Film / Bostock's Cup

Bostock's Cup is a 1999 made-for-TV mockumentary sports film, written by Nick Hancock and Chris England, and broadcast on ITV.

In 1999, a commemorative dinner is held to commemorate the 25th anniversary of Bostock's Cup, a documentary that chronicled the unlikely FA Cup victory of Bostock Stanley, an unglamorous and otherwise hopelessly inept club in the Third Division of the English Football League during the 1973/74 season. In attendance are: Gerry Tudor (Neil Pearson), the documentary's host and producer who has since become one of the country's most famous TV sports presenters; Bertie Masson (Tim Healy), Bostock's manager during the cup run; and the various individuals who played for the team that year. During the course of the night, the dinner's host, small-time TV journalist Mike Tonker (Hancock), is contacted by a secret informant who points him in the direction of out-take footage from the documentary, which suggest that Gerry was more involved with Bostock's fateful cup run than it appears...

Tropes include:

• The '70s: While the Framing Device is set in the then-present of 1999, the bulk of the film takes place in the thick of 1970's Britain, as evident in everything from the fashions and hairstyles of the cast, to the background events referenced, to even the film quality and soundtrack of the documentary itself.
  Mike Tonker: Let's go back to the 1973/74 season. Watergate and power cuts, kipper ties and flared trousers!
• Actually Pretty Funny: On the coach ride to Wembley, Rodger Hartley reads out some of the disparaging things the pundits are saying about Stanley, and him in particular, in wry amusement.
  Rodger: That's nice, listen: "I give Bostock Stanley no chance", blah blah blah... "Up front, they have an ironically nicknamed Rodger 'Rocket' Hartley, a calamitous center-forward whose striking prowess is matched only by his own execrable poetry." (grins) Not bad, eh?
• Alternate History:
  • Bostock Stanley are a fictional team, and no club from what at the time was known as the Third Division has ever reached the FA Cup final, much less won it (the closest was Chesterfield, who reached the semi-finals in 1997).
  • Bostock's opponents in the 1974 FA Cup final are shown to be Leeds United. Leeds didn't get anywhere near the final that year (they were eliminated in the fifth round), which was actually contested by Liverpool and Newcastle United. Real Life Writes the Plot here, as they needed to re-use Stock Footage from an FA Cup final for budget reasons, and they ended up going with the 1973 final since it was only a year out, and that year's winners, Sunderland, wore red-and-white striped shirts (also Bostock's colours and, as it happens, the most commonly used colour combination in the English league system), and Leeds just happened to be Sunderland's opponents that year ^note  it also made sense to use Leeds from a story standpoint, since they won the League that year, and would have been out to win the Double, making Bostock's victory even more impressive .
• Analogy Backfire: Bertie delightedly comments that, against non-league Pontefract Athletic, Bostock are considered the 'overdogs' for once, and compares it to "a classic David and Goliath situation". After confirming that Bertie means Pontefract is the David and Bostock the Goliath, Gerry uneasily informs him that it was David who killed Goliath, leaving Bertie to pause for a moment before changing the subject.
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking: Gerry describes how the 1973/74 season was a particularly bleak time for Britain: the Three-Day Week power cuts were in effect, England failed to qualify for the World Cup, and the number one hit of the season was some "forgettable" Christmas Song by Slade.
• Artistic License – Sports: Obviously Played for Laughs, but Pontefract's excessively sloping pitch would never be allowed to be used in a competitive fixture. It's a nod to how non-league grounds often used to be played up by the press to be places where top clubs drawn to play away to non-league sides in the earlier rounds of the FA Cup could be tripped up; the prime example is that of Yeovil Town, who gained a giant-killing reputation as a result of beating Sunderland (then in the First Division) in the fourth round of the 1949 tournament; Yeovil's ground at the time, the Huish Athletic Ground, was notable for having an eight-foot side-to-side slope.
• Awkward Poetry Reading: "Rocket" Rodger Hartley writes poems when he's not playing football (and sometimes, when he is). His poem in anticipation of the Cup drawing, "Contemplation of the Draw for the 5th Round of the FA Cup", is recited in a very slow, stilted manner that occasionally treats the Common Meter as more of a suggestion, and the poem itself is full of Painful Rhymes shoehorned to fit the names of the clubs mentioned (even reusing the same "excited/United" couplet consecutively).
