Two Tribes Read online

  ‘It was a matter of pride,’ Jan Mølby said. ‘You wanted to be top of the league and top of the boozing league.’

  Alcohol could never be used as an excuse for United’s failings. Whatever the reasons, they were beginning to slow down.

  They drew their 11th league match 1–1 away to Luton Town, on the notoriously awkward Kenilworth Road plastic pitch. That meant they failed to equal Tottenham’s top-flight record for a perfect start to the season, set in 1960. Then United beat Queens Park Rangers 2–0 at Old Trafford but Robson picked up an injury. He was missing for the rather tame 1–1 draw with Liverpool, which appeared to be a better result for Atkinson’s men than Dalglish’s trailing team. The captain was also unavailable for wins over Chelsea and Coventry City. The unbeaten start had now run to 15 games and into November. On the morning of United’s trip to Hillsborough to play Sheffield Wednesday, a red-top tabloid ran a banner headline ‘Give It To Them Now’. Robson was back, the Red Devils were ten points clear of Liverpool and Dalglish’s side were due to play Coventry City that afternoon and had a relatively poor record at Highfield Road. Everton, the champions, were 17 points adrift of United.

  Ron Atkinson’s team lost 1–0 to Wednesday. Liverpool won 3–0 in the Midlands. ‘We knew they would come back to us at some point,’ Nicol said. ‘We were waiting for it.’ The headline writers would be more restrained for a while.

  The meltdown continued. United took only one point in the following two league games. Next up after that was a Milk Cup tie which sent them to the last place a troubled, struggling team needs to go: Anfield. What occurred on 26 November in front of the Kop became part of Liverpool legend.

  Jan Mølby never thought he would see the goals he scored against United in the fourth round of the Milk Cup. The second, and winning, goal was straightforward enough. It was a penalty. The first, though, quickly became regarded as ranking with Anfield’s epic moments. With no television broadcast available, all anyone in the crowd could do was rely on their memory and use their descriptive talents to convey the beauty and brutality of Mølby’s strike.

  The hour mark was approaching with Liverpool trailing to a Paul McGrath goal when Mølby won the ball 15 yards inside his own half with a juddering challenge on Norman Whiteside, the notoriously tough Belfast youngster. The Dane set off upfield as United players flocked towards him to exact revenge. The Liverpool midfielder burst through their assaults, flattening his opponents like an unstoppable juggernaut heading towards the Kop. With white-shirted defenders scattered around him, Mølby lined up his shot and the ball exploded off his foot so hard it sent Gary Bailey, the goalkeeper, into a cowardly defensive crouch to avoid being seriously injured. It was, to hear the pub recollections, the most spectacular expression of Scouse power ever seen against the most-hated enemy. I know, because I missed the match and had the tale of the goal recounted to me on numerous occasions.

  The Farm had been recording a BBC radio session for the John Peel Show in London. Normally, with Peter Hooton, the singer and leader, and Kevin Sampson, the manager, being massive Liverpool fans, we would work any engagements around the fixture list. The BBC were not going to let us shift the session for a football match.

  It was not a game anyone wanted to miss. While incidents of football violence had seemed to drop off after Heysel, any time Liverpool and United met there was invariably trouble and the threat of disorder generated a frantic atmosphere that always gave the fixture a frisson other games lacked. There is a deep rivalry between Merseyside and Manchester that goes way beyond football. Its roots are economic and cultural.

  Manchester had to use the port of Liverpool to export the cotton that its mills churned out. The service came at a price and the inland city’s businessmen decided the port’s charges were too high. Against massive opposition from Liverpool, a ship canal was built linking the landlocked mill town with the sea. Manchester became master of its own economic fate.

  Both City and United have a sailing ship on their badge. That the clubs use such vessels as part of their iconography feels like an insult to Scousers.

