by Tony Evans
The downbeat mood was widespread. Attendance across the Football League programme was 412,603, the lowest for 40 years. The next weekend’s turnout dipped under the 400,000 mark.
West Ham opened the season away to Birmingham City. This was another match that was closely watched by the media after the death of 15-year-old Ian Hambridge following a wall collapse at St Andrew’s the previous May.
West Ham’s visit was clearly a flashpoint game. The ICF were Britain’s premier hooligan crew – at least in PR terms – and every effort was made to ensure the game passed off peacefully.
The London club had suspended the official Irons Travel Club and started the season by refusing to sell tickets for away games. It rather missed the point of the ICF. Few in the game understood the forces that were driving disorder at and around matches.
Birmingham and the local police insisted the match kick off at 11.30 a.m., three and a half hours earlier than the usual time. Just 11,164 people turned up to watch on a warm, sunny day in the Midlands, a few hundred east Londoners among them. It was a completely unremarkable game that the hosts won 1–0. West Ham appeared to be setting out on another season of struggle.
Things started going wrong early. John Lyall’s preferred strike force paired Tony Cottee with Paul Goddard, a stocky and efficient forward and the club’s record signing. The duo had scored 26 league goals between them the previous season and were the established first-choice forward line.
Just before half-time, Goddard dislocated his shoulder after a robust challenge. The West Ham manager shuffled his side and pushed Frank McAvennie up from midfield to play with Cottee. The partnership did not produce on the opening day but Lyall had just stumbled on a combination that would change the course of West Ham’s campaign.
McAvennie had played up front for St Mirren but he was expected to operate in the midfield at Upton Park. The Glaswegian was never shy about coming forward, though. ‘I was lucky Paul Goddard got injured,’ McAvennie said. ‘Things weren’t working up until then. It might have worked eventually but it was fortunate for me we had to change and I moved up front.’
The 25-year-old came to football late. He had dug roads, painted and decorated and worked in a garage while struggling to get by on Clydeside. Spells on the dole were not unusual. When he came to London, McAvennie embraced the lifestyle with gusto.
In his autobiography, Lyall recalled bringing the Scot from the airport after the move south was completed. ‘We drove back through the centre of London,’ Lyall wrote. ‘He wanted to see the King’s Road. I was to learn he was a fashion-conscious lad, very concerned about his appearance. I could tell he was thrilled to be in London.’
McAvennie’s sense of style was hardly West End. He had dyed his red hair bleach blond and the spiky, backcombed hairdo looked like a relic from the previous decade.
‘We drove through the city, where the traffic was particularly heavy,’ Lyall continued. ‘Passing on the opposite side of the road was a convoy of black limousines with police motorcycle escorts. Sitting in the back of one of the cars was Princess Diana. She passed within a few feet of us. Frank was impressed.’
McAvennie remembers the incident slightly differently and his version is a more accurate depiction of the new signing’s attitude. Far from being awed, Frank was cocky. ‘All the roads were blocked for royalty,’ he recalls. ‘I said, “Even the Queen’s coming out to meet me.” I think it was the moment that John Lyall realized he’d bought a character.’
That is an understatement. Far from being dazzled by the royal family, McAvennie wanted to make a big impression on the capital. Soon, he would be king of the East End and football’s first anonymous superstar.
Perhaps the only game that had a real buzz of anticipation about it was Leicester City’s home opener against Everton. The defending champions were among the best teams in Europe but one man made this a must-see match in the East Midlands city: Gary Lineker.
The striker was a local hero. He had scored 24 goals for Leicester the previous season and had become the hottest property in English football. A move to a bigger club was inevitable. The champions were the obvious destination.
The fixture computer sent Everton to Filbert Street on the opening day of the season, providing Lineker with a quick return to his boyhood club. Leicester was agog with excitement.
‘It was massive,’ Mark Bright said. ‘The newspapers went mad. I thought, “I’ve got to get in the team for this one.”’
