It was a peculiar position for Jim Smith to find himself.
Walking out from the famous old Wembley tunnel and into the blinding sunlight, where he was enveloped by the noise of over 90,000 expectant supporters. There was a time when the League Cup final would be played out in the late April sunshine, rather than the late February chill. It made the first showpiece event of the English football calendar that bit more aesthetically pleasing, than it is now.
Less than 12-months earlier Smith had led Oxford United to promotion to the top flight of the English game for the first and only time in their history. Now, here he was, striding out at Wembley as the manager of Queens Park Rangers, as an opposing manager against his former club in the 1986 League Cup final, the fifth and final time that the tournament went by the name of the Milk Cup.
It was one of those wonderful footballing oddities, on a day when it could easily have been Liverpool and Aston Villa contesting the first piece of silverware of the 1985/86 campaign.
Smith’s new side were the clear favourites going into the game, yet at his own admission, he probably still knew more about the Oxford line-up than he did the QPR one.
After a difficult start to the season, Smith’s QPR had rallied to a comfortable spot in the First Division mid-table, and their run to Wembley had seen them conquer Nottingham Forest, West London rivals Chelsea, Liverpool, and Graham Taylor’s Watford.
Oxford, on the other hand, were perilously placed in the bottom three with just a handful of games left to save themselves, and in Smith, they were facing a manager who knew all their strengths and weaknesses.
Maurice Evans had been the reluctant manager who had led Oxford to this unlikely cup final appearance, seeing off Newcastle United, the holders Norwich City, and Aston Villa.
The two semi-finals had been settled by the narrowest of margins, with a heavily anticipated Aston Villa v Liverpool final, instead being transformed into a wildly unexpected Oxford v QPR alternative.
Oxford, under the ownership of the controversial Robert Maxwell had risen from the lower divisions in the blink of an eye. In an action-packed four years, Maxwell almost forced the club into a merger with Reading, under the working title of the Thames Valley Royals, before a boardroom coup at Elm Park put an end to the idea.
With Smith securing the back-to-back promotions which took them into the First Division, it came as a shock when he walked away from the Manor Ground on the eve of Oxford’s debut season in the top flight.
With assurances over an improved contract having stalled, and Maxwell feeling he should have more of the limelight than his manager, Smith had accepted QPR’s approach with no small degree of reluctance. The pull of Wembley in 1986 was almost a magnetic one for Smith and Maxwell.
Ultimately, this proved to be a battle between the team that Smith built and the team that he was trying to remodel, played out under the unsettling shadow cast by Maxwell.
Smith’s new side went to Wembley on the back of an eight-game unbeaten run, they were blessed with a notoriously organised defence, inclusive of the England international Terry Fenwick, who was pushed into midfield that day, one of two survivors from the QPR side which had contested the 1982 FA Cup final replay.
In attack they had the experienced Michael Robinson, a European Cup winner with Liverpool, his Republic of Ireland teammate John Byrne, the free-scoring Gary Bannister and the dangerous Robbie James.
It was to be the mercurial, but at times self-doubting talents of Trevor Hebberd who would dictate the outcome of the day however.
Scorer of the first goal, and co-creator of the second alongside Ray Houghton, Hebberd’s match winning performance had been a career in the making. Having threatened big things at Southampton, Hebberd had drifted to Oxford, where he was pivotal to the inexorable rise of the U’s.
With Hebberd playing the game of his career, and Houghton contributing in a style which would soon become familiar to Liverpool fans, it was perhaps surprising that another Liverpool player to be was left frustrated for much of the afternoon, as John Aldridge missed an open goal, was denied a clear penalty, and saw a late effort converted by Jeremy Charles instead.
For so long having been the underdogs, QPR simply froze on a day when they were cast in the role of the favourites. Oxford prospered by sticking to Evans principals of playing the ball on the floor.
Just four years after coming close to extinction, less than a quarter of a century since gaining entry to the Football League, Oxford had their first piece of major silverware. A story that was simultaneously heart-warming and unsettling.
Heart-warming for a small club like Oxford to ascend to glory beneath the twin towers, but unsettling for such a polarising figure as Maxwell to be at the centre of it.