  The two cities are little more than a day’s walking distance from each other but feel remarkably different. They frequently judge their achievements – in music, fashion, politics, the arts and literature – in comparison to each other rather than London. Merseyside assumes the upper hand in music, courtesy of the Beatles, and can claim to have invented terrace fashion. Manchester has produced better literature, has a more vibrant artistic scene and was developing groundbreaking radical political ideas when Liverpool was still an Establishment bastion nicknamed ‘Torytown’.

  Most fans on both sides would not have been able to articulate why the hatred existed; they just learnt to mistrust their enemies from an early age. My first away game was at Old Trafford in September 1972. On the forecourt outside the ground, I remember asking my dad about the Mancunian accent. ‘How do they speak?’ I said. ‘With forked tongue,’ came the terse reply. There were bloody clashes in the Scoreboard End before the game and the fighting spilt on to the pitch as the teams came out before the match. Liverpool lost 2–0. At the age of 11, I already knew who the enemy were and was enthralled by the rivalry.

  Both cities were suffering badly under the Thatcher government but that hardly lessened the antagonism that existed over football. This was United’s first time back on Merseyside since the FA Cup semi-final at Goodison six months previously. The levels of violence on that day in April exceeded anything that had gone before in encounters between the teams. The expectation of another titanic clash – on and off the pitch – was high.

  It was the biggest flashpoint of the domestic season so far. Peter Robinson made a plea for calm from the Liverpool boardroom: ‘Any incidents could have a major bearing on when we are allowed back into Europe. Both United and ourselves are eager to get back into European competition as soon as possible and it would be a tragedy if a flare-up of any kind delayed our return.’

  Tragedy was perhaps the wrong word given what had gone before but the mood was tense. Police warned that they would confiscate offensive banners. The dark undercurrents made anticipation of the game even more exciting.

  United were – and still are – the biggest club in England and one of the world’s premier football teams. They had won the European Cup in 1968 – nine years before Liverpool – and had a wider fanbase. The global awareness of United was rooted in real tragedy. In February 1958, while returning from a European Cup quarter-final against Red Star Belgrade, the team’s plane crashed while taking off after a refuelling stop at Munich. Twenty-three people on board were killed, including eight players and three of the club’s staff. Matt Busby, the manager, survived with serious injuries. The team had won the title in the previous two seasons and had acquired the nickname ‘the Busby Babes’ for their youthfulness and brilliance. One of the best sides in English football history was destroyed in the disaster.

  The initial outpouring of sympathy towards United was as strong on Merseyside as anywhere else. Two decades after the crash, a generation was growing up who had not been born in 1958 and believed that the horrific air disaster was fair game to chant about at matches.

  The ‘Munich’ songs grew louder throughout the 1970s. Liverpool – and Everton – supporters began making flags that simply read ‘Munich 58’. It did not matter that Busby had been a much-admired captain at Anfield. The sick ditties talked about him waking in an oxygen tent after the crash.

  The flags went everywhere Liverpool played and were always prominently displayed. They could be picked out on the live television coverage of the World Club Championship in Japan in 1981 and 1984 alongside the ‘On the dole, drinking sake, Tokyo’ banners. Munich flags were visible at Heysel, too.

  The police could confiscate the banners but it was impossible to stop the chanting. United’s fans tried to hit back by singing ‘Shankly 81’ to mock the great man’s death that year but their response never caused the fury the Munich songs generated. Duri
ng the 1–1 draw at Old Trafford a few weeks before the Milk Cup tie, supporters in the away end threw inflatable aeroplanes into the no man’s land between the two sets of fans and the Liverpool end cheered wildly when they nosedived into the ground.

  When the Milk Cup draw was made, the clubs immediately talked about setting up closed-circuit television and showing the match at Old Trafford. A potential crowd of 90,000 across the two stadiums was mooted. In the end, 7,200 Mancunians watched the game on a big screen. At Anfield, more than 41,000 saw a match where the noise ‘was laced with a disturbing amount of animosity’, according to The Times.

  Mølby’s goal sparked a pitch invasion but things never quite got out of hand. The tie passed off relatively peacefully. It was just as well. UEFA sent representatives to monitor the match. Serious trouble would have inflamed an already tense situation.

