I HAVE A TERRIBLE admission to make, and now seems like as good a time as any to own up to my sins: I have supported Manchester United.

It’s true: I was once a cockney red. In my defence I never stopped loving West Ham while I was seeing another club. Furthermore, I was very immature at the time. But I know now that it was wrong.

Before you judge me, let me try to explain. As a fresh-faced nineteen-year-old I had been sent to south Wales by my immediate employers to learn the basics of journalism – they clearly didn’t want to do it themselves, which was odd considering I had been taken on by a newspaper. There I found myself sharing a house with an even fresher-faced young man (unlike me he didn’t have a stylish Zapata moustache), who came from somewhere called The North. His name was Bob. It still is, in fact.

It’s fair to say we were wary of one another to begin with. We had been allocated a student house on the outskirts of Cardiff with four other young wannabe members of our chosen profession and none of us had the faintest idea what the immediate future held for us.

As with any strangers trying to find some common ground, one of the first topics of conversation was football. We had all been instructed to turn up some time during the first weekend of January – which for any self-respecting supporter means the third round of the FA Cup. I was jubilant: the previous day West Ham had won at Southampton. Bob, on the other hand, was not so chuffed – it turned out he was a Man U supporter and they had been held to a draw at home by lowly Walsall. Three days later he was even more displeased when the Mancs lost the replay. Perhaps, looking back, I could have been more sympathetic at what must have been a difficult time for him.

What finally broke the ice was The Sweeney – the TV programme rather than the Flying Squad itself. Bob couldn’t understand a word of the rhyming slang that littered each episode, so I translated. And, as he gradually got to know his dog and bone from his dickie dirt, our friendship grew.

One of the many things we had in common was a pathological dislike of the city in which we now found ourselves living. So to cement our friendship we started going to Ninian Park on Friday evenings – which isn’t quite as silly as it sounds because, for much of that season, that was when Cardiff City played their home games. We supported whoever Cardiff were playing. (By the end of that season we were to take this to international level and, as two lone Sassenachs, found ourselves in the midst of a baffled Tartan Army roaring on Scotland against Wales.)

Until this point I always thought of myself as a one-club man. But we were a long way from Upton Park, and once you start fooling around with other teams it’s hard to stop yourself. So when Bob suggested a threesome – him, me and Man Utd – it didn’t seem quite as grotesque as it sounds now. However, I wasn’t prepared to turn my back on West Ham completely; we had been in a relationship for many years by this time and you don’t give that up lightly. After examining my conscience I decided it would be OK to explore the exotic charms of the Red Devils if Bob was prepared to try a blind date with West Ham. We had ourselves a deal.

The year in question was 1975. We were on our way to Wembley. The mighty Manchester United, who only a few years before had been champions of Europe, were now in the old second division. It turned out to be a fascinating few months.

The first game we went to under our pact was West Ham v. Swindon in an FA Cup fourth-round replay at the County Ground. It was a mudbath. In fact, my overriding memory of West Ham’s Cup run that year is mud. It was as if we’d cornered the market in the stuff. The records show that there were 27,749 people in the ground watching Trevor Brooking and Patsy Holland score the goals that secured us a place in the fifth round and many of those were there to support West Ham. Be fair – that’s not bad for a wet Tuesday night in Wiltshire. It was certainly several thousand higher than Swindon’s average attendance in the third division.

Man Utd weren’t getting bad gates themselves. The glory years of Charlton, Best and Law were behind them, and the previous season had ended in a humiliating relegation. But former Chelsea boss Tommy Docherty – the man once described as having more clubs than Jack Nicklaus – was putting together an exciting young side and the fans were turning out in huge numbers to support them. It is estimated that in the 1974/75 season Man Utd took 15,000 fans to Cardiff, 20,000 to Sheffield Wednesday and a staggering 25,000 to Bolton. At Old Trafford they never got fewer than 40,000, and in November more than 60,000 turned up to watch them play Sunderland. And all that in the second tier of English football at a time when attendances were falling because many people preferred to stay away rather than risk getting caught up in the violence making headline news with dispiriting regularity.

