On 5th April 2009 at just after 2.30pm, Tom Craddock etched his name into Luton Town Football Club’s history book, joining a select few who have scored a goal at Wembley for the club and gone on to lift a trophy at the full time whistle.
More than 14 years on from that memorable EFL Trophy Final, where a promotion-chasing Scunthorpe United in the league above tried to spoil the party for over 40,000 Hatters fans who dressed Wembley Stadium in orange and white, Craddock can still remember the moment his strike hit the net after neat chest down and thumping volley which saw Luton take the lead for the first time in the match.
“The stars aligned for me to score that goal at Wembley,” he said over the phone on the eve of the final’s anniversary. “It was everything you’d want in a good half volley - head over the ball and a good first touch, it was just perfect.
“I’ve got a picture where you can see me after it’s just gone in, and all the fans cheering, it honestly just makes me so proud that I was able to do that.
“It’s not until you finish and look back that you think ‘wow’. I was a tiny little bit of the history of such a fantastic club like Luton and it just makes you proud.”
Craddock’s goal set up what was to be an entertaining last 20 minutes, with Scunthorpe clawing their way back through a Grant McCann wonder strike on 88 minutes which forced extra time.
In a tight affair, Claude Gnakpa raced through for Luton in the first half of the extended period and sent a looping effort over the Iron’s goalkeeper Joe Murphy to clinch victory for Mick Harford’s side at the national stadium for the first time since 1988. Craddock always felt like his side would be lifting the trophy on the day.
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He said: “We stayed in a hotel the night before the game and I remember Mick (Harford) gave a speech about taking the opportunity and how well you’ll be remembered if you do it. I was just so excited, my phone was going mad and my friends and family were coming down from the north east.
“I was just so confident that we were going to win this game, but speaking to people afterwards, no one expected us to win as Scunthorpe were doing so well. However, if you look at the run-up to the final, we beat all League One teams, so I just expected to win and I think all the lads did too.
“I remember being subbed off with about ten minutes to play and being gutted that they scored because I wanted to score the winning goal, but that was when I looked around and saw the fans cheering. It was unbelievable.
“Obviously Claude (Gnakpa) scored and at the final whistle, I remember running on the pitch and it was just euphoria - I was absolutely buzzing. We’d won at Wembley and I can remember the celebrations on the pitch with that amount of fans with their flags and scarves. I didn’t want to come off the pitch and go into the changing room, it was just brilliant.”
The slap…
The final could have been so different though. On the stroke of half time, the former Luton forward jogged past Scunthorpe’s captain Cliff Byrne and struck him across the face in an off-the-ball incident that left the skipper dumbfounded.
Confusion ensued as the players in claret and blue argued with the puzzled officials who hadn’t seen anything. Although Craddock was lucky to get away with it and admits it was “a heat of the moment thing”, there was only one thing on his mind after the altercation.
“If there was VAR then I would have been sent off,” he said with a smirk. “When the referee was speaking to the fourth official, all I was thinking was that I need to apologise to the lads, and that Niko (Kevin Nicholls) is going to try and fight me in the changing room because he would have gone mad.
“I was practising my apology speech in my head, and when the ref came over and said the fourth official and the linesman didn’t see it, I was so relieved - thank the lord because it could have been so different.”
But why? The 36-year-old continued: “I ran across the pitch and he went to step across me, so with inexperience I gave him a slap. I had a streak where I could do something stupid like that.
“Nothing had been said, I don’t even think we had been near each other, but because he tried to step across me and stop me, I lashed out.
“At half time I can remember Mick just giving me a smile and a nod. I think a couple of the subs had seen it who were laughing and saying I was lucky.”
A club in trouble
Winning at Wembley created a wonderful day for everyone connected to the club and a welcome distraction from what was happening in the league. Before Craddock touched a ball in a Luton shirt, relegation from the Football League was inevitable, even with more than three quarters of the League Two season to play.
When the forward signed initially on loan from Middlesbrough in the October of 2008, the Hatters sat on -18 points after picking up a trio of wins and draws, but would have to hope for a miracle if they were to overturn a -30 point deduction imposed by the Football League and the Football Association.
Craddock’s switch from the north east to Bedfordshire was made permanent a month later following a good run of form where he scored three in four matches, however the striker wasn’t worried about the uphill task of keeping Luton’s football league status alive. In fact, he believed he could help turn the deficit around.
He said: “I remember going into the office (when first signing for Luton) to meet Mick and shaking hands with him. He was very warm and welcoming, but the whole club was full of normal and good people.
“Looking back at the points deduction, it was a foregone conclusion (that Luton would be relegated) but in my head I thought we could stay up. We absolutely battered every team we played when I first came in on loan, and although we scored goals, we just couldn’t seem to put teams to bed.
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“Even when I signed permanently, we were battering teams but getting beat or going down a goal and coming back, which was weird because I felt we were capable of going on a run. It was a tough task but I wasn’t even really bothered as I was enjoying my football and loving being part of the first team. I had fans singing my name so it was just brilliant for me.”
The goal scorer also looks back with happiness at the fans when he helped secure Luton’s Wembley date in the EFL Trophy Final after scoring against Brighton & Hove Albion in the second leg of the Area Final with only 60 seconds played at Kenilworth Road.
He continued: “It was a perfect start and it was perfect how the ball fell. I won the flick on, the defender and the goalkeeper got confused and it wasn’t a bad finish to be fair as I had to take a quick touch then slot it in - it was quite a tight angle.
“I remember running over to the crowd and I had grown men cheering and jumping on me saying ‘we love you Tommy’. That’s when I thought this is what football is all about, this is what I’ve been craving. It was just fantastic.”