  That should have been that. The goal became the stuff of legend, elevating the Dane’s exploits to epic status. Kopites trapped in Maida Vale studios thought themselves accursed they were not there.

  Then we learnt that there was a tape of the game. United had a video from the closed-circuit footage. My brother found this out from his mate during athletics training at Kirkby Sports Centre. The friend, Alasdair, was the son of Jim McGregor, the United physiotherapist. Within a week or so, we were watching the tape. As great as it was, the goal was a disappointment after all the hyperbole.

  Mølby does not clatter Whiteside. He cleverly whips the ball off the Northern Irishman’s toes. He turns upfield and, rather than being gang-tackled by a bunch of Mancunian bruisers, he accelerates towards goal, leaving Clayton Blackmore in his wake. The shot is indeed powerful but not quite the cannonball of popular legend.

  It was perhaps the best argument for keeping football off television. The feats on the pitch and the exploits of players become even greater in the imagination and memory.

  After a few months, someone I knew who lived on the same estate as Mølby on the Wirral asked to borrow the tape to show the midfielder. Another few weeks passed and Mølby’s neighbour suggested I accompany him to get the video back and perhaps have a drink with the great man, who had indicated he would be up for a beer. When we got to the semi-detached house on a new-build estate, Big Jan came to the door bare chested. He handed the tape over and communicated that he was busy by pointing to a blonde girl sitting on his couch.

  Mølby does not recall the incident but said, ‘It sounds like me.’ He had forgotten who had provided the tape. ‘I remember seeing it and having it but I thought Ron Atkinson got it for me.’

  The memory of the goal is sharp, though, as he recalls the moment. ‘You act on instinct,’ he said. ‘Nothing goes through your mind. Well, almost nothing. I was worried about Whiteside because you took your life in your hands going past him. But once I was clear, it opened up and I just did what came naturally. I was playing well and in a confident mood.

  ‘You have moments in your life when you know something special has happened. This was one of them. Driving home that night I knew it was a moment that would be hard to beat. It was my first goal in front of the Kop, too. It made it doubly special.’

  United’s good start to the season had sown some doubt on the Kop and Mølby feels the victory was an important step in rebuilding confidence within the team and on the terraces.

  ‘The fans needed it, too,’ he said. ‘It was a time of change and youngsters had come in and replaced some of the players who’d been important for so long. Phil Neal and Alan Kennedy [long-serving European Cup winners] had gone, Kenny was the manager and it was a time of transition. We needed to step up and prove we could fill their shoes.’

  United’s awful November was nearly over. All that was left was one more stumble, a 1–1 draw at home to Watford. Liverpool appeared to be hitting their stride. There was a long way to go, though.

  12

  London calling

  While United’s ten-game winning start to the league season had garnered all the headlines, there were other teams that got off to a great opening. In division three, Reading were sweeping all in front of them.

  It was one of the unlikeliest stories in the Football League. The Berkshire club had a tiny support base and were susceptible to the Thatcherite doctrine that only entities that made a profit had any worth. On the balance sheet, Reading were a disaster.

  In the early 1980s, they were treading water at the bottom of the division and fewer than two thousand people were coming through the turnstiles on average.

  Predators were circling. Robert Maxwell, the corrupt tycoon who was building a media empire, acquired Oxford United in 1982, picking up the club when the previous owners could not service their debts to the bank. Oxford were one of Reading’s nearest neighbours and in the same division. To the fans, that meant a rivalry. To Maxwell, it suggested something different: a business opportunity.

  The Czech-born former Labour MP cared nothing for the social component of football clubs. He imagined only profit. His idea was to merge and grow. A year after taking control at the Manor Ground he unveiled his big idea: to consolidate Oxford and Reading into the Thames Valley Royals, basing the new club in Didcot between the towns and creating a bigger catchment area for supporters.

  Maxwell’s footballing philosophy would have earned Thatcher’s approval. ‘Everything in the world that cannot pay its way must go the way of merger to combine into stronger units,’ he said.

