Used to walk to BP from Chants Ave never really knowing whether you were going to get filled in by away fans in North Road or on the cinder carpark where the bid programme stall was. Running down the platform sometimes with my little book of green tickets in my season ticket. Getting into Bunkers Hill and seeing the pitch and spotting the likes of Sinbad, Suzy Quattro and Alan Jackson in the crowd. The smell of the bogs and our 12 foot Union Jack draped over one of the barriers with John Kayes Super Black and Amber Army stitched on it by my mates mum. We would give it large to the away fans then run like fleeing rats when it got ugly. As hard as jelly we was. Saw the last game against Darlington and the first in the KC against Sunderland. Loved BP but times move on and the MKM is now home.
For me too. Cigarette smoke - even now when I smell it sometimes, in certain situations, like a damp night with a crowd it takes me back. Cigarette smoke mixed with so much else though.
I always advocated spending the council money on improving BP....ie buy the houses on North Road by Compulsory purchase, adjacent to the east stand, then knock them down so they could build a new main stand then have that sweep around to a new North Stand, then around again to the East.....All in all, maybe the cost of this would have been greater than building a new stadium. Therefore, decision to build new stadium was the right one...BP was tremendous when it was full and the North Stand was still there, but you don't stand in the way of progress....KCOM/MKM is great, but I bet the maintenance costs are high. Biggest larf at BP was the ball hitting the East Stand roof and the rust falling onto the fans in the seats...Just showed you how far gone it was.
I felt exactly the same going to the open day I went looking for my seat i felt like a kid on Xmas day . BP was a complete dump I first went in 1974 and it wasn't to bad but just went downhill and I was glad when we left even the final game was a dismal memory
Went to that game with my mate Steve....We were pass holders. He completely forgot that he had to pay to get in, so there we were asking strangers for a few coppers to get enough to get in...Collected the dough by five to three...3-0 CITY, start of the run to the Q/Fs, should have got to the Semi-Final...Another tale of what could have been, involving HCAFC. One of many!!!!!!!!!!!
Talking about crowd parting on Bunkers. Anyone witness an incident, maybe in the early 70s. City were playing Crystal Palace. A couple of their fans were on BH. Not sure what happened but a fight/pushing broke out. One of the Palace lads pulled out a knife and the crowd parted. Then a City skinhead, think he was called Pete or Paul Rudd, hopped over a barrier and booted the geezer, which caused the knife to fall out of his hand, then the Palace lad legged it out of there pdq.
There was certainly a smell in the gents toilets! Rancid. However the smell of cigars still reminds me of games atBP in the sixties and seventies. Strange but true.
Don't think he saw the original Sinbad there, not in 1974. He'd be lucky to see him there in 1970 too, maybe his younger brother around 1970, but certainly not during the short lived John Kaye era.
I was there. It was 1968/69. The Palace fans came onto the terrace from the concourse behind the South Stand. There were about a dozen of them, maybe more, all wearing long black coats. I think City had just scored an early goal, Ian Butler from memory. Hooliganism was still in its infancy at Boothferry Park back then and I don't remember any away fans venturing onto Bunkers before those Palace fans did. One certainly had a knife and one had a chain of some sort. I was 14 at the time and got thumped across the back of my head by one of them who was old enough to be my father. I had a pen pal in Bromley in those days, a Palace fan, and we used to exchange programmes so when I sent him the match programme I mentioned that I'd been thumped and he sent my letter onto the club and I think the incident got a mention in their next home programme. A week or so later I received a parcel of a full season of Palace home programmes and a card with half a dozen or so Palace lapel badges all personally sent with a covering letter of apology from the then Palace manager Bert Head. ps; The City skinhead called Pete you mention would probably have been Pete Saxton aka Sacko.