• The Bad Guy Wins: Insofar as the film has a bad guy, but Alan Hardy gets exactly what he wanted by leaking Gerry Tudor's backroom wrongdoings to Mike Tonker, spoiling Bostock Stanley's greatest achievement purely because he wasn't a part of it.
• Best Served Cold: Alan Hardy is revealed to have tipped off Mike Tonker as to Gerry's actions behind the scenes of the FA Cup run, thus setting up Mike to ruin Gerry's career (and, inadvertently, his own).
• Blatant Lies: When Mike reveals the footage of Gerry giving money to the referee before the semi-final against Leicester City, Gerry tries to protest that he was just paying the referee to do a loft conversion for him.
• Brick Joke: "Young Pete", the teenage triallist who Bertie dismissed as "not good enough at football", is revealed during the end credits to have grown up to become Peter Beardsley.
• Cluster F-Bomb: Bertie drops a major one at the Bostock players after they end up 3-0 down in the first half against non-league Pontefract Athletic, mostly as the result of them having to play uphill on Pontefract's ludicrously sloping pitch. Eventually, Alan Hardy starts dropping F-bombs too, then Mick Wallace gets involved, and even the referee ends up getting on in it by sticking his head into the dressing room to say "time for the second half, you bunch of fucking cunts".
• Crazy Enough to Work: Subverted; after Alan Hardy burns Bertie's lucky cup hat prior to the quarter-final against Hull City (not that Bertie realises this, as he was hypnotised at the time), the players suggest that he rub the ashes into his hair. He does so, setting his hair on fire, but it seems to work, as Bostock defeat Hull. Unbeknownst to Bertie, however, this had far more to do with the Hull players having been secretly hypnotised to be scared of the ball.
• Crushing Handshake: Mick Wallace gives a deliberate one to the Pontefract captain at kickoff.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Mention is made of a long-running sport-related quiz show that Gerry presents called Sporting Questions, which is clearly an Expy for A Question of Sport. Mike proposes to the TV executives that this show is out of date and should be replaced by something edgier, to be presented by Mike himself; what he suggests for the replacement show sounds a lot like They Think It's All Over. Which was presented by Nick Hancock, who not only plays Mike but co-wrote Bostock's Cup ^note  although funnily enough, Des Lynam, the Real Life version of Gerry, never actually presented A Question of Sport — although he did present the radio version of They Think It's All Over .
• Downer Ending: It's mentioned that Bostock went bust only a few months after their FA Cup victory, meaning they never got the chance to defend the trophy or play in the European Cup Winners' Cup. Worse still, the ending reveals that this was the result of Gerry exploiting some Loophole Abuse to secretly buy out Bostock's ground, evict the club and make himself a tidy profit.
• Epic Fail:
  • While Bostock Stanley would make history with their FA Cup victory, their league campaign is strongly implied to have also made history as the worst-ever season for a club in what at the time was known as Division Three. A quick look at the table ahead of the FA Cup 5th round shows that, by February, Bostock had only managed one win in 26 matches^note And it's explicitly stated that that win was only recorded as such because the match was snowed off at home. and possessed a goal differential of -55. And to rub salt in the wound, they never got the chance to improve on this dismal performance as the club went bust shortly afterwards thanks to Gerry's meddling.
    Gerry: Indeed, it was clear that the only way Bostock Stanley could avoid relegation would be if the football league suddenly changed its rules so that the team finished in alphabetical order.
  • Mike's plan to use out-take footage from the original documentary to discredit Gerry ultimately ends in himself getting sacked, while it's implied that Gerry will still be able to resurrect his career after lying low for a while.
• Exact Words: Tommy Bennett is touted as having experience playing at "the highest level" of English football. As in, he used to play for West Bromwich Albion, whose ground, the Hawthorns, is the highest League ground above sea level in England ^note  although, to be fair, West Brom had been in the First Division prior to the relegation in 1973, and had won the FA Cup in 1968 .
