Tranmere need repeat fairytale to prevent league exit after 94 years

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2015/apr/24/tranmere-rovers-fairytale-gary-williams-league-exit

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Tranmere Rovers have been members of the Football League since the year in which Charlie Chaplin released his first feature film but what they need now is a Gary Williams-style fairytale.

Williams was the improbable scorer of the goal that saved Tranmere from relegation to the Conference on the last day of the season in 1987 and proved the catalyst to a renaissance that took them to a slew of Wembley appearances and the verge of the Premier League. Williams hopes the memory of that dramatic turnaround can help lift Rovers’ players, who need to find inspiration from somewhere pronto.

Tranmere will drop out of the body they joined in 1921 if they lose at Plymouth Argyle on Saturday and Hartlepool United and Cheltenham Town win. Rovers’ form is ominous: they have lost their past four matches and performed so badly in last week’s 3-0 home defeat by Oxford United that Micky Adams left and was replaced as manager by two caretakers, Alan Rogers and Shaun Garnett. Both men are steeped in Tranmere’s heritage and may well cite Williams’ famous winning goal against Exeter as an example for their players to follow at Plymouth.

“I remember it well,” says Williams, who runs urban regeneration projects on Merseyside. “I remember how nervous everyone was before the Exeter game. We were churning inside, especially all the local lads from Liverpool and the Wirral. The assistant manager at the time, Ronnie Moore, was also a local lad and he kept saying to us: ‘Come on, let’s not go down in history as the ones who took Tranmere out of the league.’ Everyone was on edge.”

The pressure did not dissipate at kick-off. “No one really wanted the ball and we were just kicking it as far down the other end as possible,” Williams says. “It was going to take a moment of inspiration from someone to get us the win.”

Six minutes from time, Williams, who scored only 16 goals in 174 appearances for Tranmere, met a cross from Ian Muir and headed it into the net from close range to seal a 1-0 win that kept Tranmere up. “The inspiration behind the goal was really Muiry, who was probably the only one of us who didn’t feel nervous, probably because he had such good technique. His run and cross made the goal. I was just in the right place at the right time. The euphoria afterwards was unbelievable. You think you’ve won the World Cup!

“All the players went for beers in Birkenhead with the fans. Players weren’t detached back then. We knew all the fans, lived on the same streets as them, were just like them. And I’ll tell you, there are a lot of good people who will really feel something’s missing if Tranmere go down this season.”

Williams believes relegation would be all the sadder because it would complicate the plans of Mark Palios, the former Football Association chairman who, along with his wife, Nicola, took charge of Tranmere at the start of this season.

“I think he is the best chairman in all four leagues,” says Williams, who has known Palios since the pair played together at Tranmere in the 1970s.

“He was then what he is now, just a lovely, helpful man. That is what would make it even more upsetting if they went down.

“He genuinely has great plans for the club: a new stand, new training facility, the money in place. All they have to do is stay up this season.”