1967 FA Cup Final: Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Chelsea
The Cockney Cup Final

The footage

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1967

The match report

Two clubs from London had never met in an FA Cup final before. Tottenham Hotspur and Chelsea did it at Wembley on 20 May 1967, in a match the papers called the Cockney Cup Final, a label that strictly fitted neither of them: Tottenham play in the north of the city and Chelsea in the west, while Cockney belongs to the East End. Tottenham came into it third in the First Division. Chelsea, ninth, were in only their second final and their first since 1915, when they lost the Khaki Cup Final to Sheffield United at Old Trafford. They had never won the competition.[1][3][9][19]

Bill Nicholson had built his third Tottenham cup-winning side in seven years around Pat Jennings in goal, Mike England at centre half and Dave Mackay as captain, with Jimmy Greaves and Alan Gilzean in front of them. Tommy Docherty's Chelsea were younger, and in Peter Bonetti, Charlie Cooke and Bobby Tambling they had enough to worry anybody. The two leading scorers in that season's competition, Greaves and Tambling, were on opposite sides. Only one of them scored at Wembley, and it was Tambling.[1][2][10]

Tottenham started the better of the two. Robertson forced Bonetti to turn a shot round the post in the fourteenth minute and put a second effort just over the bar soon afterwards, while Cooke replied with a dribbling run that ended with Jennings punching clear. The goal, when it came five minutes before half-time, was a rebound. Alan Mullery struck from outside the area, Allan Harris got in the way, and the ball ran to Robertson, who hit it low past Bonetti. Tottenham led at the interval and never trailed.[10][16][18]

The second half went the way of the first. Tottenham kept the ball, Chelsea chased it, and the match was settled midway through the half. Mackay took a long throw from the left, Robertson headed it on, and Frank Saul turned and hooked it in. Accounts differ over whether that arrived in the sixty-seventh minute or the sixty-eighth, which is the kind of detail that goes missing when nobody keeps the film.[1][10][12]

With the match gone Tottenham slowed it down and passed it among themselves, working the ball in neat squares and triangles. Chelsea got something back in the eighty-fifth minute, John Boyle crossing from the right for Tambling to head past Jennings. Five minutes was not enough. The Duke of Kent presented the cup to Mackay, who was then carried around the pitch on his team mates' shoulders while the photographers followed him.[10][12]

The shape of the win was Nicholson's. Cyril Knowles, who had spent the season overlapping down the left, was held back to cover the ageing Mackay, while Joe Kinnear went the other way and attacked from right back, so Chelsea spent the afternoon defending a flank they had not expected to have to defend. Mike England took Tony Hateley out of the game in the air. Hateley had scored the goal that beat Leeds United in the semi-final; he won nothing at Wembley, and Docherty sold him before the next season began.[17][2][7]

Almost none of this survives on film, and the reason is a broadcasting decision. The broadcast archive that logs BBC and ITV cup final coverage season by season records a live BBC transmission of every final it covers except this one. ITV did, inside World of Sport, with Hugh Johns and Billy Wright at the microphone. The BBC settled for a highlights programme on Match of the Day that night, introduced and commentated by Kenneth Wolstenholme. The live transmission has never resurfaced, the commercial DVD sold as the full match turned out to contain the BBC highlights instead, and those highlights are missing the start of the second half. What is left whole are two colour newsreels, one from British Pathe and one from British Movietone, each running to a few minutes.[14][15][16][12]

Tottenham's fifth FA Cup was also their fifth final, and they had still never lost one. That would wait until 1987. The win took them into the European Cup Winners' Cup. Chelsea went away with a grudge, and the Evening Standard traces the modern hostility between the two clubs to this afternoon rather than to anything that came before it. Chelsea won the competition themselves three years later, and the two clubs have never met in an FA Cup final again.[5][9][19][1]

How the match unfolded

1. 14'Jimmy Robertson strikes from distance and Peter Bonetti turns it round the post. A second Robertson effort soon afterwards clears the bar.[10][16]
2. 30'Charlie Cooke beats several Tottenham players on a dribbling run and Pat Jennings punches his shot clear.[10][16]
3. 40'Alan Mullery shoots from outside the area, Allan Harris blocks, and the ball rebounds to Robertson, who drives it low past Bonetti.[10][18][16]
4. half-timeTottenham lead by one goal and have had much the better of it.[10][1]
5. 67'Dave Mackay hurls a long throw in from the left, Robertson heads it on, and Frank Saul pivots and hooks it into the net.[1][10][12]
6. 85'John Boyle crosses from the right and Bobby Tambling heads Chelsea's goal past Jennings.[12][10][1]
7. full-timeTottenham win. The Duke of Kent presents the trophy to Mackay, who is carried around the pitch shoulder high by his team mates.[12][14]