Manchester United’s travelling support – the so-called red army – had a reputation for causing trouble wherever it went. But then, so did West Ham fans. It’s true there were some serious headcases among both sets of supporters, just as there were at every club in the country, and no one is trying to defend how the violent minority behaved on occasions. In mitigation, though, it should be pointed out that the reception we got from the police as away supporters in the ’70s did nothing to ease the tension. We would be met at the station as the football specials pulled in and marched to our destination as if we were on a chain gang. You didn’t break ranks to get a pint or a bag of chips – it wasn’t permitted if you supported one of the nasty clubs. Local people would turn out to watch us go past – some hostile, others simply curious. Defiantly, we’d sing and we’d chant … usually with one eye on the police dogs you knew were itching to get their teeth into your denims and the other eye on the police horses ready to happily crush every bone in your foot if you failed to stay in line. If you did catch the eye of one of the policemen you realised just how much they wished you were somewhere else.

It’s a strange sensation, but when you’re made to feel like a criminal even the most law-abiding of citizens can be tempted to believe they are entitled to behave like one.

Before we go any further, let me make it perfectly plain that neither myself nor Bob, who is now a highly respected sports journalist, are, or ever have been, football hooligans. But Bob could look after himself. I knew his northern accent wouldn’t cause him any problems as a temporary member of the claret and blue army – we have recruits from all over the country after all. I, on the other hand, was concerned that my southern pronunciation would not go down well in Manchester. Bob told me not to worry, explaining that Man United have always had a large following in London and the cockney reds were much respected by their Mancunian brethren – mainly because they included some of the most terrifying individuals in the country at that time.

However, I come from a long line of cowards. In fact, cowards run in our family – and none of them run faster than me (boom boom!). Actually, when you’ve been given a chasing around a strange town by a bunch of morons intent on giving you a good kicking it really is surprising how rapid a person can be.

In the ’70s, after an away game, as you made your way back to the station and cattle trucks that passed as football specials, you’d think carefully before answering anyone who asked you the time – especially if the person making the enquiry was wearing a watch. Your best bet, if you found yourself alone and confronted by a group of young gentlemen with scarves tied around their wrists asking you some pointless question with the sole purpose of determining whether you had a local accent, was to sprint back in the direction from which you’d just come, then head off down the side roads. Left here, right there, each turn an instantaneous decision – not knowing nor caring which direction you were going in, just trying to stay two steps ahead of your pursuers and hoping the patron saint of away supporters would look after you.

Old Trafford, for me, was about to become a home ground. Even so, the prospect of standing on the Stretford End pretending to be harder than the hard cases who surrounded me was not something that appealed greatly. Couldn’t we sit in the main stand instead? Apparently not. It’s the terraces for you, my lad – and let’s hear no more about it.

God knows how I got away with it – perhaps it was the camel hair coat (which will never truly go out of style while the real hardmen are still allowed to buy their own clothes); maybe it was the fact I kept my trap shut as much as possible. What limited experience I’ve had of truly dangerous people is that they say little and stare a lot. But, for whatever reason, I increasingly found myself in the midst of the red horde and being treated as one of their own.

Sometimes I’d be offered a cigarette, which I’d take with a curt nod and wait for someone to light it for me. And on the rare occasions we found ourselves anywhere near the fighting that was becoming synonymous with Man Utd I’d look at the skirmish as if weighing up the possibilities then simply shake my head – implying it was too minor for a cockney red to become involved and we’d leave this to the Manc infantry.

I was starting to wonder if there was a career in method acting for me. At the time it was looking more likely than a career in journalism. I was not enjoying the course I had been sent on, and got a reputation as a troublemaker when I tried to convince my fellow students to join the National Union of Journalists and take industrial action to improve our terms and conditions. (Not only was 1975 a vintage year for hooliganism, it was pretty good for strikes too.)

Bob felt the same way as I did – we wanted to be real reporters, not schoolroom scribes trying to master the libel law and the workings of local government. And we didn’t like the nightlife in Cardiff. We’d walk into a pub and the place would go silent. Or we’d try our luck at one of the city’s discos and invariably draw a blank.

