1987–88 FA Cup
association football tournament concluding in 1988
The 1987–88 FA Cup was the 107th season of the world's oldest knockout football competition, the Football Association Challenge Cup, or FA Cup for short. The competition was won by Wimbledon who defeated league champions Liverpool 1–0 following a headed goal by Lawrie Sanchez, thus denying Liverpool the double. This was Wimbledon's only FA Cup title during its lifetime.
Qualifying rounds
Most participating clubs that were not members of the Football League competed in the qualifying rounds to secure one of 28 places available in the first round.
The winners from the fourth qualifying round were Bishop Auckland, Macclesfield Town, Colwyn Bay, Runcorn, Chorley, Lincoln City, Northwich Victoria, Billingham Synthonia, Atherstone United, Welling United, Chelmsford City, Dagenham, VS Rugby, Barnet, Aylesbury United, Hayes, Worcester City, Halesowen Town, Tamworth, Sutton United, Carshalton Athletic, Bath City, Merthyr Tydfil, Farnborough Town, Bognor Regis Town, Yeovil Town, Maidstone United and Cheltenham Town.
Appearing in the competition proper for the first time were Colwyn Bay and Atherstone United. Of the others, Merthyr Tydfil had last featured at this stage in 1979–80, Cheltenham Town had last done so in 1974–75, Hayes had last done so in 1973–74, Tamworth in 1970–71 and Billingham Synthonia in 1957–58.
Macclesfield Town, Sutton United and Yeovil Town each played nine matches across seven rounds of this tournament, progressing from the first qualifying round to the third round proper. Yeovil Town did this from the Isthmian League at Step 6 of English football, while Macclesfield Town and Sutton United were from the Football Conference at Step 5. Sutton United also managed to push Middlesbrough to extra time in a replay (at Ayresome Park) before being knocked out of the competition.
The public source identifies “1987–88 FA Cup” as association football tournament concluding in 1988. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around association, football and tournament.
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Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1386602. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1987, 1979, 1974 and 1973.
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This entry incorporates text from “1987–88 FA Cup” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.