“Someone put it on Twitter a while ago, and I saw the goal and a bit of the game for the first time in a hell of a long time,” said Derek Mountfield. “As the years went by, I suppose I’d forgotten just what that night meant to people. Christ, it was such a big thing for Carlisle, for the city.”
As Carlisle United head to Rochdale’s Spotland today, one game returns to the mind more than any other. It is the Auto-Windscreens Shield northern final second leg of 1995, and a frenzied first half when the Blues’ dream of Wembley suddenly found itself in alarming peril.
Enter Mountfield, the experienced and illustrious defender who normally provided reassurance at the back, but on this anxious night, scattered the tension with perhaps the most jubilantly-received close-range header in United’s history.
It guided Mick Wadsworth’s team from the sort of mishap which would, had it not been intercepted, have made their brilliant mid-1990s look a lot differently. Imagine the deckchair army’s story without Wembley?
Mountfield’s goal came at a time United, 4-1 up from the first leg, had conceded two quickfire goals as Rochdale came fizzing back at them.
His nod of the head, then, comforted supporters who had started to worry whether their longing to see Carlisle play at the national stadium would ever be satisfied.
After the agonies of 1993/94, when Joe Joyce had blasted them to the brink in a heroic last-stage failure against Huddersfield Town, United had advanced to another northern final in what was not just a cup run but a crusade.
Mountfield was a calm port in the storm: “I just focused on my job, but for the local lads, the families in Carlisle, the fans you spoke to, it was an absolute, ultimate dream,” he said.
“I could understand where they were coming from. As an Everton fan, I wanted to watch them play at Wembley and in my young life the only time they got there was in 1977 in the League Cup, but I couldn’t make it because I was playing in a junior cup competition. My first trip there was to watch England play Scotland and it wasn’t the same as watching my own team.
“So I understood it immediately when the Carlisle fans talked about it and said: ‘We got so close last year…’”
Mountfield had been recruited to ensure that United could get to higher places. With David Currie, he was an astute addition in the summer of 1994 to a team who had skirted with success, but needed an extra framework of reliable experience.
“I’d been released by Wolves and done a bit of searching around,” said the centre-half, who had won a string of top-level trophies with Everton and also represented Aston Villa in the top flight. “Mansfield were desperate to sign me. I wasn’t asking for stupid money, but they said they couldn’t afford me. Then I went to Walsall and met Kenny Hibbitt. I trained for three days, but again we were miles apart with our valuations of each other.
“I resigned myself to finishing in the game and doing something else. Then I got a phone call from Mick Wadsworth [United’s director of coaching]. I drove up on the night of the World Cup final in 1994, listening to the game on the radio. I checked into a hotel and the next morning Waddy said he wanted to sign me.
“I wasn’t one of those people who came for money. I wanted to play football. Mick explained what he wanted to do and spoke about some of the younger lads in the back four, saying he needed someone who could come along and talk, pass information on, push them to where they should be. Mick saw me as a man who could do that and I’m glad he did.”
He signed even though Michael Knighton offered the 31-year-old only monthly contracts: “I could have walked away any time that season. But I didn’t because I enjoyed being around that group of lads.”
Mountfield added poise and control to a defensive unit containing the positive, younger talents of Tony Gallimore, Darren Edmondson, Dean Walling and Tony Caig in goal. With the canny Currie supplementing the goals of David Reeves and the trickery of Rod Thomas, United rose to the top of Division Three and by February had only Rochdale – from the middle of their own division – to surpass in order to deliver that Wembley fantasy.
“The first leg…we called it Typhoon Brunton,” Mountfield said. “It came down in sheets of hail, rain, snow.” It was indeed a vile Tuesday evening in Cumbria. United’s pitch was also boggy and brown, but the turbulent conditions did not deter them from building a 4-1 lead by halfway.
“We’d proved we could play some good stuff and that night we showed how well we could adapt. It was one of those nights you’d rather be playing than standing in the crowd. At least we could run around a bit. I remember coming off, thinking: ‘Gordon Bennett, where’s the shower?’ We came down the side of Shap sideways on the drive home along the M6 with some of the other lads. A snowplough overtook us and we tucked in behind it. It was the only bit of road we could see.”
It was a calmer night at Rochdale two weeks later, but only in one sense. United’s supporters went from confident to concerned when Dale began at a vicious speed, scoring twice. “The first one was a spawny deflection,” Mountfield said. “After the second goal I had a right go at Gally – he must have lost his man. On the video you can see me pointing fingers at him.
“It was backs to the wall. They scored both their goals in front of our fans and you could hear a few mutterings from the terrace. But we kept trying to play and they stayed with us.
“I remember making a couple of tackles and headers and then all of a sudden we have this corner. Raver [Currie] throws the corner in and Deano knocks it down. It bounces off the crossbar and, being the lazy git I was, not trying to run too far, I was just there. It was in the back of the net in seconds and I knew it was an important goal.