Match facts

Date

Saturday 20 May 1967

Venue

Wembley Stadium, London

Attendance

100,000The figure every source prints for a Wembley final of this period. It is the stated capacity rather than a published turnstile return.[1][10][16]

Referee

Ken Dagnall (Bolton, Lancashire)[1][10]

Scorers

Jimmy Robertson 40'
Frank Saul 67'
Bobby Tambling 85'[1][10][11]

Half-time

1-0

Competition

1966-67 FA Cup

Where they played

Both sides as they lined up. Choose any player to read what they did in this final.

Select a shirt for that player's note.

Route to the final

Line-ups

Trivia and detail

• Jimmy Greaves and Bobby Tambling finished the season as joint leading scorers in the competition with six goals each, and lined up against one another in the final.[2]
• Chelsea's only previous final was the 1915 Khaki Cup Final, moved from Crystal Palace to Old Trafford to keep crowds away from wartime London and watched by a ground full of uniformed soldiers.[3]
• Terry Venables was playing against the club that made him. He had left Chelsea for Tottenham the previous year after 202 league appearances and a League Cup win.[6]
• Tottenham went into the final unbeaten in 24 league and cup matches, a run that began after a defeat at Manchester United in the middle of January.[17]
• Neither named substitute got on. Cliff Jones sat it out for Tottenham and Joe Kirkup for Chelsea. No substitute appeared in an FA Cup final until the following year, when Dennis Clarke replaced the injured John Kaye for West Bromwich Albion.[1][4][17]
• British Pathe catalogued its colour film of the match simply as The Cup Final, film identifier 2031.01, and its shot list records the Duke and Duchess of Kent watching from the royal box.[12]
• British Movietone released its own colour reel as part of what it called a Sport in Colour Service, and dated the story 22 May 1967, two days after the match.[13]

How well do you know the 1967 final?

Five questions. Every answer is sourced from the material on this page.

1. Who scored Tottenham's opening goal?

   Jimmy RobertsonFrank SaulJimmy GreavesAlan Gilzean
   Answer

   Jimmy Robertson. Alan Mullery shot from outside the area, Allan Harris blocked it, and the rebound ran to Robertson five minutes before half-time.[1][10]

2. Why is this match known as the Cockney Cup Final?

   It was the first FA Cup final between two London clubsBoth clubs wore claret shirtsIt was the first final played on a SundayThe trophy was presented by a Londoner
   Answer

   It was the first FA Cup final between two London clubs. No two clubs from London had contested a final before. The nickname is loose, since Cockney refers to the East End and neither club is from there.[1][19]

3. Which broadcaster showed the 1967 final live?

   ITVBBC OneBBC TwoNobody, it was not televised
   Answer

   ITV. ITV carried the whole match inside World of Sport. The BBC broke a long run of live coverage and showed highlights on Match of the Day that night instead.[14][15]

4. Which club had Terry Venables left the year before the final?

   ChelseaQueens Park RangersCrystal PalaceWest Ham United
   Answer

   Chelsea. Venables joined Tottenham from Chelsea in 1966, so he spent this afternoon playing against the club where he had made his name.[6]

5. Who presented the FA Cup to Dave Mackay?

   The Duke of KentThe QueenThe Duke of EdinburghThe Prime Minister
   Answer

   The Duke of Kent. British Pathe's shot list for its colour newsreel records the Duke and Duchess of Kent in the royal box and the Duke making the presentation.[12]

What is not settled

Honesty matters more than tidiness. These details are contested or unrecorded, and we have not guessed at them:

