenager turning out for Eastfields High School in neighbouring Merton in the morning before hurrying round to Sandy Lane to sit on the bench in the fourth qualifying round of the FA Cup against Tooting & Mitcham. “I turned up with mud all over my legs, and we lost 3-0,” he said. “I don’t remember the score in the school match, but I asked to come off early.”
He went on to win seven caps for the England non-league team – “and I should have had more but I missed a couple of training sessions because I got married” – and was the subject of interest from Cardiff and Shrewsbury. But he was settled, with a good job, and there was no great desire to break into the professional game. His 19-year playing career yielded honours from the Anglo-Italian Cup to two Isthmian League titles, eight Surrey and one London Senior Cup. The locals christened him “Able” after he arrived for one game wearing a suit straight out of Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. “A double-breasted blue jacket with gold buttons and a stripe across the shoulders, and the type of boots you’d expect on a pirate, hence ‘Able Seaman Stephens’ … fashionable, no?”
Doswell brought him back into the fold upon his appointment in 2008 and on the recommendation of the chairman, Bruce Elliott, as the Ryman Premier League club sought a regular opposition scout. “I thought I’d watch the game then just relay the info to Doz face to face,” said Stephens. “But the first time I did it he came back with: ‘OK, Micky. I want a six-page report emailed to me as an attachment.’ An attachment? An email? I didn’t have a clue what he was on about. My daughter helped me out and I blagged my way through while I took myself off to evening classes to brush up on the IT. Then, about four years back, he asked me to join his coaching staff.
“The changes under Doz have been brilliant, through the National League South and now the old Conference. Sutton were always a top end non-league club, but it’s being run now with a view to progressing. Ultimately the aim might be to reach the Football League, but not right now. The manager wants to continue growing the club, with the pitch at the centre of the local community. I know you can’t have a 3G surface in the League, but it’s used all the time, there are always people down here, and the players can train whenever they want. Back in my day, when the weather was bad, we’d be in the President’s Lounge doing indoor circuits and squat thrusts. Now the lads are out there two mornings a week whatever. We’ve got masseurs, video analysis, ProZone statistics … the works.”
The £300,000 raised by the televised Leeds tie will allow a team mid-table in the National League to make further tweaks and improvements. Workmen spent Wednesday repairing a hole in the roof of the home dressing room (“We thought we’d knock one in the roof of the away team’s room,” said the assistant manager) at a club whose season ticket sales have risen from 120 to 1,200 over the last two seasons. Back in 1970, when Don Revie’s Leeds visited in the fourth round of this competition, Sutton borrowed temporary benching from The Oval to boost capacity to 14,000 and raised £3,000, which put them in the black for the next three seasons. Leeds even returned to sign Sutton’s centre-half John Faulkner a few weeks later. The lasting benefits are likely to be just as profound this time round.
Leeds were reigning league champions and top of the First Division under Revie, and duly won 6-0. Monk’s team may find it tougher going. “The Coventry game is always flagged up as this club’s moment,” added Stephens, “but we’re trying to build our own bit of history. Any kind of result and we’d achieve that.”