After the Wembley win, Luton never got back on track. The side failed to claim another victory for the rest of the season and Tom’s confidence of staying up was swept away in the celebrations of creating history. Relegation was confirmed just a few weeks later on Easter Monday.
“Personally for me, and what happened in the final and playing such a big role, I struggled to come down from that high,” he said. “My form was crap for about five or six games afterwards. I think I scored a couple of penalties before the end of the season but I struggled with it. I think everyone struggled a bit.
“When we got relegated, I remember Mick said in the changing room that this was the rebirth of Luton Town and he pointed at the clock to show the time."
"When Luton got promoted back to the Championship (in 2019 with Mick Harford as manager), I texted him to remind him about what he said all that time ago and to say well done for getting the club back to where it belongs.
“I thought we would come back up straight away, but the National League is a tough league and we didn’t realise that everyone would be raising their game against us.
“As a club, we found it difficult to begin with. I think it was just the expectation, and everyone going from being on our side from the season before, to the fans letting us know about it if we weren’t winning.”
Money, Money, Money
Craddock believes it was that expectation from the outside that brought poor form at the start of the club’s first season as a non-league side. Mick Harford was eventually relieved of his duties on 1st October 2009 and Richard Money came in as his replacement. Although the Hatters went on to finish second in the table, adjusting to life under the new manager was tough, according to Craddock.
He said: “I was gutted that Mick lost his job but we just weren’t playing well. I think it was because teams were lifting their game to play against us, and as a club, we struggled with the expectation.
“It was difficult because Mick had been at the club for years and he is a brilliant football man, he just made you feel like a million dollars and knew what it meant to play for Luton.
“Richard came in and he was the complete opposite, he was a bit of a nightmare at first. He was very emotional and you didn’t know what he was thinking. It was a little bit here, there and everywhere so you didn’t know where you stood with him.
“You can get a feeling from managers whether they fancy you or not and I just knew when he came in he didn’t fancy me. He brought Barnsey (Matthew Barnes-Homer) in who was a similar striker to me and I knew he was looking at bringing in other strikers.
“Richard was really, really good on the training ground. Tactically he was excellent and he set the team up really well, but I do think he fell into the formation a little bit at the end of the season.
“He sort of had to play me because he was getting pressure as the fans were singing my name. We did a lot of work on the training ground and he was really good at that to be fair, but he just created problems where problems weren’t needed.
“He was just a bit chaotic really, Richard had an ego and I think he just wanted to put his own stamp on things, but he didn’t need to.”
“I remember him arguing with the fans and after we got beat in that play-off semi final (against York City), I wanted him to keep the team together as everyone liked it there and no one wanted to leave. We would have been better prepared (for the next season) and would have gone up, but he just tried to change too much.”
Play-off heartbreak
The Town finished ten points in front of play-off rivals York City in their 2009/10 non-league campaign, but couldn’t muster a goal across two semi-final legs which handed The Minstermen a place in the final against Oxford United.
City scored late in the first leg then created a hostile encounter at Kenilworth Road in the reverse fixture, stealing another soft goal which made it 2-0 on aggregate and ended the Hatters’ hopes of an immediate return to the Football League.
“I rewatched the play-off games recently for the first time and I cannot believe we didn’t score in that away game,” said Craddock.
“Apart from leaving Luton, that’s my biggest regret in football that we didn’t get a victory in the first leg, because we would have beaten Oxford at Wembley with the way we played.
Watch the highlights of that play-off first leg semi final against York City below...
“York were a bit of a bogey team for us. We’d had a couple of draws against them in the season and we just didn’t get the rub of the green. We needed to defend better at the end of that first leg, plus our finishing and end product needed to be better. Whether that’s because there was a lack of quality, or a lack of luck, I don’t know.
“We were on top in the second leg, then they scored, which meant the game got really bitty and we weren’t finding a way through as they were hard to break down. York managed the game really well to be honest and everyone began to get frustrated.
“I had a flat in Dunstable and I just remember going home and being absolutely gutted. I couldn’t believe we hadn’t scored a goal against them with the chances we had across the two games.”
Cue the U’s
Although the season ended in disappointment for the Hatters, personally for Craddock it was a campaign to be proud of having finished as the league’s top goal scorer. His form gained interest from teams higher up the footballing pyramid and eventually the striker put pen to paper up the road at Oxford United.
He said: “Richard Money was leaving me out and Oxford United were interested. I had scored 24 goals in the season before and I couldn’t work out why I wasn’t first choice.
“I said to him if you’re not going to play me then I would like to leave, but I didn’t want to, it was just to scare him. I felt like he was sort of forcing me out. I was quite impatient when I was younger, and I found out that Oxford had made a bid for me so I signed for them.
“I went and met the manager Chris Wilder who was a good guy, but I remember being sat in the reception after everything had been agreed and I was literally going to get in my car and drive back to Luton without signing because I had this feeling that I didn’t want to leave. I regret giving up everything I had at Luton.”
Despite Craddock only being a Luton player for 18 months, he managed to get fans off their seats in that time and create a magic Wembley moment that is just as special for him, as it is for the Hatters’ faithful. His time with Luton was remarkable and he admits that he never quite found another club which suited.
He said: “Every time I used to set off from Dunstable to get to Kenilworth Road, I was just so excited to get to a game and absolutely buzzing to play - it was just such a good feeling. I never got that again in my career.
“I’ve only got good memories about the club. It was a massive part of my life and one of the most enjoyable parts of my life that I will always look back on with pride.
“I’d like to think people will remember me at Luton for being a good goal scorer, they’ll definitely remember me for the slap and Wembley, but hopefully the fans will also see me as a good person.” They certainly will, Tom.
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