• Sources disagree on which foot Jimmy Robertson scored with. Wikipedia says right; the archived fa-cupfinals.co.uk report says left, twice; and Robertson told Tottenham's own website that he was a right-footed player converted from outside left. The record leaves the foot off the goal.
• Frank Saul's goal is timed at 67 minutes by Wikipedia and by the ITV broadcast listings archive, and at 68 by the archived fa-cupfinals.co.uk report. The record uses 67 and shows the disagreement.
• The attendance of 100000 is the figure every source prints for a Wembley final of this period. It is a stated capacity rather than an audited turnstile return, and no published gate figure was found.
• The formations are a reconstruction. No source consulted prints a shape for either side, so the pitch draws the positional labels the standard match article assigns, which makes both teams 4-4-2. Contemporary descriptions put Dave Mackay in midfield rather than in a back four, with Cyril Knowles held back to cover him, so the real shape was probably a back four with Mackay in front of it.
• Why the BBC did not televise this final live is not settled by any document we could reach. Lost-media researchers attribute the decision to the presence of two London clubs, but that explanation traces to fan-archive discussion rather than to a BBC or Radio Times statement. The BBC Genome listings that would settle it refuse automated access.
• Whether any copy of ITV's live transmission survives in private hands is unknown. What is documented is that it has never resurfaced and that researchers who have looked report it is not held in the ITV Sport archive.
• Cliff Jones and Joe Kirkup are recorded as the named substitutes. That neither was used follows from Spurs Odyssey describing Jones as a non-playing substitute and from the first substitute in an FA Cup final not appearing until 1968, rather than from a team sheet.

How we know

Every claim on this page is tied to a numbered source below. These are the contemporary records behind it, each one fetched and matched word for word before publication rather than taken on trust:

• The Cup Final (1967), FILM ID 2031.01 (archive film and catalogue shot list) · British Pathe (official YouTube catalogue)
• THE CUP FINAL (22 May 1967), Sport in Colour Service · British Movietone via AP Archive (official YouTube catalogue)

Where a primary record and a modern account disagree, we show both rather than choosing the tidier number.

Sources

1. 1967 FA Cup final · Wikipedia
2. 1966-67 FA Cup · Wikipedia
3. 1915 FA Cup final · Wikipedia
4. 1968 FA Cup final · Wikipedia
5. List of FA Cup finals · Wikipedia
6. Terry Venables · Wikipedia
7. Tony Hateley · Wikipedia
8. Frank Saul · Wikipedia
9. 1966-67 Football League First Division · Wikipedia
10. FA Cup Final 1967: match report, line-ups and round by round results · fa-cupfinals.co.uk, archived by the Internet Archive
11. England FA Cup 1966-67, full results · Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation
12. The Cup Final (1967), FILM ID 2031.01 (archive film and catalogue shot list) · British Pathe (official YouTube catalogue)
13. THE CUP FINAL (22 May 1967), Sport in Colour Service · British Movietone via AP Archive (official YouTube catalogue)
14. Cup Finals on ITV 1955/56 to 1967/68 · Carousel (ITV broadcast listings archive), archived by the Internet Archive
15. FA Cup Finals of the 60s (discussion thread) · Missing Episodes Forum
16. 1967 FA Cup Final (partially found footage of football match; 1967) · The Lost Media Wiki, archived by the Internet Archive
17. Recalling the 1967 FA Cup Final, by Brian Judson · Spurs Odyssey
18. Kinnear, Robertson, England and Mullery: 1967 FA Cup heroes on playing Chelsea at Wembley · Tottenham Hotspur FC, archived by the Internet Archive
19. The Cockney Cup Final: when Tottenham and Chelsea's fierce rivalry began · Evening Standard

Elsewhere in the encyclopedia

Other finals involving these clubs

• 1970 Chelsea: Chelsea 2-2 Leeds United
• 1981 Tottenham Hotspur: Tottenham Hotspur 1-1 Manchester City
• 1982 Tottenham Hotspur: Tottenham Hotspur 1-1 Queens Park Rangers
• 1987 Tottenham Hotspur: Coventry City 3-2 Tottenham Hotspur
• 1991 Tottenham Hotspur: Tottenham Hotspur 2-1 Nottingham Forest
• 1994 Chelsea: Manchester United 4-0 Chelsea

Other finals at Wembley Stadium

• 1923 Bolton Wanderers 2-0 West Ham United
• 1953 Blackpool 4-3 Bolton Wanderers
• 1968 West Bromwich Albion 1-0 Everton
• 1969 Leicester City 0-1 Manchester City
• 1970 Chelsea 2-2 Leeds United
• 1971 Arsenal 2-1 Liverpool

Elsewhere on WhatChan