This doesn’t make him seem so hard anymore
With Liverpool playing AFC Wimbledon tonight in the FA Cup there has been plenty of former members of the 1988 giant-killing Wimbledon side gabbing away to the media about that game and this evening’s third round fixture.
One of the more interesting appearances has been by Dennis Wise, the tough tackling no-nonsense hardman of the late 80s and early 90s.
He featured on Setanta Sports over the weekend and it’s fair to say that he looks a bit different now than he did snapping into tackles and routinely leaving players in a crumpled mess on the pitch:
We think he looks a bit like Javier Bardem’s serial killer from No Country for Old Men :
Ahead of that game a few of the ex Wimbledon players have been revealing their secrets as to how they overcame Liverpool 27 years ago. And it seems a few trips down the pub helped.
In a piece in today’s Telegraph Terry Gibson and Lawrie Sanchez describe how the team stayed at the swish 5-star Cannizaro House but got a bit bored and decided to head down the pub.
“Thorny [Andy Thorn] and Corky [Alan Cork] started early on the Bloody Marys. We were misbehaving a bit in the hotel and Gouldy [manager Bobby Gould] was worrying that we would get thrown out so he said: ‘Why don’t you lot clear off down the pub?’.
What a fantastic idea just 24 hours before the biggest day for the club ever.
The team headed for a few quiet ones but the party was then brought to a halt by a Wimbledon fan who wandered into the pub to see his heroes ‘pre-hydrating’ according to Terry Gibson, “And I remember this Wimbledon fan walking into the pub at about 11 o’clock that night with his dog who, I’ll never forget, was wearing the Wimbledon kit. The bloke looked at us as if to say: ‘What the hell are you lot doing in here the night before the cup final?”
Awkward.
It didn’t matter as Wimbledon famously won 1-0, and if AFC Wimbledon do cause a shock tonight then they can perhaps re-create some of the famous celebration’s that the original ‘Crazy Gang’ enjoyed and which were captured gloriously by the BBC:
Also marvel at ‘little’ Dennis Wise’s hair:
H/t to The Telegraph