  Reading fought off the hostile approach. In 1984, having been unable to amalgamate two clubs into a bigger entity, Maxwell flexed his ambitions even further. He tried to buy Manchester United. Luckily for all at Old Trafford, he was unable to make the deal work.

  Reading looked extremely vulnerable in the post-Heysel world. Elm Park’s capacity was reduced from 27,000 to 6,000 and the local council denied an application for the club to build new, revenue-raising social facilities.

  Reading did curry favour with the government, though. The club volunteered to be the guinea pig for Margaret Thatcher’s much-reviled computerized identity card scheme for football fans. The plan, in its infancy at Reading, required supporters to carry photo ID cards and only those with this proof of identity would be allowed to attend away games.

  Ian Branfoot, the manager, had little interest in politics. He imagined an opportunity. Branfoot had seen Watford and Wimbledon, two small teams from London’s commuter belt, rise through the divisions with remarkable speed. Watford had finished second in the league to Liverpool in 1983. With good and prudent management, advancement was possible without merging.

  Reading had a striker in Trevor Senior who excelled at this level. They also kept clean sheets. They kept pace with United with ten victories to start the season and when Ron Atkinson’s team drew with Luton, Reading had a chance to equal Tottenham’s 1960 record of 11 wins to open a season. Local businessmen clubbed together and promised the club the princely sum of £4,500 should they exceed Spurs’ start. They passed with ease, winning their first 13 league matches.

  During the run, they kept seven clean sheets and Senior clubbed in with 11 goals. Their first dropped points were in the 2–2 draw away to Wolverhampton Wanderers in late October. It did not spark a crisis. Reading would go on to win the third division title with four games to spare and Senior would score 27 league goals over the season. United’s fate was not so straightforward.

  There was more to West Ham than Frank McAvennie. Against all expectations, the East London club were one of the unseen attractions of the tail end of 1985.

  ‘We had Phil Parkes, who was the world’s most expensive goalkeeper when he moved to West Ham, Mark Ward and Paul Goddard were class players and Alan Devonshire was coming back from injury and that was like a new signing,’ Tony Cottee said. ‘There were good players all over the pitch.’

  West Ham were another club that started as a works team. In 1895, they were formed at Thames Ironworks, on the instigation of a foreman from the foundry and the company’s owner. Initially, they took t
he character of the firm’s Oxford-educated boss, wearing a kit that copied the university’s shade of blue. By the time Thames Ironworks morphed into West Ham United they had adopted the more egalitarian claret and blue shirts, colours that would come to be associated with the East End.

  The 1960s were West Ham’s glory years. They were the second English club to win a European trophy – the Cup-Winners’ Cup in 1965, two years after Tottenham had achieved success in the same competition – and had won three FA Cups in their history. They had never come close to winning the league, though. Their proudest boast was they provided the core of England’s World Cup-winning side in 1966. Bobby Moore, the captain; Geoff Hurst, who scored a hat-trick in the final; and Martin Peters gave the world champions a claret-and-blue hue.

  The club had a reputation for playing in an entertaining style but also for being a soft touch. Bill Shankly summed them up in the era of two points for a win: ‘Lovely club, great people, great football, four points.’ Teams like Liverpool expected to beat the Hammers whenever they played them. Inconsistency was in West Ham’s DNA.

  By the mid 1980s, they were more famous for their fans. Alf Garnett, the bigoted racist character from the BBC sitcom Till Death Us Do Part was the best known but his notoriety was being surpassed by the ICF, a group of wide boys on the make who had spotted a way to turn hooliganism into a nice little earner.

  In true Thatcherite fashion, many of the ICF were parlaying their notoriety into a business opportunity. Some even used the media glare to create their own fashion range. It never caught on but many of the people dismissed as ‘thugs’ went on to successful careers in writing, music and the arts. The popular press always found folk devils easier to deal with than the reality of terrace culture. Having said that, groups like the ICF also generated their fair share of bouncers, drug dealers and armed robbers. The East End always had a tradition of producing gangsters, regardless of whether they were West Ham fans or otherwise.