Bright was 23 and had signed for the Foxes from Port Vale the previous summer. He understood his role at Leicester. ‘When I signed, I asked, “Where will I play?” because Gary was the main man. They said I’d be his understudy and I’d learn a lot from him. I did. As we got towards the end of the season, it became clear that he was going to leave. I was sad to see him go. He’d been very helpful. He always looked to help me.’
Bright was suddenly starting the season as the first-choice forward. Like most people in Leicester he was pleased to see his friend return to Filbert Street. ‘Gary got a great reception,’ he said. ‘After all he’d done for the club, he was always going to be welcomed back and he’s a local boy. I thought it was inevitable that he’d score.’
The afternoon turned out to be less predictable. Lineker’s league debut for Everton proved to be memorable for someone else – the understudy now recast in the starring role.
‘I scored two of the best goals of my career and nobody except those in the ground saw them because of the TV blackout,’ Bright said ruefully. ‘I turned [Kevin] Ratcliffe and hit it with my right foot past Neville [Southall] for the first.’
On the Everton bench, Howard Kendall looked on in shock as the unknown striker powered the ball into the net. ‘Adrian Heath was substitute and Howard, sitting on the bench next to him, asked, “Who the hell is that?” Inchy told him. He knew all about me from his time at Stoke when I was at Port Vale.’
The Everton manager was dismissive. ‘He’ll never score another one like that,’ he said. Kendall spoke too soon.
‘Alan Smith nodded a ball on and this time I lobbed Neville for the second,’ Bright said. Leicester went on to win 3–1, leaving the prodigal son disappointed.
‘At the end, Gary hugged me and said well done,’ Bright said. ‘I wound him up and said, “2–0 to Brighty” and he laughed. He reminded me of it at the end of the season when I was stuck on six and he’d scored a few more.’
The champions and Lineker were off to a slow start. There was talk of a ‘Heysel hangover’, as if the disappointment about not being able to compete for the European Cup was having a lingering effect at Goodison. Neville Southall dismisses the notion. ‘Once we got into preseason, all we were thinking about was playing,’ he said. ‘Once you’re in that bubble, you don’t think about anything else. You have to be self-centred.’
Leicester was just an off day for Everton. Lineker, like McAvennie, failed to make an instant impact. Better times lay ahead for both.
9
Black September
The other main contenders for the first division title had a straightforward start. Manchester United swept past Aston Villa 4–0 in front of the biggest crowd of the day, 49,743. Ron Atkinson’s side was led by Bryan Robson, the England captain. They lost the season opening Charity Shield to Everton but optimism was high at Old Trafford. There was an increasing sense that the Red Devils were ready to break the Merseyside stranglehold on the title.
The craving to win the league was huge at Old Trafford. United had not won the title since 1967.
Liverpool-born Atkinson had a swaggering confidence. Nicknamed Big Ron, the 56-year-old was the most flamboyant personality at Old Trafford. He had shot to prominence as the manager of West Bromwich Albion and was something of a groundbreaker. His West Brom side featured three black players: Brendon Batson, Laurie Cunningham and Cyrille Regis. It was rare to find a black face in the top flight in the 1970s. A trio in the same side was unprecedented. They were nicknamed ‘the Three Degre
es’ after the American female soul singers. The media embraced the moniker despite its obvious layers of racism. Black players of the era were considered to be less tough than their white counterparts. They couldn’t handle rough treatment, the popular theory went, and their manliness was frequently questioned. It was often claimed they did not like cold weather or hard work. Batson, Cunningham and Regis undermined any crank white-supremacist dogmas.
It was a breakthrough. A decade earlier, a Member of Parliament for Wolverhampton South, a handful of miles from the Hawthorns, gave an inflammatory speech to the West Midlands Conservative Association that pandered to fears of immigration. Enoch Powell’s racist fantasy became known as the ‘rivers of blood’ speech, though those words were never spoken. Ever keen to show off his classical education, the pretentious and snobby Powell alluded to Virgil. ‘Like the Roman,’ he said, ‘I seem to see the River Tiber foaming with much blood.’
