My step son asked me the other day what, was footbal llike and was it really that bad in the 70s thats on and Off the pitch or as bad as some people (probably those that werent there or fantasty tales in Smiths ) made it out to be anyway here is my take on a typical 70s day at Leeds Despite what some may think or have heard about 70s Football i would Love a return to it myself here are the reasons now despite living in south east have always followed Leeds, anyway my first trip to Er was in 77 v Forest actually who werre then ripping the old division one up anyway this is what i told my Watford ss Got train from kings cross to Leeds for £7.50 return now this was at a time when wearing your scarf or colours was suposed to be a time of sticking up for your club, didnt agree with it but it was risky, particually on the Underground but didnt see any trouble myself Got to Leeds about 1230ish went for my pre match drink Larger tops 78p , and then made weay to the ground, took my seat in ground £2.70 , although it was 80p to get in boys pen, told not to risk it as it sold out very quickly it was £1.80 to stand on Geldred end , loved those days you could sway all over place surge forward with the crowd, and not having some jobsworth telling you you cant do this or that , singing dancing all way tho as well, sing what you like andd nobody gave a **** or rang 606 after match FV, did occur with running battles most games i went to, but i never grt involved(apart from one game at Arsenal then it was unovidable ) and always said if you wanted to get involved you could and if you didnt you didnt have to simple really isnt it So despite all the tales coaches got smashed rival fans attacked Every week its just not true, yes it could be bad a certain away games but no worse really than any town or city at that time on satuday night Thoughts on 70s soccer anyone Edited to say in all the games i saw i didnt see one player Leeds or otherwise not giving 100% during a game, and whilst it was physical , the players would always have a few drinkls in bar afters Quote from the late Derek dougan Me and Norman (hunter) would kick ten bells out of each other for 90 mins but we always have a drink at bar afters
Yeah it sounds like a lot of fun but when it all goes wrong you have a human disaster on your hands. It's not worth it.
haven't you posted this up before? Most of my family stopped going in the late 70s because it wasn't worth getting your head kicked in over. From what I've been told back in the 70's Boundary Park got taken over by huge away followings on a regular basis because back then it was a crumbling 40,000 capacity stadium. Hard to imagine when you see the state of the place today
it may have been someone else then did anyone ever go on any British Rail Football Specials? I heard they helped increase the amount of away fans who travelled to games, when I was in Germany watching matches they still ran them and I went to see Wisebaden vs Kaiserslautern on a Friday night in Wisebaden and I'd say 70% of the ground was made up of Kaiserslautern fans for a match 100kms away
Yep used too go on them all the time. the ones we ran from Preston held 750 fans.depending where the game was we would take multile trains,so you can imagane what it would be like at some games.At first you could take as much drink as you wanted but they clamped down on that pretty quick because of the bother. Was good fun at times though.
Just been watching " The Big Match Revisted " on ITV 4 and they had a match from 1979 between Wrexham and Sunderland. Was strange looking back when the players did not wear shin pads or have adverts on their shirts, neither goalkeeper had gloves on and the referee was all in black unlike today. The linesman was indeed called a linesman and not an assistant and you were offside if you were ahead of the last man before the ball was played even if you were not interfering with play, no shitty 1st phase, 2nd phase bollocks. Also the subs bench only had one player on it, no seven subs to choose from. If a defender got injured and you only had a striker on the bench then the manager just had to shuffle the team and not be able to bring on a defender.
I've been enjoying watching that programme as well,it was when you used to be allowed to tackle and play on muddy pitches not the golf greens they have today,proper hard men back then which made football much more enjoyable.How would the divers of today fared against tough tackling/
Depends who you ask and what you're looking for. I think I'd rather have a 70s style atmosphere around a ground nowadays, but it wasn't for everyone and certainly wasn't great for the chairmen - attendances declined so steadily from the mid 70s to the mid 80s (the heydey of hooliganism) that aggregate attendance across the Football League by 1987 was literally half of what it was fifteen years before. Clearly not everybody enjoyed it all that much. Would have been great if you're a young working class lad though. I'd definitely prefer it to the terrible atmospheres we have now.
The crowds dropping had a lot to do with the very high unemployment in the late 70's/early 80's, back in the day 99% of the crowd were working class, so unemployment hit attendances far more than it would these days. Hooliganism didn't help, neither did Maggie the bitch Thatcher who hated the game and did all she could to kill the game off. The atmosphere back then was tremendous, just everything about the game was more enjoyable. Proper mans game back then.
I was unaware that Mrs Thatcher ever expressed any strong opinions on football. The government that she led had to deal with the serious threat of public disorder that surrounded nearly every match in that era, including a serious international incident which was utterly shaming for Britain.
I seem to remember her calling British football fans animals and saying they should be treated as such in the 1980's.
I recall the late 70's as a Fulham fan, it was only a £1 to stand and 25p for the programme. There would be a strong stench of cigar smoke on entering the ground coming from the press box and burgers actually tasted so much nicer! Footballers with long hair and silly looking beards, shirts without sponsors and the only time you saw a red card was when a player clubbed another one on the opposing team. We have Live football now on almost every day of the week but back then MOTD on a Saturday night was a delight with Jimmy Hill and Bob Wilson and then on ITV Sunday afternoon, The Big Match! - Even better!!! - Brian Moore was one of the best commentators ever!
