Ee-aye-addio: The road to Wembley 1965

It's strange to think that up until 1965, Liverpool FC's trophy cabinet had lacked an FA Cup. The club owned six Football League championships but astonishingly had never won the world's oldest - and most famous - cup competition.

In fact, the Reds' failure to win an FA Cup had even begun to spark talk of witchcraft.

As Liverpool FC historian Adrian Killen explained: "It was said that if Liverpool ever won the FA Cup, the Liver birds would take off!"

Indeed, Bill Shankly could scarcely believe that a club like Liverpool had never lifted the FA Cup, as Ian St John recalls: "Shanks used to go mad because he'd say, 'How can a club like Liverpool with the support they've got and the city they're from not have won the FA Cup?' That used to bug him."

The team had come close in 1963, but initially even Shankly wasn't immune to the cup curse as his team suffered a heart-breaking defeat in the semi-final to Leicester City.

"It was the Holy Grail. I think he made it one of his priorities and that was why it was so devastating when we got knocked out in the semi-final against Leicester in 63," Killen remembers.

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Liverpool's pursuit of that grail in 1965 began at West Bromwich Albion. In the game, they built up a two-goal lead, but the curse appeared ready to strike once again when Ron Yeats picked the ball up in the area after hearing a whistle in the crowd. The resulting penalty was missed, and Liverpool went through 2-1 despite a late Jeff Astle strike.

The fourth-round draw pitted the Reds against fourth-division Stockport County. It appeared a foregone conclusion - the previous season's league champions against a team who'd prop up the entire Football League that season. Shankly even passed on management duties to Bob Paisley in order to scout the Reds' European Cup opponents, Cologne.

"We thought we were going to win that easy, but as it turns out we didn't," said striker Roger Hunt.

In fact, the minnows scored first and Gordon Milne had to equalise at Anfield to prevent one of the all-time great FA Cup shocks. The replay was won 2-0, again in uncomfortable fashion.

After coming through a tricky tie at Bolton, the Reds faced their 1963 nemesis, Leicester City and their highly-talented goalkeeper Gordon Banks. Even worse, they would have to do so away from Anfield. Thoughts of revenge were at the forefront of the players' minds - but there was also an element of trepidation.

"It all went silent when we drew Leicester, our bogey team," Hunt said. Fate appeared to be conspiring once more against Liverpool.

They may not have been able to beat Banks in a 0-0 draw at Filbert Street, but importantly it meant that the team could pursue their revenge in front of the Anfield crowd, desperate to see the team vanquish those who had broken their hearts two years before.

After 71 minutes of the replay, Hunt finally put the ball into the Leicester net and Anfield began to believe that 1965 might finally be the year in which decades chasing cup glory came to an end.

Of the 285 goals Hunt scored for Liverpool, it is one the man himself thought was pretty special, saying: "Big Ron Yeats had come up and he headed the ball down and it just came just down to me for a left-foot volley, which flew into the net. I rate it one of the best I've ever scored."

Those involved remember it as one of their greatest ever nights at Anfield.

Liverpool 'keeper, Tommy Lawrence, said: "It was a fantastic night - the noise...it was probably the biggest noise I'd ever heard that night when we beat Leicester."

Going into the semi-finals, however, that looked like Scouse optimism rather than a rational assessment of Liverpool's chances as the other three semi-finalists occupied the top three places in the First Division, and the Reds would play a swaggering Chelsea side.

Liverpool were big underdogs, especially because they had to face the Blues just three days after a gruelling European Cup game in Cologne. So confident were Chelsea that they'd allegedly already printed their program for the final.

Typically, Shankly used this as motivation, as defender Chris Lawler said: "He came in the dressing room and was saying they'd had a program printed already that they were in the final, and he was fuming. He was saying, 'If that doesn't gee you up I can't see what else will.'"

The speech worked - but it took incredible guts from Willie Stevenson to win the game 2-0 with a penalty which no one wanted to take. His confidence was admirable but the player admits that there was some luck involved.

"The best thing about that was that I meant to put it in the bottom right-hand corner, but my foot just slipped and instead of going along the ground it went about six feet up and straight into the back of the net," Stevenson said.

The fates had turned, and at last it appeared that the cup curse might be broken with the Reds on their way to Wembley.

Little did the players know that just minutes into the final against Leeds their cup dreams would be in tatters...

Come back to liverpoolfc.com on Thursday and Friday to hear more from those who were there.

A brand new documentary, 'EE-AYE-ADDIO - 1965 And All That' premieres on Friday May 1 at 8pm BST on LFCTV (available on Sky channel number 429 and Virgin Media customers on 544) and will air throughout May.

For more information about how to sign up to LFCTV in the UK and Ireland, visit www.liverpoolfc.com/lfctv.

Fans outside the UK and Ireland can still enjoy the documentary which will be available to view on LFCTV GO at www.liverpoolfc.com/video.