• Face Framed in Shadow: The identity of Mike Tonker's Deep Throat-style informant is hidden this way up until The Reveal that it's Alan Hardy, with the only visible traits being that he is a very tall, very bald man.
• Face Palm:
  • Bertie's general reaction (and by extension, Bob Phillips' reaction as well) every time the ball gets anywhere near the Bostock goal.
  • Gerry is left doing this when the team's idiotic coach driver's poor sense of direction reaches truly mindboggling levels.
• Fiery Redhead: Ginger-haired hard-man Mick Wallace is a combative presence both on and off the pitch and has an exceptionally poor disciplinary record (noted as one of the worst in the league, in fact).
• Film Within a Film: In addition to the film itself being called Bostock's Cup, "Bostock's Cup" is used as the title for the fictional documentary that tells the story of Bostock Stanley's FA Cup victory - though it's revealed that it was meant to be called "Life in the Slow Lane" until their cup run.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Early on, Mike Tonker mentions the Watergate scandal while setting the scene for the 1973/74 season. During the interludes, its revealed that Mike was approached Deep Throat-style by an informant pointing towards evidence in the documentary out-takes which will expose Gerry's crimes.
  • The first such interlude features a flashback of Mike working late at the office putting the reunion dinner together. Pinned to his corkboard are the names of several former Bostock players and personnel he's tried to contact to invite, among which is a name we've yet to hear: "Brian Parkinson", followed by "???", alluding to his mysterious nature and suggesting that he will be significant later on.
  • Gerry's candid interview with Margaret Masson has them sitting intimately close to one another as Margaret talks less about her husband and the team and more about her holiday plans to work on her tan. The interview concludes with a Time Skip to around the end of Mrs. Masson's holiday, with Gerry now sporting a conspicuously healthy tan of his own. It's later revealed that they had an affair and he's the biological father of her son.
  • Alan Hardy gets revenge for being demoted to the bench by stealing Bertie's lucky hat while Bertie is hypnotised and burning it. While it sets up a funny scene of Bertie trying to preserve the team's good luck by wearing the still-smouldering ashes on his head, it also shows that Hardy is petty enough to try and spoil things for Bostock out of spite for not getting what he wants, which sets up him being Tonker's informant.
• Gilligan Cut: When Gerry asks if Bertie has anything planned for the FA Cup quarter-final match, Bertie explains that he's not going to rely on any silly gimmicks, since that's not what the game is about. Cut to the Hull City changing room, where Bertie has brought in a hypnotist for the team. After that match, Bertie promises Gerry and the viewer that they'll employ no more publicity stunts for the semi-final... and then we cut to the training pitch, where the team is having their footwork assessed by a ballet instructor while Bertie suggests this exercise is purely for the film's benefit.
• Groin Attack: Mick Wallace delivers a cheap shot to notorious hard-man Billy Bremner, of all people, at the Cup Final, right as the teams are lining up to march out.
  Announcer: And here come the two teams... Billy Bremner seems to be walking a little oddly. I wonder why that is?
• Hypno Fool: Bertie hires a hypnotist, Edgar Pendulo, for the team ahead of the quarter-final match with Hull City, presumably to try and mesmerise some confidence into the team and invigorate them for the match, but instead all Pendulo does is hypnotise Bertie (whose skepticism offended him) into giving them all a striptease set to a raunchy Musical Trigger. Gerry gets more use out of Pendulo by hiring him to hypnotise the entire Hull team into being afraid of the football, giving Bostock the edge.
• Hypocritical Humor: When Norman Lewis and Mark Bull begin arguing over who should be last out of the changing room, Bertie comes in and admonishes them for their stupid superstitions, before noticing that he dropped his lucky cup hat and begins carefully dusting it off.
• It's All About Me:
  • While Mike Tonker certainly isn't wrong to expose Gerry's corrupt actions from 25 years prior, his main motive is to advance his own career by taking over over Gerry's presenting jobs after discrediting him. This winds up backfiring on Tonker and getting him fired (though it admittedly didn't help that he publicly showed footage of Gerry having sex with Margaret Masson, which really wasn't needed to make his point).
