From Last Place to the First Round: How Billy Smith’s Side Defied the Odds and Achieved FA Cup Success.

by Zac Welshman 

The dawn of each new season has always bought with it the same familiar emotions; wide-eyed optimism, nervous excitement, and gripping uncertainty to name a few. Most seasons though rarely meet the giddy expectations that fans and players concoct during the summer months. Imagined league titles become relegation dogfights, and fabled cup runs last just 90 minutes. Football rarely delivers. Occasionally though, things fall into place, and for the Corinthian-Casuals side of 1983-84, managed by Billy Smith - an icon of south London’s non-league scene who spent his days working at the New Covent Garden Flower Market - their fantasies became reality as FA Cup triumphs led to the first round proper and the glamour of the football league.
 
The side in question, defined by its industriousness and unity, also happened to contain three of the club’s most famous alumni. Tony Finnigan, a former England youth international whose career was revived at the Casuals before he enjoyed top-flight success at Crystal Palace and Blackburn Rovers. Alan Pardew enjoyed a successful playing career in the First Division/Premier League which paved the way for a lengthy managerial career. And Andy Gray, the last man to have represented both the Corinthian-Casuals and the England team, with a professional career spanning 14 years and three countries, and who upon returning to the club as first-team manager this season, will be looking to emulate Smith’s success.
  
There are parallels to Smith & Gray’s appointments. Both took the job without experience in first-team management, and each inherited squads in need of a lift. Smith, appointed in 1981, was greeted by a team that had gotten used to losing, finishing bottom of the Isthmian League Division Two table for three successive seasons, collecting just 51 points and conceding a mammoth 251 goals across that time. For Gray, who returns to the club on the back of its relegation to the Isthmian League South Central Division, the picture looks far less bleak with a group of players likely capable of pushing for promotion, but there is doubtless work to be done and pride to be restored under his supervision.
  
It remains to be seen what Gray’s inaugural matchday squad will look like when the season kicks off on 12 August, but it is unlikely to be as raw as Smith’s was. After deciding to clear house in pre-season, Smith culled the existing first-team squad and only Bobby Armitt, who joined the club as a schoolboy in the late 1970s survived. With little to work with, a summer of creative recruitment began and goalkeeper Chris Chapman was bought in as tough tackling defender Colin Coldspring signed from Sunday league football. Striker Bernie Merron and utility man Paul Rulton, made up the rest of the notable signings as a new-look Casuals side achieved a sixth-place league finish in their debut campaign.
   
And as the 1982-83 season added the youthful flair of Finnigan, Pardew, and Gray, expectations began to rise. An eighth-place finish that year might have disappointed then, but for Smith’s new starlets, development was key. Speaking to the team behind the Broadway to Brazil podcast in 2021, the three recounted their formative years under Smith.
  
“Billy was a motivator and, to any player, he never said more than a sentence. I really liked him, that was my kind of management – he was a hard taskmaster, but if you had quality, he expected you to show quality.” Finnigan noted. For Pardew, who joined as a stick-thin 21-year-old, it was the lessons he learned from his teammates that stuck with him throughout his career. 
“It was a real eclectic mix of rough and ready types, lots of banter, and you had to hold your own. It stood me in good stead for later in my career to put up with various jibes that were flying about the dressing room.” 

In Andy Gray’s case, though, it was his time as a teenager under the watchful eye of assistant manager Ron King that stood out.  
“He [King] used to look after me very well – nice guy. He kept me focused and he was a good motivator. I used to work for him, as it goes, as a stencil cutter for Displaycraft in Brixton Hill, but he used to let me get away with liberties because he knew that I had a chance, so he just kept me on the straight and narrow.” 
 
After a forgettable 1982-83 season, Smith’s vision was fully realised in the following campaign. An impressive six wins from their first eight league games signalled the intent, but it was in the FA Cup that his side’s quality really shone through. A routine 2-0 victory over Camberley Town took the Casuals past the first qualifying round on 17 September, and two weeks later, Southall was dispatched in front of just 52 spectators. Isthmian Premier Division side Bognor Regis came next, but their league status meant little as the Casuals secured their first real scalp of the competition in a 3-1 victory.
  
By the time Merthyr Tydfil arrived in Molesey for the final qualifying round on 29 October, the cup run had gained traction and with the prize on offer for the winners, Pardew told of the bubbling atmosphere before the game:  
 “I seem to remember a lot of market boys were following us at the time, and Merthyr were a tough team, with a tough group of fans, and it was very boisterous and aggressive.” 

The Casuals ran out 1-0 winners on the day as Pardew scored the only goal, a self-defined “scrappy old tap-in” that sealed the result and with it, an FA Cup first-round appearance for only the second time in the club’s history, and the first since 18 years. Emblematic of the get-your-hands-dirty attitude that filtered through the squad, after crowd trouble followed the match and a clubhouse window was smashed, Pardew was able to put his glazing skills to good use and aid in the restorations.
  
“Well, I did repair the window. I think they smashed up a little bit of the internals, the fruit machines or whatever was inside. But yeah, I got the window job. We had to make do and mend in those days.”
 
With Casuals in the hat and the first-round draw made, Fourth Division side Bristol City was confirmed as the opposition. Playing five leagues above Smith’s side and in search of a promotion themselves, Finnigan remembered the media attention as fans counted down the days before the big day.
  
“That’s all we spoke about all the time leading up to it, and at the games prior to it. I remember no one could believe it, and it was a massive story in the South London Press, because I used to buy that paper every week.” 

As the Robins descended on Dulwich Hamlet’s Champion Hill ground on 19 November, 52 spectators became 2216 raucous Casuals fans, all desperate to witness a giant killing live. But in the mid-November haze, there would be no fairy tale victory. The Casuals played out a heroic 0-0 draw, summed up by Coldspring playing on after receiving four stitches to the head and earning his side a clean sheet, meaning a reply was needed and the cup run was still alive. 

The rematch at Bristol City’s Ashton Gate would be one step too far for Smith’s team as they lost 4-0, with Gray admitting the players were just “too tired” by the time of the replay. But for the supporters and players of the 1983-84 season, the achievement was in making it this far, Smith and his side had defied expectations and earned their place in club folklore. 
 
An admirable fifth-place finish in the league followed, the highest of Smith’s time at the club. But when changes to the Isthmian League’s rules on ground sharing came into effect the following season, the then nomadic Casuals resigned from the league, a decision that signalled the end of Smith’s tenure as he departed for Dulwich Hamlet, taking many of his players with him. His three-year spell at the club is still remembered by many as a golden era of the modern years, and despite a premature exit, Smith is considered a Casuals legend.
  
For Gray, who briefly joined Smith at Dulwich Hamlet before earning his move to Crystal Palace, there is a chance to pick up where he left off and spot the next class of exciting young Casuals talent. Speaking to the club during pre-season preparations, he noted what he would be looking for in his players.
  
“Anyone I look at, I’ll see myself in them. The attitude, and the way that they conduct themselves, hunger and a fire in his belly so you can just look in his eyes and know ‘yeah’ when he goes onto that pitch this is a different animal. 
The gauntlet is there for me to say to somebody ‘Surpass what I did, then you’ll be okay.’ It’s a simple brief to anyone with aspirations of getting into the professional game, do better than me. That’s your yardstick, simple as.” 

The Casuals 2023-24 FA Cup campaign will begin in the first extra preliminary round on 19 August, with either Tunbridge Wells or Uxbridge as opponents. For the players it will be a chance to test their metal in  knockout football, for Gray, it will be an opportunity to repeat history, this time from the dugout.   


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