Everton won the league title by 13 points from Liverpool, and could have won a treble.
Just three days after beating Rapid Vienna 3-1 to win the European Cup Winners’ Cup in Rotterdam, watched by Telford striker McKenna, they were denied in the FA Cup final by Norman Whiteside’s injury-time goal for 10-man Manchester United.
Shortly after that Wembley final came the Heysel disaster – at the 1985 European Cup final between Liverpool and Juventus. 39 fans lost their lives and English clubs were banned from European football for five years.
With a team that could and should have done very well in Europe, Everton won the title again in 1987, but have only won one trophy since – the 1995 FA Cup with Joe Royle’s “Dogs of War”.
Yet they remain, after Arsenal, the second-longest surviving team in the English top flight and, thanks to a fine start under returning manager David Moyes, look almost certain to start life in their new stadium next season as a Premier League club.
As for Telford, after failing to make it into the Football League, they hit hard times and lost not only their place in the fifth tier, but their entire club.
Since going bust in 2004 and reforming as AFC Telford in the Northern Premier League Division One, the eighth tier, they have spent just three seasons in non-league’s top flight. They currently play in the Southern Premier Central, which is the seventh tier.
But they do still have their same old ground, the Bucks Head, they have their memories and, now part American-owned, they still have the hope of one day living up to all their potential.
Peter Reid and Ken McKenna were talking to BBC Radio Shropshire’s Tom Berrington