Well, Batson, Cunningham and Regis helped break the dam. Powell feared race war but all he got, if he ever noticed, was a flood of superb black footballers.
Atkinson let the trio loose on a league unprepared for their impact and they were a revelation. Things were changing in Britain, and in the ethnically diverse West Midlands, West Brom caused a sensation. Twice in Atkinson’s three seasons at the Hawthorns the Baggies finished above United. ‘For a while, we were the best team in Europe,’ said Atkinson, never a man to undersell the exploits of his teams. In the early days of 1979, he was not far wrong. ‘We were top of the league in mid January. We’d beaten Valencia in Europe and then the big freeze happened. We didn’t play for three weeks. The next game was at Anfield and we were rusty and lost 2–1. Then the fixture pile-up happened and we ran out of steam.’
West Brom played 17 times in March and April, finished third in the league and reached the quarter-finals of the UEFA Cup. The two teams above them were the European Cup holders at the beginning of the season – Liverpool – and the team who would become Continental champions at the end of the campaign, Nottingham Forest. Batson, Cunningham and Regis continued to draw most of the attention but a 22-year-old midfielder whose career had been dogged by injury was beginning to emerge as West Brom’s most influential performer. Bryan Robson was beginning to make his mark.
Atkinson had the Baggies punching way above their weight. It earned the outgoing Scouser a move to Old Trafford in 1981, where he made headlines almost immediately by returning to the Hawthorns to sign Robson for £1.5 million, breaking the British transfer record in the process.
‘After every game at the Hawthorns, I’d pull Robbo into the office and ask him a simple question: “Who’s tapped you up this week?”’ Atkinson said. ‘He’d always tell me. Lots of clubs approached him. In those days, you always went to the player and got it sorted with them before going to their club.
‘One time he said United had been on to him. I shot it down. “The only way you’re going to Old Trafford is if I get the job there,” I told him.
‘On my first day as manager of United, I got a call from Robbo. He said, “You know what you told me about United?” Let me get my feet under the bloody table! But he was the first player I wanted. What a signing.’
This was now Atkinson’s fifth season at United. They had won two FA Cups but the club and fans were obsessed with winning the title. Their pain was sharpened by Liverpool’s domination and Everton’s emergence as a power. Manchester’s rivalry with Merseyside was toxic.
After losing the Charity Shield, United stormed into the season like a juggernaut. By the end of August, they were top of the league with a five-game 100 per cent record. They had scored 12 goals and conceded two and if the media and public loved any team in football it was the one from Old Trafford. ‘United were all about show,’ Steve Nicol said from his jaundiced viewpoint at the other end of the East Lancs Road. ‘The papers were full of them. It was all, “What’s going on with Big Ron this week?” Our attitude was: “Keep talking, we’ll keep playing.”’
Nevertheless, United’s bullish start to the campaign heaped more misery on an area that was under political, economic and social pressure. Football, at least until Heysel, was Merseyside’s saving grace. Manchester would have liked nothing better than to remove any straw of comfort from the sporting arena.
Life was difficult for black players. There were more of them in the league than ever before but racism was still widespread. Every touch of the ball would be greeted with jeers, and monkey noises were often directed at anyone with Afro-Caribbean heritage.
Racial slurs were common on the terraces and it was not unusual for opponents to try to unsettle black players on the pitch with bigoted jibes. There was little sympathy for those who complained about such behaviour. The best approach, most people in the game believed, was to suck up the insults and pretend that the comments were not hurtful.
Mark Bright suffered his share of abuse playing for Leicester. His manager’s advice was to act as if nothing had happened. ‘Gordon Milne said not to say anything to the papers, it would only make things worse,’ Bright recalled. ‘The only answer was to puff your chest out and score goals.’
It was bad when opposition fans made racial taunts but even more sinister when supporters turned against a player on their own team. Paul Canoville was on the receiving end of such treatment throughout his Chelsea career. While warming up to make his debut against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park in 1981, the winger had to run the gauntlet of hate from the away fans. He described the moment in his autobiography. ‘As I’m stretching and running, I hear loud individual voices through the noise: “Sit down, you black cunt!” “You fucking wog – fuck off!”