Up until then I hadn’t had been much of a one for discos. Some people just aren’t meant to boogie. On the rare occasions I had been to clubs with my mates in the past I’d forgone the dancing and stood with a pint looking like a really interesting sort of bloke, waiting for the girls to come to me. As a strategy it was spectacularly unsuccessful. But Bob taught me a few steps – I still use them today when the occasion demands – and with a sophisticated panache guaranteed to turn heads we’d hit the floor to the sounds of ‘Kung Fu Fighting’ and ‘Lady Marmalade’. Voulez-vous coucher avec moi, ce soir?

I can’t think why we didn’t have more success with the opposite gender: I remember telling one beguiling Welsh wench that, being a journalist, I was an expert in shorthand and ready to take down anything she said at a moment’s notice. Rather than giggle knowingly at this astonishing witticism as I had anticipated, she lamped me with a right hook.

Things got so bad we decided to forget about Cardiff altogether and a bunch of us jumped into Bob’s canary yellow Opel Kadett and headed for the other side of the Severn Bridge. We ended up in a pub in Bristol with the two roughest-looking strippers who have ever disrobed in the name of eroticism. I don’t want to be unkind here, but these two troupers were so repulsive they could make beer curdle.

We were still laughing about it on the way back to Cardiff when one of the guys sitting in the back dropped his cigarette down the side of the seat. As he was sitting closest to the petrol tank the general mood of hilarity changed quite quickly when he told us what he’d done. Bob was forced to make an emergency stop on the hard shoulder and we tore out the back seat to get to the smouldering Player’s No. 6 before it became necessary to look up just what the ‘fire’ part of a third party, fire and theft insurance policy really covers.

I realise the odds are heavily stacked against Hollywood superstar Steve Martin being on the M4 that night, but some years later he and John Candy re-enacted a scene that took our local difficulty to its ultimate conclusion in Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Makes you think, doesn’t it?

In a desperate attempt to be fair here, the journalism course did have its moments. On one occasion we were taken to a police training school – I think the object of the exercise was to make it plain to all concerned that journalists and police are born to mistrust one another. It’s genetic.

The best day of all was when we went down a pit – at least the blokes did: the girls weren’t allowed. Being something of a troublemaking rabble-rouser, my sympathies had been with the miners during their struggles with Ted Heath’s Tory government, which had been voted out the year before. But if they hadn’t been I’d have still become their most ardent supporter after spending a day underground in a mine. You really cannot believe the conditions in which those guys had to labour unless you’ve seen them for yourself. And talk about taking your work home with you! That coal dust gets everywhere, and I mean everywhere. Your ears, your nose, your … well, you get the picture. And you don’t get rid of it in a hurry – it was weeks before I could get in a hot bath without the water instantly turning black.

These excursions notwithstanding, most of the time spent learning the rudiments of our chosen craft was desperately tedious. But at least we always had the football at weekends.

When West Ham’s season had kicked off in August with a thumping defeat at Manchester City I never dreamed that a few months later I would be queuing up to get into Old Trafford to support the red half of the city. But here I was, regularly doing just that. To be honest, all these years on and the games we saw have become something of a blur. But one that readily comes to mind is the Cardiff fixture. Such was our dislike of the Welsh capital we made a special point of going to Old Trafford to watch them play there. United won 4–0 and I saw Steve Coppell make his Man Utd debut.

There were a couple of United players from that team who ended up at Upton Park. Bustling striker Stuart Pearson would, among other things, later provide the cross-shot that Trevor Brooking headed home to beat Arsenal in the 1980 Cup final, while midfield general Lou ‘Lou, Skip to My Lou’ Macari was destined to be West Ham manager for all of six months. Who’d have bet on that? Come to think of it, Lou might. He was accused of betting on just about everything else.

While Man Utd were tearing up the second division, West Ham were starting to put together what would turn out to be a triumphant Cup run. After beating Swindon we were drawn against QPR in the fifth round, a game we won 2–1 at Upton Park. Then it was Arsenal at Highbury in the sixth round and, unless you skipped Chapter Four, you will now know this was the first time it was officially noted that Sir Trev walked on water.

