This is one of my favourite games.FA Cup at Ayresome Park....midweek I think. Brilliant game with an atmosphere many will never encounter.Some of saves from Southall were unreal and a last minute equaliser. Coach smashed up on way home and -10 over the penines was fun to. Never been so scared in my life but wouldn't change a thing. You can keep your ipads and half/half scarves it was much better back then.
I remember going with my old man, I was quite young. You scored a last minute winner and the place was rocking. Remember the fans on our right giving us abuse all game. Intimidating but impressive at the same time at how hostile you made it for away teams.
I started going in the mid 80's, looking back they were grim days but i didn't know any different. Yes the grounds had character and the atmosphere could be electric and cheap tickets were all great things but people seem to look back with rose tinted spec's. The attendances were often atrocious, the facilities horrendous and it was often unsafe.
It was because of UTD fans good old days rampaging around the UK they were put up. Exactly....brilliant. Not the sterile shite you have today.
Travelling to away games on special trains because it was safety in numbers, not wearing colours or a badge because it could save your life, buying a National Front badge off a West Ham fan for a fiver so his mate wouldn’t stab you, watching a police dog getting kicked to death, being chased through the back streets of Nottingham and hiding in someone’s garden until it was safe, listening to home fans singing ‘you’re going home in a ****ing ambulance’ knowing it was a possibility.. Yeah, it was blinding..
Blinding wasn't it. There was some great things about the old days, particularly town centre grounds, atmosphere and terraces. But it did come with a price sometimes.
Blues v Leeds in 85 was probably the worst I’ve seen where two fans got killed, and the home game against Chelsea where an away fan got thrown in front of a bus and died. Oh , and every game against the Villa and Wolves when it started getting more organised when the Zulus were born
Used to work nights & we'd finish at 3.30am Saturday morning , play 3 card brag in canteen until about 5 , home , bath , changed & up the train station for about 8 with your £12 Railcard save 1/3rd on all your travels for the year but unlike lots of comments on here some but not that much violence following Posh though not done away days since Covid & don't intend , just don't get the football vibe anymore & know quite a few similar .
Stoke v Man City final game of the 97/98 season when both teams got relegated to League One on the final day due to results elsewhere. Man City won 5-2 but the result was rendered irrelevant by results elsewhere. There was trouble all through the match because of Man City fans who had managed to get tickets in the home ends and the players got taken off a couple of times. We knew carnage was coming after the match with two 'big' clubs getting relegated on the same day and the anger that was in both sets of fans, and sure enough it was an absolute war zone. I was only 14 but got hit by a half ender and smashed into the wall of the bridge near the ground by a police horse. Fights and bricks flying everywhere, I saw a traffic cone thrown through the window of a moving car. Trashed cars, burning cars. Utter carnage. I was on that bridge.
Ninian Park was hands down the scariest ground i've been too, went there for a cup game in the mid 90's I think and i've never seen so many blokes who just wanted to f*cking kill you. Was a very different time and yeah some of it wasn't nice, but so much was better, paying on the gate, turning up with your mates after deciding on the day, genuine identity at each club instead of copying what you've seen on social media, crowds actually having the accent of their team/city, and like @johnnyT said - like it or not - there was a sense of adventure and adrenaline in there too. For all the bad that came with it i'd snap your arm off to stand on proper terraces week in week out again.
We went to Swansea one year for a Friday night away game (I think the Welsh rugby team was playing on the saturday) and after the game we were driving away when we got stuck in traffic. This lad came over and asked my mate for the time to which he pulled a knife out and said no. The next thing, about forty lads descended on the car and kicked the shit out of it. We couldn't get out because we'd have been killed so just sat there as the side windows were put through and every light was smashed. Drove on the pavement to get away but had to park in the garage until it was light enough to drive home the next morning.
Games are sanitized in Europe but nowhere near as much as in the UK. You can feel the PC brigade going apeshit at games and stewards telling you to sit down if you're standing up for too long. I wish I could have lived the hooligan decade in the 80s, sounded great fun. All those posts don't really make me want to go to PL games at all tbh. It's too expensive, the experience is shit and most of the time the game is terrible. I'll visit the few grounds there is to visit that I haven't done yet (apart from Villa, Everton & Newcastle I can't think of all that much tbh) but I'm sure I'd get more of an experience if I go to an U21/women's game than if I go to a PL game.
