FA Youth Cup final memories shared by Man Utd club journalists

1995: UNITED V TOTTENHAM
Adam BostockLike my colleague Adam Marshall, my debut season of working for the club featured a triumphant run in the FA Youth Cup. This time, it was Phil Neville who was straddling the leap from youth team to first team – he went into the final a few days after making his third senior appearance for the Reds. He was therefore the natural choice to captain a side coached by the late, great Eric Harrison, a mentor to so many future stars for club and country.

I had the privilege of sitting down with Eric on a monthly basis at The Cliff training ground, as part of the Academy page I compiled for the club magazine. The straight-talking Yorkshireman would give me candid reviews of the recent fixtures for United’s ‘A’ and ‘B’ teams as they were known then, playing in the Lancashire Youth League, as well as the various rounds of the Youth Cup. He’d also discuss individual trainees to a degree but his information on that front was always concise and, I suspect, designed to elicit a positive reaction from the player in question on the training ground or in games. Eric astutely knew his charges all read the mag – he probably saw them eagerly grabbing fresh copies when I brought a box to The Cliff every four weeks or so.

I was grateful to Eric for allowing me to travel on the team bus for the first leg of the ’95 final, as we headed from our hotel in Hertfordshire to White Hart Lane for a challenging clash with Tottenham Hotspur. I wasn’t the only interloper among the staff and youth-team players – Phil Neville’s brother Gary, a winner of the competition three years previously, was also on board. As well as rooting for his younger sibling, he was looking forward to playing for United in the senior FA Cup final against Everton later that month.

Although Eric’s young Reds lost the away leg 2-1, it all turned out alright on the night at Old Trafford when Terry Cooke equalised on aggregate with a minute to spare and then, after extra-time, our boys won 4-3 on penalties to lift the trophy. Both no.2s missed their kicks in the shootout – Neville for us, Stephen Carr for them – but it did neither of them any harm as they went on to rack up hundreds of top-flight appearances for their clubs and earn multiple caps for their countries.