45 years ago today

[City Man]

One of the City faithful got chased into a back garden down North Road by a couple of Reds- he grabbed hold of a spade and wacked them round the head - well done that man

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[John Ex Aberdeen now E.R.]

MUFC and their legions of mercenary bootboys from the length and breadth of the country were the visitors at Boothferry Park.

Never seen owt like it before or since .

Stalybridge, Taunton, Carlisle, Mexborough Reds.... a franchise in every town. Back then the plastic phenomenon was unheard of, although bootboys from every tinpot town were coalescing around MUFC as it afforded some kind of vicarious hardman ID.

The garb was a tartan scarf, docs, calf length green Oxford bags or white Skinner jeans and of course Docs (suitable for bootiing **** out of people) and a denim jacket. A sort of melange of Slade, Northern Soul and the Bay City Rollers.

There must have been somewhere between 10 and 15,000 of these goons in Hull from around 10 in the morning on a murky day like today. Audible chanting from the direction of BP from around midday. Widespread trouble in the hostelries of West Hull and town. About 30 arrests, 59 injured and over 100 ejected, all this in an era of innocent amateurish coppering and pre cctv. A palpable tension around the ground that day . Attendance was 23 287, previous attendance was 7,571 against Fulham and subsequent one was 9,612 against Bristol C.

Ground was therefore about half full instead of the usual quarter full, and crowd split was probably 50-50.

Mally Lord scored in first half at Bunkers end cue more scrapping, ejections and St Johns stretchers. Waggy sealed it at North Stand five mins from the end cue mass angry exodus with 'It's time for you to run' and the 'You're gonna get your ****in heads kicked in'.

Tommy Doc, the generalissimo of Doc's Red Army whinged about City's rough play as his decoy post match comment. City had John appointed John Kaye two months earlier and had Alf Wood up top.

It was as good as it got for Kaye, as City were skint and Harold Needler died the following summer.

Still in my top 10 City games after all these years.

I was at the game, quite a day, lives long in the memory, I've never seen anything like it either.. I always felt Tommy Doc was rather overrated as a manager, and live off his success at Chelsea, but never really did anything after that,

 

[Gone For A Walk]

Would have been there too.
Scary days for a teenager, made worse by having to get the train home from Paragon. But hell of a buzz.
Thinking about it, not sure why I / we didn't walk to Cottingham and catch the train there!