Cheltenham's greatest ever result?

As the Mastercard advert goes: Ticket-£13, programme-£2.50…watching Gillespie score with five minutes to go in front of the C&G Stand – priceless!

This was one of the biggest, if not the biggest game in Cheltenham’s history. Certainly the biggest I’d ever attended. The game was moved to Sunday, I heard, not due to being on television, or international reasons, the real reason was…..it clashed with the turning on with the Christmas lights. Cheltenham versus Leeds or Richard Fleeshman- I certainly know which one I’d choose!

Tickets sold out almost instantly, meaning Whaddon Road had the second biggest crowd in its Football League history, second only to the 2002 play off semi-final against Hartlepool. It was such that the club urged fans not to turn up after 1:30pm to this 2pm kick off.

Leeds, meanwhile, were confident. Dennis Wise had pointed out that Cheltenham were in dire straits, and Eddie Gray concluded that the Robins were probably the worst team he’d ever seen play, and the game should be one of the easier ones in Leeds’ League 1 season. How wrong he’d turn out to be…..

Before kick off, the general view around the ground was not whether Leeds would win, but how many they’d win by. As fans piled into the ground, and Leeds fans attempted to disguise themselves as Cheltenham fans, apprehension grew, and I counted a couple of famous and semi-famous faces, such as Flo, Prutton, Kandol and Beckford.

The Robins meanwhile had debutants on the bench. Guy Madjo, the loan signing from Crawley, and somebody called Michael D’Agostino. Despite having D’Agostino, a winger available, Keith Downing still decided to continue with the very frustrating Damien Spencer on the left side.

From the off, Leeds attacked. And continued to attack throughout the first half. At this stage I was trying to remember how long it took us to concede in the recent game against Nottingham Forest. It was, I remembered, about 10 minutes. When 15 minutes passed with no goals, I began to grow slightly optimistic.

I was reminded of cup games against superior opposition on Football Manager where I’d count down the minutes in order to hold onto the 0-0. As it got to half time, I began to feel that it could be one of those games where Leeds dominate but somehow fail to score.

It certainly helped that the Cheltenham players were defending as if their lives depended on it. It made me wonder why they couldn’t defend like this against teams like Walsall and Port Vale, who have a much less talented strikeforce than Jermaine Beckford and Tresor Kandol, with Tore Andre Flo as backup.

However our defending led Dennis Wise to panic, and Leeds launched a full on assault on the Cheltenham goal, playing a 3-3-4 formation, with De Vries and Flo coming on for Prutton and Parker, and Westlake coming onto Kandol. With quarter of an hour left. Leeds won a free kick in a dangerous position. Captain Jonathan Douglas placed the ball. Cheltenham set up what looked suspiciously like two separate walls, Douglas shot, Shane Higgs palmed it away, and Beckford smashed it into the net.

The Leeds fans went wild, and the Cheltenham fans accepted the inevitable. Just then I heard cheering behind me. "Oh must be a Leeds fan in our end" I thought. But I looked behind me and recognised him as someone who I’d seen cheering on Cheltenham a few minutes ago. So why was he cheering what looked like a Leeds winner? Then suddenly it dawned on me. It was offside! There was a moment of great amusement as the Leeds fans continued to celebrate as though they’d just won the Champions League, until the fact they hadn’t scored suddenly dawned on them.

With about ten minutes to go, a pivotal moment in the game took place. Madjo, who had just replaced Connolly, raced to beat David Lucas for the ball, resulting in a rather nasty collision. Leeds players rushed to the injured keeper, and it didn’t look good. Leeds had at this point made all three substitutions, and Lucas was their third choice keeper.

I admit I felt rather worried for him, as the urgency in which the Leeds players summoned the referee suggested this was no ordinary injury. Fortunately, he got up, though he definitely wasn’t 100% fit. And so it was that a mistake by the injured Lucas led to the only goal of the game.

A rare attack from the Robins resulted in a long ball. Lucas decided to header it, not out for a throw, but straight in front of him. A gleeful Steven Gillespie saw the open goal, chipped the ball, and…Surely it couldn’t go in? Surely Cheltenham couldn’t be taking the lead against Leeds United? It can’t be allowed! Surely the ball would bounce harmlessly over. But no…the ball was in the net! Cheltenham fans jumped for joy, and began the countdown to full time.

After four agonising additional minutes, the referee blew the whistle, and Cheltenham celebrated one of their greatest ever results. How apt that it was a scouser who robbed the points from the league leaders. To put the brilliance of the result into perspective…this was only Leeds’ second defeat of the season, the first of which came against high-flying Carlisle. We were also the first team in the league to keep a clean sheet against Leeds, not counting Hereford in the F.A Cup. Meanwhile we had only won twice before this game, at home to Gillingham and away to Huddersfield.

Next up for Cheltenham is the short trip to the Memorial Stadium to play Bristol Rovers in this weekend’s big westcountry derby. Rovers have a number of players out injured, and their home form has been rather woeful. A jubilant Robins should be confident of getting a result.

JAMES LEWIS