The semi-final against Ipswich at Villa Park was one of the worst games I’ve ever seen. It finished 0–0, and both sides were lucky to get nil. It didn’t help that both Bob and I had monster hangovers, brought about by spending most of the previous night drinking vast quantities of Bull’s Blood (the Hungarian wine rather than the actual blood of a bovine male). We were in the North Stand and it was so packed we couldn’t force our way on to the terracing itself and had to stand on a sloping walkway instead. Try that for two hours and see what it does to your hamstrings.

The most memorable part of the day was the drive back to Cardiff. Bob was behind the wheel – it was his car after all – but he decided I should steer from the passenger’s seat while we polished off a bottle of vodka between us. So that’s the way we did it – for 100-odd miles. It was probably the most stupid thing I have done in my life – and certainly one of the most dangerous. Almost as dangerous, however, was watching Man U clinch the second division title at Notts County.

Between you and me, I much preferred supporting Man Utd at Old Trafford than on the road. Bob’s mum and dad always made me feel tremendously welcome whenever I stayed in their warm, cosy, comfortable home. Usually Bob’s mum would feed us royally, but on one occasion his dad gave us the money to treat ourselves to a meal in the Grand Hotel. It was the first time I ate duck à l’orange, which, preceded by a prawn cocktail, was without doubt the pinnacle of style in 1975. Many years later I went back to the Grand with Di after we’d been to see a game in the north-west. We stayed overnight – partly because we didn’t fancy the drive back south, but also because I wanted to rekindle the memory of those wonderful times. We got woken up by a bunch of workmen in the adjoining room at 6 a.m. and, after our complaints to reception that no one should be hammering this early on a Sunday morning were relayed to the horny handed sons of toil next door, we were subjected to a stream of abuse through the paper-thin wall until we finally got up and went down for breakfast.

Anyway, there was no getting out of the trip to Nottingham – not with Manchester United on the verge of the title. Again we drove up from Cardiff – this time with Bob firmly in control of steering wheel as well as pedals. But soon after parking the car we became part of the phalanx of Man U fans making the slow march to the game under the watchful – and nervous – eye of a huge police escort.

Inside the ground there was the usual mixture of emotions that you get with any football crowd; expectation, tension, bravado – even some humour. But that day there was a sense of insanity too. One guy shinned up a floodlight pylon and got a huge cheer for his efforts. Another idiot decided to follow suit and clambered up the pylon in the other corner. But instead of being saluted for his efforts he was urged to jump – and for several worrying moments I really thought he was going to give in to the baying crowd below.

Bob recalls how he was finally talked down. ‘It was a convincing and compelling piece of advice from the highly trained police negotiator: “Come down here, you thick twat”.’

I can’t pretend to remember much about the game itself, although United were two up at half time and got the point they needed. We all ended up on the pitch afterwards. Even those of us who didn’t want to go found ourselves there; to be honest, you don’t have much of a say in the matter once the common consensus is for a human stampede. Depressingly, what should have been a celebration became another wrecking spree as hundreds of Man Utd fans tried to tear apart Meadow Lane with their bare hands.

My overriding memory of the game is the sound of unidentified objects flying past my head at various times throughout the match. I had witnessed coins being thrown before, but this was something different. The missiles were clearly heavier and more menacing – they hissed in flight. It wasn’t until the following day, when the Sunday newspapers were full of pictures of a 5-inch metal kung fu star embedded in a policeman’s helmet, that I realised what had been whistling past my unprotected cranium. Had one of them hit me I doubt I would here to tell the story now. It seems some of the more enterprising yobbos had been making them at school, painstakingly filing down lumps of metal into the shape of a star with several razor-sharp prongs. I wonder what those characters are doing today? No doubt they are family men with strong views on law and order. Perhaps one of them even went on to be a metalwork teacher.

Fleet Street went to town on the red army. The Daily Mirror was still frothing at the mouth on Monday. Under the front page headline ‘Savage animals’ it reported that six kung fu stars had been recovered and two supporters were still in hospital. On the back page Tommy Docherty was quoted as saying: ‘What these mobsters will do next season has me really scared.’

A fortnight later Bob and I were at Wembley to watch West Ham beat Fulham 2–0 in the Cup final, courtesy of two goals from Alan Taylor – and the chances are I never would have got to see the game if it hadn’t been for my northern soulmate. Being an all-London final, tickets were like hen’s teeth in the capital but, luckily, there were some to be had in the north and Bob’s dad managed to lay his hands on a couple in Manchester. I’ve no idea how he did it – but I will always be grateful to him for that.

