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:
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)
“Culture, the acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world, and thus with the history of the human spirit.”
—Matthew Arnold (1822–1888)
“When the landscape buckles and jerks around, when a dust column of debris rises from the collapse of a block of buildings on bodies that could have been your own, when the staves of history fall awry and the barrel of time bursts apart, some turn to prayer, some to poetry: words in the memory, a stained book carried close to the body, the notebook scribbled by hand—a center of gravity.”
—Adrienne Rich (b. 1929)