It has been more than 35 years since Tim Buzaglo wrote himself into FA Cup folklore with a stunning hat-trick for non-League side Woking that knocked out West Brom in the third round.
Today, the bashful 64-year-old brands his heroics at The Hawthorns, which remains one of the competition’s greatest-ever shocks, as the ‘worst thing I ever did’.
Not for any other reason than the sheer amount of badgering that has, and continues to come his way – including, he smiles, from this reporter.
Yet, his daughter Olivia, 31, who has risen up the ranks as a presenter in recent years – and now works on the FA Cup for TNT Sports – wears it like a badge of honour.
‘I don’t ever want to change my surname,’ she beams in a conversation with Daily Mail Sport ahead of this weekend’s fifth-round fixtures.
‘I want to keep Buzaglo forever, because I love its links to football and the FA Cup. When you hear the name, everyone thinks of my dad – and I think he will always be the most famous Buzaglo. But I love the surname, it’s always been special.’
Olivia Buzaglo says she never wants to change her famous surname because of her father
Tim Buzaglo scored a hat-trick as non-League Woking beat West Brom in the FA Cup in 1991
Just how special that January 1991 day was – when the minnows from Surrey claimed the scalp of a team from the old Second Division – has only become clearer with time. A study recently shared by the FA calculated the probability of Woking’s 4-2 victory at one in 16 million.
‘For me we had no chance of winning that game, absolutely no chance,’ Tim says.
‘But Geoff (Chapple) and Fred (Callaghan) had them watched five times and they were convinced we would beat them. And we deserved it as well. It wasn’t a fluke.’
The result transformed Tim’s life overnight – his strikes had made him the unlikely hero of the cup. Suddenly there were cameras in his face, requests for interviews and a phone that was ringing off the hook. It was ‘scary’, he admits.
That might explain why he never told Olivia about it.
‘I don’t tell anybody what I do,’ Tim explains. ‘I find it all embarrassing really, so the last person I wanted to tell was Olivia.’
In fact, it was Olivia’s mum who explained her father’s achievements and, at the age of around 15, she realised its significance.
‘I just remember loving it,’ Olivia recalls. ‘If anyone ever asked me about it, I thought it was so cool.’
At that time, Tim, who also turned out for Gibraltar’s cricket team, would take Olivia to her own football matches when she dreamed of emulating her dad on the pitch.
After playing for sides such as Maidenhead, QPR and Watford, Olivia pursued a career in sports journalism and has now become one of British broadcasting’s most recognisable faces.
But whether her surname was on the back of a shirt or on a media pass, people were bound to recognise it.
Olivia loves her dad’s story – but he was too shy to tell her about it when she was growing up
Olivia played football as a youngster before pursuing a career in broadcast sports journalism
‘I can’t remember ever going into a press room where there’s not someone that either asks me if I’m related to Dad or asks how he is,’ Olivia says.
‘I work on a lot of the same games as Martin Tyler, and obviously he’s a Woking fan, but every single time he asks about Dad.
‘I always think it’s hilarious that people think he’s the reason that I’ve got my job. People always say, “The daughter of an FA Cup legend – shock – that’s how she got into the industry”. But it couldn’t be any further from anything like that.’
In actual fact, Olivia began her career at Premier League Productions after an interviewee for her university dissertation tipped her off about a role as a digital logger, manually inputting information for live top-flight matches. She still works there today as a presenter and reporter, alongside her duties with TNT Sports, talkSPORT and Baller League.
Despite her career taking her to all corners of the globe, one of her greatest professional moments came at Moss Rose – when she was pitch-side for Macclesfield’s shock FA Cup win over Crystal Palace in this season’s third round, in a giant-killing that perhaps even eclipsed her father’s famous day in 1991.
‘This season’s been extra special,’ Olivia says. ‘Being at Macclesfield for that game – I couldn’t have written any better.
‘Someone actually messaged me to say, “The daughter of an FA Cup giantkiller, at one of the biggest giantkillings of all time”. So that was really special.’
Tim and Olivia’s love of Chelsea is also centred around the FA Cup, as fate would have it.
As a youngster, Tim attended the famous 1967 FA Cup final between Tottenham and the Blues and decided, in somewhat masochistic fashion, that he would go on to support the losing team on the day.
With Spurs running out 2-1 winners, the rest, as they say, is history.
‘My love for football, and my love for Chelsea started with Dad,’ Olivia says.
‘Because I would go to his friend’s houses to watch football or they’d come to our house. And I’d just go along and sit there and watch. I’d be the only kid, or the only girl, definitely.’
Olivia’s love of Chelsea came from Tim choosing to support the losers of the 1967 FA Cup final
Olivia also presents a show on talkSPORT among her various other pieces of broadcast work
She adds: ‘If I didn’t have that love for Chelsea growing up, I probably wouldn’t be in this job right now. I wouldn’t have the love for football that I do. So, on my days off, I will always make sure I can try and go to games.
‘If I can go away, great. If I can’t, fine. But I’ll always try to go to Stamford Bridge, and I’ll always try and keep the fan side of me there, because I love it. It’s so different to watching a game when I’m working. I can just go with my friends that I’ve been all around Europe with, and have a nice time.
‘So no matter if big companies tell me that I can’t be too Chelsea, I’m just like, “Well, maybe I’m just not the person for you then”.’
Ahead of this weekend’s fixtures, Tim – who jokingly laments that Olivia has only seen the good side of Chelsea in the post-Roman Abramovich era – is optimistic that Liam Rosenior’s Blues will get past Wrexham on Saturday.
‘I’ll say 3-1 to Chelsea,’ says Tim. ‘If we ever play a team, and it’s anybody, a team in a lower division, I expect to win. A higher division, I expect to lose. So I expect Chelsea to go and beat Wrexham.’
By his own logic, upsets should never happen. Which makes what he did at The Hawthorns all those years ago even more remarkable.
That, in itself, is surely the beauty of the FA Cup.
