From the Striker archives: "The Best Years of Our Lives"

Published Sept. 25, 2005

Fairy tales are supposed to end happily, and by that ruthless standard, the long-defunct Fort Lauderdale Strikers didn’t measure up. But try telling that to players who wore the red-and-yellow bumblebee jersey or the Striker Likers that filled Lockhart Stadium to watch them play.

The Strikers debuted in 1977 by compiling the league’s best record with an overachieving band of shaggy, free-spirited Englishmen. They left for another city seven seasons later after allowing four goals in the dying moments of a losing playoff game.

Between the sweet seduction and the final collapse, there was the symbiotic pairing of Ray Hudson and Nene Cubillas in the midfield, Gerd Muller poaching goals in the 18-yard box and goalkeeper Jan Van Beveren making highlight reel saves at the other end. Mostly, there was a relationship between players and fans that was as romantic as any in South Florida sports.

“There had never been anything like it before and they’ll never be anything like it again. And that’s not an overstatement,” said Hudson, who played all seven seasons in Fort Lauderdale and now lives within a five-minute drive of Lockhart. “You can go through the catalogue of players who were here and it’s astounding.

“I talk to so many people I come across who weren’t just supporters; these were fanatics. They’d meet for breakfast at coffee houses and talk about last night’s game like they do anywhere in the world, and that’s not putting too bright a light around it. ... It was the rest of the league that [expletive] up.”

Last Wednesday marked the 25th anniversary of the day the Strikers reached their zenith. The occasion was the 1980 Soccer Bowl and the opponent was the New York Cosmos. In what was arguably the peak moment for the North American Soccer League as well, a lively crowd of 50,768 turned out in sweltering heat at RFK Stadium in Washington, D.C., to see the Cosmos win 3-0.

As usual, Giorgio Chinalgia was the Strikers nemesis, scoring two late goals to seal the game. He had help from a lineup that included such World Cup alums as Franz Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto, Vladislav Bogicevic and Johan Neeskens. Afterwards, Strikers’ owners Joe and Elizabeth Robbie held a party at the team hotel. It was the Strikers’ only Soccer Bowl appearance and the only time Joe Robbie missed a game involving the other team he owned – the Miami Dolphins.

"My dad never missed a Dolphins game, even a preseason game, until the Soccer Bowl,” said Tim Robbie, who worked in the Strikers front office and later served as Dolphins’ team president. “He called them ‘My Strikers.’ He was the first to say, ‘I enjoy my involvement in soccer just as much as the Dolphins.’ ”

Ditto for many South Florida fans. The Strikers started modestly at Lockhart, drawing 6,213 for their first game on April 9, 1977. By season’s end, the average attendance had exceeded 8,000 and by 1980 it was a club-record 14,781. What began as an anomaly -- a pro soccer team in a city known for wet T-shirt contests – quickly became a sensation, then finally a genuine passion.

The Strikers captivated South Florida soccer neophytes in their first season with a mostly English squad that was indomitable on the field, charming in the pubs, and willing to do anything to sell the game. With Coach Ron Newman doubling as promotions czar during his three-year tenure, the Strikers entered Lockhart Stadium on Go-karts, motorcycles and even horses. Once, during a brief losing streak, Newman rose from a hearse to cry, “We’re not dead yet!”
Before long, fans were Striker Likers, there was a cheerleading squad called the Striker Psychers, and a rock/pep band was playing on a platform in the west end zone.

“It was the greatest atmosphere I had ever seen and I had been to a lot of games in Europe while I was in the Air Force,” said Plantation resident Jim Laurent, who attended games with his wife Gisela and their three children. “There was such diversity among the people there and it was always easy to get a gang to go to a game. Everyone wanted to go.”

The parking lot filled with smoke from tail-gate parties before the game, and the communal post-game parties saw the Strikers and their fans toast victories at the same bar. English defender Ken Fogarty arrived in 1979 to a scene that was nothing like he grew up with back home.

"My first memory was all these sun-tanned people barbecuing outside the stadium,” said Fogarty from his home outside Houston. “I remember on the playing side the heat being a big factor for us. I thought we had a very good team in a very good league. I look back at some of the soccer we played and at times it was sublime.”

The selling of soccer in the NASL almost made the game itself an afterthought. That changed for the Robbies once the Strikers proved they could attract a crowd. With support growing, they turned the club into the Cosmos South by acquiring some of the biggest stars to ever play the game.

In 1978, the Strikers traded for chronic bad boy George Best, arguably the greatest talent to emerge from Great Britain. A year later Cubillas, Peru’s greatest player to this day, and Muller, Germany’s most prolific goal-scorer, signed within the same week. The crowds rose by more than 3,300 a game and the 1979 season included a Strikers first -- ticket scalpers for a sold-out match against the Cosmos.