The following season Bob and I were both back on our respective papers, trying to put into practice what we had learned in Cardiff. But although we could no longer go to matches together on a regular basis we were determined to see both West Ham v. Man Utd games that season. Which is why I watched in horror as some of the worst crowd trouble ever witnessed at Upton Park was played out in front of me – believing my mate was in the thick of it.

It was widely expected there would be trouble between two sets of supporters who detested one another. The shops and pubs near Upton Park had closed for the day and the sale of alcohol was prohibited. Some eyewitnesses have reported they saw skirmishes before the game, but I don’t recall encountering any trouble after Bob and I parked the Kadett in a side street and made our way to the ground. With three times the usual number of police on duty, anyone who fancied a pre-match tear-up was certain to get nicked.

As usual in those days, the away team were given the South Bank – and they didn’t get all of that. Bob had decided he wanted to be with his fellow supporters in their end of the ground rather than join me on the North Bank, where he would have been required to remain seriously schtum for the duration of the match. We went our separate ways at the junction of the Barking Road and Green Street.

The atmosphere was tense from the outset. After six minutes a massive Mervyn Day goal kick landed on the edge of the Man Utd penalty area and, as their defence dithered, Alan Taylor nipped in to score. On the North Bank we forgot about abusing the opposition fans for a while and concentrated on celebrating the goal.

West Ham were still 1–0 up at half time. Then, nine minutes after the interval, Man Utd supporters began to spill on to the pitch. Exactly what happened down their end is still a matter of debate. Go online and you will find any number of accounts from people who were there. Some put the disturbance down to fighting, others reckon it was simply because too many people had been herded on to the South Bank terracing.

Eugene says:

But Steve disagrees. ‘This was violence. I was there. West Ham were in the ground hours before us and ambushed us on the way in. They were throwing bottles and milk crates at us. There were quite a few fans locked outside, WHU and reds.’

This was a time when the fans of both clubs reckoned they were the heavyweight champions of British hooliganism. The red army was notorious after its exploits in the second division; West Ham’s Inter City Firm had yet to be formed but there were plenty of other, smaller, groups (some of which were later to be marshalled under the ICF banner) who were ready and willing to dish out a liberal dose of West Ham aggro when called upon to do so. The Mile End Mob; the Teddy Bunter Firm; the South Bank Crew – you really didn’t want to mess with those boys. It was these ‘firms’, say some, who caused the mayhem.

Stepney says:

His comment is appended to online footage of Brian Moore’s calm, measured, analytical commentary of the mayhem that was taking place in the south-east corner of the ground. He adds:

Pogo12xu saw things in much the same way.

Whatever the cause, one thing is certain. If there had been fences, as there were at Hillsborough fourteen years later, there could well have been a tragedy on a similar scale.

As the chaos played itself out, referee Peter Reeves was left with little choice other than to take the players from the field. He set a time limit of twenty minutes for order to be restored, after which he proposed to abandon the game. Ron Greenwood, recently elevated to general manager, went on the pitch in his gabardine Mac to see if he could help the hard-pressed police sort out the mess.

Years later, Richard went online to say: ‘I was there that day as an eight-year-old with my dad sitting safely in the West Stand. It was my first game at West Ham and I remember thinking, “Is this normal?” I remember John McDowell of West Ham leading a child off the pitch.’

In the event, the players came back with two minutes to spare – and Manchester United promptly scored via a Coppell free kick and a Macari header.

Our second goal – which turned out to be the winner – came on seventy minutes and was also the result of a set piece. Trevor Brooking picked out Graham Paddon, who had been brought down to win the free kick, and his low cross was fired home by Bobby Gould. Deep, deep joy for all those in claret and blue.

What I didn’t know at the time was that, by a huge stroke of luck, Bob had managed to avoid the man-made maelstrom that could have cost him his life. I’ll let him tell the story himself.

United took massive crowds to all games and this one was no different.

