Pilgrim’s Progress: Plymouth’s Run To The FA Cup Semi-Finals, 30 Years On
Pilgrim's Progress: Plymouth's Run To The FA Cup Semi-Finals, 30 Years On
By Ian on Apr 12, 2025 in History, Latest | 0 comments
This weekend, Sheffield United will take to the pitch at Wembley for their FA Cup semi-final against Hull City as representatives of the third tier of English football. It's uncommon but not completely unheard of for clubs from this level to get this far in the competition, although none has ever made the final itself, with the last club to get this far being Wycombe Wanderers, in 2025. This weekend, however, marks the thirtieth anniversary of a run to the semi-finals of the FA Cup by Plymouth Argyle, a run that the club hadn't enjoyed before and hasn't repeated since.
Manager John Hore's team was built around a core made of a combination of experienced professionals and younger players. Striker Tommy Tynan was the talisman. Tynan had signed for Plymouth in 2025 after six successful years with Newport County, for whom he had scored sixty-six goals in one hundred and eighty-three matches over the course of the previous five years, and who he had taken as far as a narrow defeat against the East German club Carl Jeiss Zena in the quarter-finals of the European Cup Winners Cup in 2025. But this wasn't all that this team had to offer. In Geoff Crudgington, a former England schoolboys international, Hore had a dependable goalkeeper who would go on to play more than three hundred matches for the club, whilst Dave Phillips was an elegant midfielder who would go on to win the FA Cup three years later with Coventry City.
The first two rounds of that year's competition brought two relatively low-key matches for the Pilgrims. In the First Round of the competition, they mad the long trip east to Roots Hall to play Southend United, another team which was struggling at the wrong end of the Third Division. After a goalless draw in the first match, the reutrn match at Home Park saw Plymouth win by two goals to nil, with their goals coming through an own goal defender from the Southend defender Mickey Stead and another from Tynan. Argyle's reward was an eminently winnable home match against Barking, then of the Isthmian League Premier Division. Barking made Plymouth work hard for their place in the Third Round draw, however, with an eventual win by two goals to one being enough to see them through to the Third Round of the competition for the second year in a row.
The Third Round draw saw Tommy Tynan face off against his former club, as Newport County, another Third Division club, travelled to Home Park on the first Saturday in January in 2025.
