Swindon got me at home before I made like Red Rum over a load of garden hedges and I got slapped about a bit at Preston many years ago.
I was at most mentioned above. The Wigan game was crazy. Chelsea was the biggest mass fight I saw. My first ever away game at Vale in 79/80 saw mass brawls all over Burslem afterwards. Loads of trouble after the Milk Cup semi final against Liverpool - saw a Walsall fan stabbed that night, Bristol Rovers away at the end of one season when they played in Bath. Mansfield away - maybe the same season - we lost two nil and there was a ton of bother. Shrewsbury away when that lad died. Millwall, Chesterfied and Huddersfield all having a go in the street end and all being sent packing. Bristol City in the play offs in the enclosure. Oxford at home when they did us 1-0 in the milk cup year. Newport when they got promotion on the last day. Blues on Garrison lane after the cup game replay around 1983 when Mighza hospitalised a top Zulu(Blues came unstuck a few times against us and in all their books reckon we were teamed up with Wolves!!) Bramall Lane in 1981. Stoke away when we were partying and Stoke weren’t really in the mood.
All a bit daft but was part and parcel forty years ago. I dressed the part (indeed my wardrobe is still homage to sometime around 1983) but when I’d done twenty five quid on a Fila polo shirt the last thing I wanted to do was fight in it. Trudging through muddy away car parks in new Stan Smiths was as much wear and tear as my wardrobe could stand on a single day out tbh.
Its legacy is quite pitiful. The era adapted into books and films encouraging a new generation of wannabes who end up picking on stragglers, the weak and vulnerable. Cretins.
We were walking to the train station, got to the end of the road by the high street and looked back, must have been a stampede of about 150 people running towards us
Peterborough was always troublesome, i remember traveling there on a football special train back in the day, we had got into about 3-4 scuffles on the way to the ground, and by the time we had got to the high street, they must have been warned because all the shops were shut with shoppers still inside
So when we got to the ground, they made us take out the laces from our shoes and boots, said they would leave them in a box outside after the game
By the time i got to the box there were none left
The most terrifying moment I’ve seen is hundreds of blackpool fans walking towards us after we stopped them getting promotion (lost in the play offs) and reaching our end to give us good old handshakes
For all the recollections, the seventies and eighties were truly pathetic. Pathetic inadequates who felt that battering their "peers " from elsewhere in the country made them hard boys ffs. If you were one of them, sorry to piss on your youth but think about it.
Yeah they still had the plastic pitch, we were down one side , a police horse was trying to come into the pub, think the cricket was being shown at the time.
I was just thinking Preston away in the club on the car park all kicked off as we where trying to get outside they where throwing glasses at the exit we were getting covered in glass then when outside coppers on horses wading in lol
Chelsea at home. As I went outside people were telling the coppers outside the ground that it was kicking off but they just stayed there. Been atracked in Bradford in early 80s in city centre walking back to my uni digs after the game with brother and friends. Was recognised on the Monday but as they thought I’d caught train back to Walsall they left me alone. And just about avoided similar walking back from Doncaster’s Belle Vue ground to the station.
Was there with migza That night in garrison. Lane when he got badly. Cut. up
Zulu’s. Came unstuck that night Also the Chelsea. Game. Where one of. there. Top lads Had the end of his nose sliced off in penalty box of the street end goal
But as bad as the above. And the battle of bramnhall lane where. The worst fighting. I ever saw was. North Shields. Away. Often. Wonder how we ever got home alive Those geordies took it to another level that day
Rightly or wrongly. It was part and parcel of going to Games. in those days. But it was. Only between likeminded lads. And scarfies . Youngsters. And families. Where never targeted. Unlike today
I remember the Chelsea fan getting thrown over the wall after the street end had finished with him, and his mates screaming blue murder as if it was OUR fault