After we split up I located the massed ranks of United fans and stood in line to get in. Everybody seemed pretty chilled – West Ham were always decent opposition, but it wasn’t seen as a powder-keg game: that was reserved for the likes of Liverpool, City and Leeds.

After about twenty-five minutes I hadn’t moved and nor had anybody else.

The rumour went round that the end was full so I decided to do the unthinkable – go and stand on my jack in the West Ham end. My grasp of cockney was limited only to the few months I’d known this London fruitcake in Cardiff: apples and pears, giving it large, you’re having a laarf – that sort of nonsense. I knew that if I tried to sound remotely southern I’d do a worse impression than Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins. So all I could do was keep my mouth shut.

Surprisingly, when I got to the Hammers’ end, there was no queue and no stewards or coppers checking supporters in. So I handed over my cash and in I went.

I manoeuvred as far to the left side of the stand as I could get.

My plan to be incognito, though, was immediately compromised by a group I had unknowingly stood next to: ‘U-N-I-T-E-D, United are the team for me, with a knick knack paddy whack give a dog a bone, why don’t City fuck off home?’ Oh no. I had stood next to a group of seemingly suicidal reds.

Heads turned in our direction, so I suddenly made a discreet exit to a relatively safe area. It was around about now, thankfully, that everyone’s attention was drawn to the other end. It was chaos. United fans were grouped in several factions but seemingly below West Ham supporters who had the high ground and were able to charge down at them.

Police crowd control was pretty basic in those days. But to have no segregation at all – absolutely nothing at all – was mind-boggling. Occasionally you would see United and City fans mingling in a derby at Maine Road, but I can’t ever remember seeing such a ticking timebomb anywhere else.

It was sickening watching the scrapping – and the utterly useless, spineless, leaderless response from the police.

As the game developed and we were thankfully losing, the last thing I needed was Lou Macari getting a goal to make it even more edgy. The Manchester lads in the West Ham end, pretty quiet during a disappointing game from our perspective, suddenly spurted into life and it kicked off again.

Maybe, in the light of Bob’s account of events that grim day, Gould’s winning goal was even more important than it seemed at the time.

The victory put us level with QPR and Man Utd at the top of the table, separated only by goal average1 and with a game in hand on the other two. Normally I would have been ecstatic at beating my mate’s team and being in such a dizzyingly high League position, but for once I didn’t rub it in. Not after what we had just seen.

Instead, we listened to the reports of what we’d witnessed on the car radio as we headed for home. ‘Talk about uninformed gibberish,’ says Bob.

It was all the maniac Mancs’ fault, of course. The local station fell completely for the stereotype: northern monkeys coming to the big city for a punch-up. Not a word on the complete shambles brought about by a lack of organisation by the police and the club. Journalistically, it was an important lesson for me. The anger I felt then shaped how I went about my business afterwards, and to this day. Assume nothing – rather than follow the obvious line, dig under the surface to find the full facts. Don’t be a lazy tosser.

For anyone thinking of taking up a career in journalism, can I just say that is better advice than anything Bob and I were ever given in Cardiff.

History hasn’t been kind to the ’70s, and after days like that you can see why. But it wasn’t all football hooliganism and industrial unrest. Unlike now, people didn’t fear for their jobs, the cost of housing was affordable for the vast majority and there was a general feeling life would improve for everyone. Much of the fashion was a bit ropey, but some of the music will live on for ever (including ‘Lady Marmalade’). And what about the food? Prawn cocktail and duck à l’orange – it doesn’t get much better than that. Not to mention the Black Forest gateau to follow. Like the decade itself, that never got its just desserts either. For all its faults I still look back on 1975 with fondness. Let’s face it, any year’s a good year when you’re nineteen and you’ve still got your entire life in front of you.

1 From the time the Football League was formed in 1888, rather than separate sides who were level on points by the self-explanatory goal difference used today, their positions were decided by dividing goals for by goals against. It wasn’t an ‘average’ at all, but that’s what it was called. Not only was it hard to work out in your head, the system promoted defensive football (2–1 is a better result than 6–4 while a clean sheet is priceless) and it was finally junked at the end of the 1975/76 season. Sadly, the violence that was also part and parcel of the game back then took rather longer to eradicate.