Madness, Mayhem And Decency At Old Trafford
More than half a century of Manchester United-Liverpool games have taught me many lessons, good and bad. The craziness sometimes started before we'd left Lime Street
ABOUT 10.50, someone put the juke box on. The pub was so crowded that you could hardly move. The first song on was Talking Heads’ Psycho Killer. Everyone joined in, bouncing up and down.
“Psycho Killer
Qu’est-ce que c’est?
Fa-fa-fa-fa, fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-fa, Better Run, run, run, run, run, run, run away, oh-oh-oh...”
This was 10.50am. The American Bar – commonly known as ‘the Yankee’ to Liverpool’s hardcore support – should not have been legally open for another 10 minutes. But this was the biggest day of the year for the crowds of youths that crammed into the pub on Lime Street. Manchester United away. The festival of hate had been whipping up into a frenzy since just after 6am.
The madness generated by the Liverpool-United rivalry will probably never reach the heights – or perhaps we should say depths – of the mid-1980s. There will be strong feelings in play at Old Trafford, though. Just this week, a former Liverpool player told me about how much pleasure beating United gave him.
But back to the American Bar. I’d received a phone call that got me out of bed just before 7am. The message was terse. “Yankee’s open. Knock on the window.”
Half an hour later I was inside. As the ale went down, the temperatures went up. The manager tried to keep the noise down but when the juke box went on, the long delayed explosion was about to detonate.
As the song finished, a roar went up and the mob poured out into the street. A collective decision had somehow been made that everyone was getting the 11.05 to Manchester. We stayed at the bar. The mood was too erratic. Within minutes, youths started coming back.
The police had tried to stop the horde boarding the train. There were skirmishes in the station. “The police dogs were getting kicked all over the place.”
That was enough for us. We scarpered to another part of town while things calmed down. Just another day in the Liverpool-United rivalry. And we were still more than an hour and 35 miles from seeing our first Mancunian.
The savagery is now mainly online. There are chants about tragedies and poverty but the toxicity of the relationship between the two sets of supporters has mutated from those violent days. There is still plenty of ugliness.
In recent months I’ve written about Graham Reavey, who faces losing his job at the Royal Mail’s Warrington hub after being on the receiving end of Hillsborough abuse. There will be an update on that story this week.
United fans have had tragedies thrown at them for too many years. It continues on social media. One of the things that is hardest to comprehend is when individuals who have ‘JFT97’ in their online bio start throwing around jibes about the Munich air disaster. Football makes people do strange things.
Even so, the past is another country. In that foreign place, it’s very rarely the matches that retain a place in the memory. It’s the craziness of the visits to Old Trafford that is lodged in my mind.
My first visit was in November 1972. Skinheads with boots sprayed silver and gold stood on the forecourt with red-black-and-white scarves ties around their wrists. The scoreboard end was roofless and, five minutes before kick-off, the United crew surged into the ground from behind the Liverpool fans. The fighting spilled onto the pitch as the teams came out. Tommy Smith, the legendary hard-man Liverpool defender, was throwing interlopers back into the crowd with vicious glee.
More than half a century on, I have no recollection of the goals. Wyn Davies and Ted MacDougall scored for United but they made no impression when set against the cavalcade of craziness.
On Boxing Day 1978, the special train rolled into Warwick Road and it seemed that every other passenger produced a balaclava. They charged down the platform, their covered faces signalling their intent to cause mayhem.
Me and my mate hadn’t got the memo. The main thing we were worried about was whether the massed ranks of bemasked maniacs would mistake our uncovered faces for Mancs.
Things got very dark in the mid-1980s, culminating in the 1985 FA Cup semi-final at Goodison Park, the single most violent game I’ve attended. In those days a visit to Old Trafford meant wrecked buses, running battles and massed boxing matches on the forecourt.
One year, the ordinary train into Piccadilly had its journey interrupted when someone pulled the communication cord at the back of the Stretford End. A substantial crew leapt off, scaled the fence and attacked United’s home end from the rear. The Daily Star used to run a ‘Top of the Kops’ feature where they rated supporters for the fanaticism and behaviour. That day Liverpool got an unprecedented zero.
There were similar antics when Mancunians came to Merseyside and anyone who attended games during the period will have similar recollections. Yet the United-Liverpool matches took the vindictiveness up a notch.
And we loved it. The sense of threat, the wild behaviour and atmosphere of danger enhanced the experience. We were children of that age. Gigs were often rowdy with an overpowering sense of menace, too. That’s all we knew.
Too often it went beyond reasonable boundaries. In January 1986, the United team had noxious substances sprayed on them as they entered Anfield. It was reported to be ammonia but one of the regulars at the Yankee assured us “it wasn’t.” Certainly, it was something equally dangerous.
No wonder we weren’t welcome in Manchester.
Times were changing. My last ugly incident at Old Trafford came in 1990, 11 months after Hillsborough. The Thatcher government were still making life difficult for away fans. Unable to get tickets from the Liverpool end, me and my brother brought a couple outside from a tout.
We were surrounded by United fans in the north stand so kept very quiet. In front of us were two men with a young boy. The moment the teams came out they began shouting abuse, oblivious to our presence. They were in full “ninety-five was not enough” mode until John Barnes got on the end of a Peter Beardsley pass and bore down on goal from just inside the United half. When Barnes put the ball past Jim Leighton, we went up. At this point I was so angry I no longer cared about the consequences.
There were a few “Sit down you Scouse bastards,” shouts but nothing too threatening. That was until one of the loudmouths in front turned to my brother, who was on the Leppings Lane the previous year. He picked on the younger of us, of course, and positioned himself just out of my range. Then he spoke: “Did your brother die at Hillsborough?”
I could have killed. My brother, who was still a teenager, was calmer and replied as if he’d been asked a reasonable question. “No,” he said, “but I’ll tell him you asked about him. He’ll be made up.”
What was most interesting is that when the police came over to see what was going on, the vast majority of United fans sided with us. They pointed out to the officers that we’d been quiet and expressed how appalled they were that their fellow supporters had been shouting bile about the deaths at Hillsborough. The police warned us all to behave and left us there instead of throwing us out.
It was not what I expected. And that exposed what a fool I’d been.
Not everyone checks in their humanity at the turnstile. There are more decent people who go to football matches – or follow their teams remotely – than those who hate irrationally. I’d long stopped despising people because of their allegiance. But this underlined for me the stupidity of detesting people because of who they support.
These days, I talk with United fans of a similar vintage and we tell each other war stories with a sense of amazement, not recognising the world we lived in any more and sometimes not recognising our younger selves. Scousers and Mancs have more in common than what separates them.
And one thing we all have in common, Liverpool and United, is that this is the game we want to win most.
So beat the bastards. On the pitch, that is. Win, lose or draw, there’s never a need to discard your humanity over a football match.
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