  • Similarly, Alan Hardy's role in ruining Gerry's career comes about not because he wants to bring him to justice, but because he's been nursing a grudge over Gerry's indirectly forcing him out of the team for the semi-final and final by bringing in "Brian Parkinson".
• It Will Never Catch On:
  • In his narration, Gerry dismisses Slade's then-recently released Christmas single, "Merry Xmas Everybody", as a "soon-to-be-forgotten novelty". Today, it's THE perennial Christmastime song in the UK.
  • Midway through the documentary, Bertie bluntly tells a young triallist for the team that he simply won't make it as a footballer because he's completely hopeless at every aspect of the game. The end credits reveal that this young lad grew up to be Peter Beardsley.
• Jerkass Has a Point: Prima donna he may be, but Alan Hardy is the only player to object to Bertie's halftime tirade against Pontefract Athletic, sensibly pointing out that Pontefract's 3-0 lead has less to do with their skill (or Bostock's lack thereof) and more to do with their sloped pitch and gravity working in their favour, and that once the teams switch sides in the 2nd half, they'll have the same advantage and will pretty much be able to score at will. Unfortunately, Bertie refuses to acknowledge Pontefract's home turf advantage and doesn't appreciate Alan butting in on his micromanaging, starting an argument between them that ends with Mick Wallace breaking Alan's nose.
• Karma Houdini: Gerry Tudor became an overnight celebrity in the world of British footy with his serendipitous documentary chronicling Bostock Stanley's miracle FA Cup run, while the match fixing he did to facilitate the sensational underdog story - and the insider trading he later committed that drove the club out of business - went undetected for decades. Even Mike Tonker's attempt at invoking his Karma Houdini Warranty by exposing said crimes turns out worse for him than for Gerry, as Gerry is able to smooth things over with the angry former Bostock players and remains confident that, with a month or two of lying low and a self-serving autobiography, he'll be able to ride on his celebrity status to beat the charges against him and land a bounce-back gig with Sky TV, while Mike is unceremoniously sacked for his whistleblowing.
• Kick the Dog: Mike does this by including the out-take footage about Gerry sleeping with Margaret in addition to the footage showing the match-fixing and insider trading in order to totally discredit Gerry. The former is unnecessary and only serves to humiliate Bertie and Margaret, and it arguably exposes Mike's ruthlessness, which in turn turns the TV executives against him.
• Large Ham: Edgar Pendulo, the hypnotist hired by Bertie to improve the squad's performance ahead of the Hull City match, is extremely flamboyant and theatrical.
• Loophole Abuse: As Bostock Stanley was originally founded as the works team of Bostock's (long since defunct) carpet factory, the lease on their ground came with a stipulation that the club's right of first refusal could be superseded by any third-party with a more "carpet-related" proposal for the site. Gerry is shown to have picked up that bit of information during one of the out-takes and, following the Cup run, sold that information to a consortium that bought up the land cheap, razed Stanley Park and, in its place, erected a small "carpet museum"... alongside a large chain hotel, driving Bostock Stanley out of business.
• Metaphorgotten: Gerry's early exposition is prone to setting up pointless analogies that are discarded halfway through:
  Gerry: If Britain were a giant cheese, then the largely insignificant town of Bostock would be somewhere near the middle of it.
  —
  Gerry: If you were to compare football managers to great leaders in history, then Alf Ramsey would be Winston Churchill, Bill Shankly might be Robert the Bruce, while Bertie Masson would be one of the other ones who never won anything.
• More Hypnotizable Than He Thinks: Bertie refuses to believe in the power of hypnosis, even as he's putting his clothes back on from the striptease he was hypnotised into performing in front of the squad.
• Named Like My Name: Bostock's fullback, George Best. Not THE George Best of course, but a different one!
• Nepotism: Crude and undisciplined hard-man Mick Wallace is Bertie's favourite player and persistent crony, having followed him over from three previous clubs. Bertie's first act as Bostock's manager is to name Mick team captain despite only having signed him that morning, sparking conflict between them and former captain Alan Hardy, and when an argument between them ends with Mick breaking Alan's nose, Bertie only made a show of pretending to fine Mick for it to quiet Alan's complaining while clearly not planning to actually punish him.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Going by the way Neil Pearson is made-up in the 1999 segments (grey hair, moustache), Gerry is evidently intended to be one of these for Des Lynam.