‘They were all wearing blue shirts and scarves – Chelsea fans, my side’s fans, faces screwed with pure hatred and anger, all directed at me … I felt physically sick. I was absolutely terrified.’
The National Front and the even more sinister Combat 18 had made inroads on the terraces of Stamford Bridge. Bright was aghast at the treatment Canoville received from elements in the Shed.
‘There were very few black players and we all knew each other,’ Bright said. ‘I played against Chelsea and Paul was getting massive abuse from his own fans. I said, “How can you play here?” Paul just said, “I love this club.”’
Canoville’s experience was not an isolated one. After John Barnes scored a brilliant solo goal for England in the 2–0 victory over Brazil in the Maracaña in June 1984, the Watford winger was castigated by racist fans of the national team on a plane to Chile. The group had National Front insignia on their flag and, within earshot of Barnes, frequently repeated their opinion that England only won 1–0 ‘because a nigger’s goal doesn’t count’.
‘No one did anything,’ Barnes said. ‘Never mind the FA, the press were all on that plane and could have stepped in and said something. There was nothing in the papers about what happened.’
Margaret Thatcher thought the answer to hooliganism was ‘decent people’ standing up to the thugs. There was no chance. On a flight loaded with officials and newspapermen, everyone turned a blind eye while the bigots made snide comments about one of England’s best players. There was little will to confront racism.
‘That’s the way society was,’ Barnes said. ‘You expected to get racist abuse.’
No black footballer could expect any real support from the game’s authorities, the press or the police. They were largely on their own.
Even teammates could be a problem. Howard Gayle, who started his career at Liverpool but was playing at Sunderland in 1985, detailed in his autobiography how Tommy Smith was particularly vindictive to his young black colleague at Melwood. The ‘Anfield Iron’ was overtly racist but snide remarks that passed as ‘banter’ were almost as bad. Gayle went to a Liverpool players’ party where there was a stripper present. The girl dusted her breasts with talcum powder and rubbed herself against Gayle’s face. Roy ‘Chubby’ Brown, the coarse comedian providing the entertainment, said, ‘Try walking through Tox
teth now.’ It was the sort of quip that black players could expect. If they took offence, they were told it was only a joke and they needed to develop a sense of humour.
Dressing rooms were still uncomfortable places for black players. There were plenty of people on the pitch and on the terraces who still resented their presence.
Football is as good a barometer of the nation’s psyche as anything. The Swinging Sixties made London feel like the centre of global attention and, sure enough, England obliged by winning the World Cup in 1966. As a darker, more divisive new decade dawned, Harold Wilson’s Labour government were thought to be certainties to win the general election in June 1970. Four days before the voting booths opened, England were beaten 3–2 by West Germany in a World Cup quarter-final match after leading 2–0. The public’s mood soured and the Conservatives won the election. Huddersfield Town-supporting Wilson believed that the defeat in Mexico contributed to his eviction from 10 Downing Street.
In the malevolent September of 1985, football reflected society’s frame of mind. Not even the England team could unite the country. The BBC did not show the World Cup qualifying tie against Romania live. The match was part of a separate TV deal and the national broadcaster had the rights to screen the game. However, the BBC said that there was ‘not sufficient interest’. The Wembley crowd echoed this. Just 59,500 people turned up for the 1–1 draw that left England a point away from sealing qualification.
Bobby Robson was perhaps the only man in football who might have welcomed the Heysel ban. The England manager may have thought that the lack of European competition would leave his players fresher for the next summer’s tournament that would take the World Cup back to Mexico. Colombia had originally been scheduled to host 1986 but FIFA were forced to move the finals because of political turmoil in the South American nation.
Robson was aghast when the Football League filled the weeks left vacant by the absence of European fixtures with the Super Cup and Full Members’ Cup in a misguided attempt to generate more revenue. The England boss said he was ‘sad and disappointed’. Disappointment was just about the only growth industry for vast swathes of the UK that autumn.
