War On The Terraces: Football in the 70's and 80's

When I started watching football, the Country was awash with industrial disputes and the threat of IRA violence stalked the mainland. My first games were with my Dad in Coventry's pretty modern and sedate Main Stand. But my attention would be drawn to the West End Terrace. There, Coventry's "top boys" would gather. There was no segragation other than a strong blue line of police who would be like a human wall as opposing fans gathered in the other half of the same end.

If you could "take" the home fans treasured end, it was seen by some as a bigger triumph than winning the game itself. There were numerous chest thumping terrace anthems, awash with bad language and macho posing. Sometimes, away fans got into the ground early with the intention of having the numbers to run the then meagre numbers of home support out of its own end. This presented a shock to the top home boys when they got inside the stadium.

My Dad got a job managing a bookies so he could no longer take me to Saturday games. I was ten when he started letting me go with my friends. We were a bit too young to be considered the enemy apart from to the notorious scarf hunters. Bringing a scarf of the opposing team home was considered a badge of honour, a prize won in battle against one of the other sides top lads. But nobody was to know if the scarf was gained from a youngster who preferred losing his colours to the alternative of a knuckle sandwich. It wasn't easy being a 70's football urchin.

There were also two big greens just by the Highfield Road ground on the Gosford area side. We had to go across them to get home. Often fans would use the parks to carry on in stadium feuds that had developed. Only when you'd negotiated safely your passage across these battlegrounds, could you scurry home smugly to a cooked tea and that week's episode of Doctor Who.

By the time I was fourteen, segragation had came in then fences. I stood in the West End myself then. Occasionally away fans would infiltrate, like soldiers on a mission to occupy foreign soil. There was an adrenalin rush as you either ran or stood your ground. Even queuing to get in or out was a reflection of the fraught social climate. Leaflets of propaganda from the National Front or Anit Nazi League would be thrust into your hand. I just wanted to get home to my Subbuteo rather than be recruited into politics.

The early 80's hooligan become more organised. All the clubs had "firms". I admit their clobber and taste in music was pretty good even if their intentions were not. Being partial to a spot of trouble now included making a fashion statement, like latter day mods battering each other.

One game sticks out in my memory. Coventry's 1981 League Cup home semi final first leg with West Ham. There were pockets of pitched battles all over the place, inside and outside the ground. Eventually, to my surprise, a football match broke out and we won 3-2 after going two down. Cue a short trip home that felt like I was war corespondent as more fighting ensued. We crashed out in the away leg. Wembley had gone along with any football innocence I had left.

Football, with decaying grounds continue along this lemming like path until unthinkable tragedies took place at Bradford and Hillsborough. It was too much. The price too heavy. You could lose a life or loved one to football. It was time for change. The most resistant to this unbelievably, were the police and politicians who suppressed what had happened on that fateful day in Sheffield. It made you wonder, if all those years of fans knocking ten bells out of each other, was preferred by the hierarchy to people waking up to how those running the system were carving up the Country for themselves.

Like I say, it was very different back then. Sometimes when you grow up in unfeasible circumstances, you begin to accept it as normal and it gets out of control. That's the danger. What I do know is, some of those people I stood on the terraces with are still amongst my best friends. Bonds were formed that those who inhabit today's soulless plush modern stadia could never match. But some weren't so lucky. Many heavy prices have been paid from those days of war on the terraces.