Six-dollar tickets were sold for $10 outside Lockhart and the extra stipend was worth it. The game featured seven lead changes and ended with the Cosmos winning 4-3 before 19,850 emotionally-spent fans. For once, none of the Cosmos’ goals was scored by Chinalgia.

Best and Newman were gone by 1980, but the parade of star talent continued with Dutch and South American imports, namely van Beveren and midfielders Eduardo Bonvallet and Francisco Marinho.

"That year was something,” recalled Eddie Rodger, the team’s trainer, who now runs the Hilton Sports Complex in Sunrise. “Every day was different and you had these different sets of cliques. Gerd Muller somehow had [South African defender] Roy Wiggemansen as his personal interpreter. Alex Hoffman, the masseuse, was his [media] translator.

“Then there was the Dutch clan. There was always a big cloud of smoke coming from the cigarettes and the pot of coffee in their corner of the locker room. Then there was Ray [Hudson] and Foggy [Fogarty] in their stalls. The poor American group of Jeff Cacciatore, Steve Zerhusen and Jim Tietjens didn’t have a clue what was going on. Finally, you had the South Americans. It was unbelievable.”

The coach asked to stitch the team together was the irascible Dutchman Cor van der Hart, who Hudson described as “stubborn, but brilliant.” Van der Hart’s brilliance got the Strikers to the Soccer Bowl. His stubbornness helped make the 1980 team the most dysfunctional of the Strikers era.

Before a regular season game was even played, at least eight players had gone public with an assortment of gripes. Tibor Gemeri threw a glass of wine at van der Hart during a trip to Peru. Bonvallet kicked a ball at him in the locker room. Toward the end of the season, Bonvallet and Nico Bodonczy were dropped from the team because van der Hart didn’t like them speaking Spanish.

To make matters worse, there was the profane and disagreeable new general manager Bob Lemieux, whose relationship with van der Hart was nothing short of toxic. The Strikers booster club demanded Lemieux be fired in mid-season. Others blamed the overbearing tension on van der Hart, with one fan flashing the famed sign “Rotten to the Cor” at Lockhart.

“I laugh now, but I’m sure I wasn’t laughing at the time,” said Robbie, the assistant general manager in 1980. “I remember being a buffer between Cor and Lemieux, and between Cor and some of the players. I played the role of Switzerland.”

Joe Robbie, himself a bit cantankerous, saw it another way. “A little dissent is a strength, not a weakness,” Robbie told one reporter. He was right. The Strikers reached the Soccer Bowl in spite of themselves. The controversial signing of van Beveren in mid-season had a lot to do with it. A star for Dutch power PSV Eindhoven, the elastic van Beveren was booed in his first game at Lockhart because he had replaced the popular Arnie Mausser.

“I came on the field and all these people started saying, ‘Dutchie go home,’ ” van Beveren said from his home in Dallas. “I turned to the coach and said, ‘What is going on here?’ He said, ‘Don’t worry. You took the spot of an American goalkeeper.’ He said play your game and you’ll be fine.

“We won 3-0 and everyone was happy. From that moment, it was nothing but good. I had a great relationship with the folks down there. Everyone has great memories. It was a fun place to play.”

Fun. There’s a word you don’t hear much in sports these days. Yet, it is that word and variations thereof that Strikers players and fans typically use to describe the time they shared here. Cubillas, who lives in Coral Springs, said playing for the Strikers “was the best way to finish my career.” Fogarty said, “It was the most blessed thing to ever happen to me.” Even the exiled Bodonczy, who rejoined the team to play indoors at the Hollywood Sportatorium later that year, called it “the most beautiful experience” of his career.

The Strikers came within a playoff series of reaching the Soccer Bowl again in 1981 and ’82 under Eckhard Krautzun. But, attendance fell both seasons and rumors of a move to Minnesota took hold. NASL franchises had begun to fold elsewhere and the prevailing wisdom was that teams would also have to play indoor seasons to survive.

With no suitable arena at the time in South Florida, the Strikers moved to Minneapolis in 1984 for the NASL’s final season. The last game at Lockhart was against the Tulsa Roughnecks on Sept. 10, 1983. The Strikers played brilliantly to take a 2-0 lead after 80 minutes and then they fell from the cliff. Tulsa scored four goals to win the playoff series, the last goal coming courtesy of a Strikers’ back-pass that trickled past a distracted Van Beveren into the net.

It was time to move on. They were the exciting girl you didn’t marry, but can never forget. The girl was gone and all that remained was the nostalgia.

“I remember talking to people through the fence afterwards who were crying,” Hudson said of that last game. “A lot of great fans had supported us all those years and it was a very tragic ending to it all. Now it’s part of the scrapbook.

“To this day, I come across people at hamburger joints and breakfast places, salt of the earth people, who remember the bumblebee. They’re grateful for it. We were grateful for it. It was the best years of our lives.”