“I just set off. I must have run pretty fast. Not even Reevesy could catch me and he was pretty quick.”
Mountfield’s goal sabotaged Rochdale’s belief. They could not revive their assault on a Carlisle team who had quickly recovered their conviction. “I wouldn’t say we felt invincible, but we had a belief we were never beaten,” the defender said. “But, let’s be honest, you need your backsides kicking if you lose a 4-1 lead. The goal came at the right time, just before half-time. It settled nerves and allowed us to regroup. From what I remember we played quite well in the second half.”
The final whistle, and Carlisle’s 5-3 aggregate victory, had the effect of a cork being popped from a vigorously-shaken bottle. United’s fans were on the pitch and players, clad in their iconic green, red and white ‘deckchair’ shirts, were lifted on to shoulders.
“We had some great followings all over the country,” Mountfield said. “They were fanatical. Carlisle’s probably the furthest outpost in English football. To go to places such as Torquay and Exeter is a bloody journey for them. We always appreciated the support.
“The feeling at the end of that game is hard to describe. I’ve scored a goal and got to Wembley with my team, but the fans are on an even bigger high. I do remember getting picked up by two lads. One fellow went right and one went left. All I could feel was my groin opening. I shouted: ‘Could you not go in the same direction, lads?!’
“Those fans on the pitch getting hold of their heroes…it’s part of what football is. You don’t see it now and I think that takes a bit of passion and spontaneity from the game. I’ve never been kissed by so many men as I was that night. People were so elated, so joyful.”
In the dressing-room Mountfield was pelted with shorts, socks and underwear as he battled to complete interviews. It was another situation in which he had to be the sensible head in a world of chaos. He surveyed the room in snatched moments of quiet and saw colleagues wide-eyed at the thought of their achievement: “I could see one or two of the lads a bit overcome by that feeling of: ‘Wow, we’ve done it.’”
United’s day at the national stadium, where they suffered a golden-goal, extra-time defeat to Birmingham City, was one of the great community occasions concerning the club. A crowd of 76,663 – larger than that season’s League Cup final – were present. Getting there, and tasting it, meant so much.
Mountfield said: “The younger players must have felt immense pride going on that coach to Wembley, walking on to the pitch with suits on, seeing thousands of fans from Carlisle – the red, white and green flags, scarves, balloons…amazing.
“Because I’d played there with Everton, I tried to warn them about the tunnel before the game. You can’t see the pitch, just the sky. You’re on a slope and, as you walk up, bit by bit you start to see the top of the stand. As you come out, it’s as if the volume button is on full. The noise is immense and that’s when you realise you’re at Wembley. That roar.”
Mystifyingly Mountfield was not retained for 1995/96, and the circumstances of his departure left him with an amount of ill-feeling towards Knighton. Amid suggestions that his knees would not hold up sufficiently for promoted Carlisle’s needs, he played more than 100 games for Walsall.
His time at Brunton Park was, therefore, condensed into one, sky-high campaign. Yet a player with League Championship, FA Cup and European Cup-Winners’ Cup medals was always as proud of his fourth-tier escapades. In 2021 Mountfield was at the forefront of a warmly-received reunion for that United squad who won Division Three as well as reaching Wembley.
“We set up a WhatsApp group and there’s nothing like laughing and joking about the good times, the funny things, the songs you sung, the monstrously-long coach journeys, the away days,” said Mountfield, who is now 59.
“Even the journeys up to training. I’d drive up from Birmingham and meet Dave Burgess, Jamie Robinson, Reevesy and a few others at the old Lancaster Forton services. We’d pile into one car, stop at Tebay to get breakfast at 9am, arrive at Carlisle at 9.55, on the training pitch at 10.15, a double session and then home. How that car did a year with us all in it I’ll never know.”
Mountfield’s collaboration at centre-half with the enormously-popular Walling was always regarded as fundamental to that season’s glory. “I still speak to Deano a lot. He grew up immensely that season and became a really good footballer, the same as Edmo, Gally and Caigy. There was a good understanding between us all at the back. I saw those players improve, become more vocal, more expressive. If I helped those kids in any way, that’s the best thing I’ve ever done.”
Up there, too, in the minds of those who watched that team, was the simple thing that Mountfield did at Rochdale. To a great many it would always be held dear as the goal that satisfied an ancient craving, so he would never be deprived of opportunities to reminisce.
“You can’t recall everything about your career, but you’re not allowed to forget the good times when you’re a former footballer,” he said. “Somebody always wants to talk about it. That’s the beauty of it.”
*Adapted from Bolts from the Blues by Jon Colman (Vertical Editions, £14.99). All the author’s proceeds from sales of the book go to the NHS in North Cumbria’s Covid-19 appeal.
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