History
Although the club had encouraged its players in this behaviour since the early 1980s, the nickname did not really become widespread in use, beyond the players of the club themselves, until 1988 when, against all expectations, Wimbledon won the FA Cup by beating highly talented favourites Liverpool FC 1-0, with goalkeeper Dave Beasant saving a penalty. At the final whistle, BBC TV commentator John Motson said the line: "The Crazy Gang have beaten the Culture Club!". The name then caught on nationally, began to appear frequently in newspaper reports, and was often used in TV coverage of the club.
It is difficult to determine precisely when the term fell out of use. However, as Wimbledon became more established in the top flight of English football after promotion in 1986, their style of play became more advanced, and their bizarre behaviour was no longer as unexpected. It can be said that the nickname lost much of its previous effect at the point it became "official", when the club itself began to use it in its own marketing. This was carried to the extent that the name even appeared for several seasons in the mid 1990s as a small badge on the team's playing shirts. In 2000, the club was relegated from the Premier League after 14 years in the top flight, by which time the name had became rather inappropriate as a description of its players, although the club still continued to use it for some years to promote itself commercially.
Read more about this topic: Crazy Gang
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“A country grows in history not only because of the heroism of its troops on the field of battle, it grows also when it turns to justice and to right for the conservation of its interests.”
—Aristide Briand (1862–1932)
“We are told that men protect us; that they are generous, even chivalric in their protection. Gentlemen, if your protectors were women, and they took all your property and your children, and paid you half as much for your work, though as well or better done than your own, would you think much of the chivalry which permitted you to sit in street-cars and picked up your pocket- handkerchief?”
—Mary B. Clay, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 3, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“History has neither the venerableness of antiquity, nor the freshness of the modern. It does as if it would go to the beginning of things, which natural history might with reason assume to do; but consider the Universal History, and then tell us,—when did burdock and plantain sprout first?”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)