• No Communities Were Harmed: Bostock is a fictional town, but is mentioned as an industrial town which has fallen on hard times, meaning that it's likely intended as a stand-in for the Lancashire town of Accrington, whose local football club, Accrington Stanley, fell on hard times and went out of business in the 1960s, with "Accrington Stanley" subsequently becoming a byword for defunct, largely forgotten clubs ^note  although the reformed version of Accrington Stanley would later return to the Football League in 2006, seven years after this film was aired .
• No Sense of Direction: Bostock's coach driver believes that Southport is on the southern coast of England, and that Pontefract is in Wales. As Gerry has to point out to him, the former is in Lancashire, and the latter is in West Yorkshire. It reaches I Reject Your Reality territory when, on the way to the final, the driver insists that a road sign clearly pointing in the direction of Wembley Stadium must've been flipped around as a joke on him, putting the team on a two hour detour down the opposite direction.
• Not Me This Time: After the revelations about Gerry's match-fixing are made public knowledge, the former Bostock players quickly assume that he rigged the final as well. Gerry protests that he actually only rigged two of the matches: the quarter-final against Hull City (by having Hull's players hypnotised to be scared of the ball) and the semi-final against Leicester City (by bringing in a Super Ringer and bribing the referee). When pressed, he insists that he didn't rig the final itself, on the grounds that he didn't have to - a heartbreaking loss would've served the documentary just as well as a triumphant finish - and that, either way, he wouldn't have been able to match the amount of money that Leeds United would have paid the ref.
• One-Word Vocabulary: The only thing that Brian Parkinson is able to say to the other Bostock players is "'Ey up, me old flowers!", the real-life catchphrase of footballer-turned-comedian Charlie Williams (Alan Hardy even likens him to Williams when he's first introduced to the rest of the team). It's later revealed that "Parkinson" was actually a Brazilian player named Nero who happened to be a huge fan of Williams, and his catchphrase was the only bit of English he knew.
• Professional Butt-Kisser: Most of assistant manager Bob Phillips' job seems to consist of standing next to Bertie and echoing everything he says verbatim. Even 25 years later at the reunion, he's still doing this.
• Pyrrhic Victory: While Mike succeeds at exposing Gerry's misdeeds and ruining his reputation, it doesn't translate into the career advancement he was hoping for, as his bosses are disgusted with the tactless and blatantly self-serving way he dragged Gerry through the mud whilst needlessly humiliating Bertie and Margaret Masson with the latter's infidelity and spoiling Bostock Stanley's big night for everyone, and he's fired on the spot for it.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Bostock Stanley team.
• Rhetorical Question Blunder: After the Pontefract Athletic match, Alan Hardy comes to Bertie to complain about Mick Wallace breaking his nose, demanding he do something about it:
  Bertie: Well, what do you want me to do? Fine him? Fine Mick Wallace?
  Alan: I want you to drop him from the team!
  Bertie: ...Alright, I'll fine him.
• Serendipity Writes the Plot: In-universe; Gerry obviously didn't plan for the team's prank on Alan Hardy that tricked him into submitting a bogus transfer request, causing him to be dropped from the team, but it certainly created a handy opportunity for him to recommend Brian Parkinson to take his place. And he certainly didn't plan on Bostock actually winning the cup, as even them making it to the final was sufficient enough to make his documentary a success.
• Shout-Out:
  • Bertie's first team talk to the Bostock Stanley squad is heavily inspired by one given by newly-appointed Manchester City manager John Bond in 1980, which was caught on camera as part of a real-life documentary being made about City's 1980/81 season - which, as it happened, saw them reach that year's FA Cup final (albeit they lost 3-2 to Tottenham Hotspur). Though Bertie's "lucky cup hat" was actually inspired by something worn by the City manager before Bond, Malcolm Allison.
  • Pontefract Athletic's "famous sloping pitch" is a reference to the similarly famous sloping pitch employed by non-league Yeovil Town in their run to the fifth round of the FA Cup in 1949. Though Pontefract's pitch is heavily exaggerated compared to Yeovil's, sloping at almost a 45-degree angle.
• Sidetracked by the Analogy: Early into his tenure, Bertie tries to instruct his players on keeping the ball at "second floor" (use their heads to control the ball by keeping it aloft) in their end, and playing it at "ground floor" (rely on their footwork) up past midfield, but some of them quickly get confused as to what "first floor" ^note  in British English, the ground floor and the first floor are separate terms, the first floor being the one above the ground floor, whereas in the US the terms are used interchangeably would be in this situation. Even once it's explained to them, they still get hung up on the metaphor and ask if other 'floors', such as a mezzanine, or a lift to 'connect' those floors, are involved somehow, quickly wearing on Bertie's patience.
• Small Name, Big Ego: Played with by Alan Hardy, who is the one legitimately good player at Bostock, but lets his ego get in the way, eventually resulting in Bertie dropping him when he puts in a transfer request after getting pranked into believing that Brian Clough wants to sign him for Brighton.
• The Starscream: Mike Tonker makes no secret of coveting Gerry Tudor's fame and position and feels that his career is being stifled because of Gerry. He goes along with a plan to bring Gerry down by exposing his past misdeeds, fully expecting that, with Gerry out of the way, he'd be given the chance to step into his shoes, but the callous and poorly-thought-out manner in which he exposed Gerry's secrets lead to him getting sacked instead.
• Strong Family Resemblance: After Gerry's adulterous affair with Margaret Masson is exposed, amid the stunned reactions of the audience we cut to Bertie and Margaret's son Trevor, who happens to look very much like a young Gerry. Bertie even reflects (clearly in hindsight) on the resemblance during the team's confrontation with Gerry.
• Super Ringer: "Brian Parkinson", the mysterious, amateur football-playing milkman whom Gerry helped recruit for the team ahead of their FA Cup semi-final match against Leicester City, is actually a former member of the 1970 Brazilian World Cup squad that Gerry persuaded to play for Bostock Stanley in exchange for a chance to meet his idol, comedian Charlie Williams.
• Take That!:
  • The BBC and Sky TV - ITV's main rivals at the time the film was made - are given several jabs, with both being implied to be corrupt, sleazy outfits. ITV themselves are only fleetingly mentioned, and in a mostly positive context.
  • Gerry cites "Merry Xmas Everybody" topping the UK Singles Chart in 1973 as an example of that year being a low point for Britain in general.
  • Leeds United's reputation for corruption in their glory years is lampshaded when Bertie angrily demands to know how Gerry fixed the FA Cup final in Bostock's favour. Gerry replies that he didn't, partly because the documentary would have worked whether or not Bostock won the final, and partly because he knew he couldn't hope to match whatever bribe Leeds gave the referee.
• Third-Person Person: Alan Hardy often refers to himself by his full name, demonstrating how pretentious he is for someone who at best is a moderately talented player by Third Division standards.
  Alan Hardy: Uh, if I was the manager, I'd be building this team around Alan Hardy. Y'know, focusing on Alan Hardy. And playing to the strengths of Alan Hardy. I think that's the way to get the best... out of Alan Hardy.
  (caption: Alan Hardy)
• Verbal Tic: Bertie Masson has, what he'd like to call, a very particular way of speaking. Very distinctive.
• Where Are They Now: The end credits feature a photo montage of all the former Bostock players (minus "Brian Parkinson") showing what they've been up to since the cup run. Most of them have become proprietors of their own successful sports pubs, with the exception of Alan Hardy (who started a hair salon) and "Young Pete" (who grew up to be Peter Beardsley).
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: It's never established where exactly the small town of Bostock is supposed to be, beyond Gerry's vague statement about it being "somewhere in the middle" of the country. Lampshaded by the announcer following their FA Cup victory.
  Announcer: Jack Charlton was saying only yesterday, "Where is Bostock?" I'm sure he knows now! It's near, uh... er... well, these boys have certainly put Bostock on the map, that's for sure!

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