Wealdstone, White Hart Lane and Wembley

A couple of times over this period Chelsea & Watford were both playing away, so I went to see the nearest non-league club, Wealdstone, who were then a top non-league side and now based in Ruislip. 
 
The Fulham and England legend Johnny Haynes (149 Fulham goals between 1952 -1970, 18 England goals 1954-1962) played for Wealdstone in 1972/3. When the £20 per week (hard to believe now) maximum wage was abolished in1961 Haynes became the first £100 per week player. Also ‘Fulham famously turned down an offer of £80,000 from AC Milan for "The Maestro" that would have been over double the record for a transfer at the time and would have made Haynes the best paid player in the world.’

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Haynes

England international and superb left-back Stuart ‘Psycho’ Pearce also played for Wealdstone (1978-1983).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuart_Pearce

As did hard man and not very talented actor or footballer and (mystifyingly) Welsh international, Vinnie Jones (1984-1986). Having said that, I do respect what he achieved in football. He showed that competitiveness and commitment can go a long way. He was a part of Wimbledon’s ‘crazy gang’ that beat Liverpool 1-0 to win the FA Cup in 1988.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinnie_Jones

http://wealdstone-fc.com/

The eponymous 'weald stone' is a sarsen stone, a sandstone block (a la Stonehenge & Avebury) formerly marking the boundary between the parish of Harrow and Harrow Weald.

There were precious few Saturdays of football in the three school holidays per year so there was no time to lose. I was addicted!

The Chelsea I saw during these holidays was generally a team in decline. There were ups and downs along the way but there was no silverware between 1971 and 1997…A long wait!

Actually, there was an exception to this – Chelsea won the Full Members Cup in 1986, at Wembley. 


 

I went to this game with Tony Gavin, and it turned out to be a rather bizarre 5-4 win for Chelsea. I also remember City’s coach being stoned on its arrival at Wembley.

The Full Members Cup lasted from 1985 – 1992 and had two later names – The Simod Cup and the Zenith Data Systems Cup (ha!). It was created after English clubs were banned from European competition following the Heysel disaster.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heysel_Stadium_disaster

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Full_Members_Cup

Back to league games, and witnessed games between 1974-76 included a humiliating defeat in the first game of the season to Carlisle, on the latter team’s First Division debut. 

I sat in the newly built (1973) East Stand, which is now Stamford Bridge’s oldest stand, and the one which almost bankrupted the club. At the time it soon became known as a white elephant. The term white elephant, meaning a burdensome possession which creates more trouble than it’s worth, ‘derives from the story that the kings of Siam (now Thailand) were accustomed to make a present of one of these animals to courtiers who had rendered themselves obnoxious, in order to ruin the recipient by the cost of its maintenance. Keeping a white elephant was a very expensive undertaking, since the owner had to provide the elephant with special food and provide access for people who wanted to worship it.’

This defeat, however, was nothing compared to the ignominy of losing the last game of the season to Tottenham and being relegated. I went with my Dad to this game at White Hart Lane.
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For safety reasons, we sat in one of the stands avoiding the terraces behind each goal. The game was huge– it was all or nothing. Pretty much - the team that won would stay up, the team that lost would go down. The atmosphere was electric and, as usual, you could feel the violence in the air. This was before the days when the football and police authorities finally started to get a grip on the game, and before the days of fenced in fans. Minutes before kick-off, and with all the players on the pitch, there was a huge pitch invasion from both sets of fans. They were mainly trying to kick each other, but several players got hit while they were sprinting off the pitch. I remember the Spurs (and Northern Ireland and Arsenal) legend Pat Jennings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pat_Jennings), who had the furthest to run, taking several kicks. There were few punches in those days – it was the age of bovver boys – long hair, big flares, tank tops, Doc. Martens. The object was to get your ‘enemy’ on the ground and kick the shit out of them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1974%E2%80%9375_in_English_football

This was a sad day for me. The violence wasn’t shocking, because that’s just what happened. Even players being attacked and a full-on pitch invasion couldn’t stop the game. But the result – it was a disaster! This was by now a young rebuilt team that included Ray ‘Butch’ Wilkins (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Wilkins)

They would now have to carry on rebuilding in Division 2.

Check out the fifth game down from this link:

http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story/_/id/996923/first-xi:-tottenham-vs-chelsea-clashes?cc=5739

My games in the following season, in Division 2, included two away games - to Leyton Orient

(Brisbane Road) and Charlton Athletic (The Valley). 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I saw a young Laurie Cunningham playing for Orient. He went on to make his name at West Brom. and played for England and Real Madrid. He was the first black player to play for the England under- 21s. He tragically died in a car crash in Spain aged 33:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/8149282.stm

http://www.furd.org/default.asp?intPageID=35

In both games I watched as the Chelsea hardcore ‘took’ the home fans ‘end’ behind one of the goals. At the Valley this simply meant calmly walking around the ground (three sides of the ground consisted of enormous terraces) before running at the Charlton fans. After a few minute fighting the Charlton ‘end’ was soon theirs. The police seemed powerless to act.

 I also remember going to a Division 2 League game in 1976 against Fulham.

 


A local derby (you can see The Cottage over the river from the East Stand), and the first time in some time that the two clubs had met, it was more than a sell-out. What's more, Fulham booasted a line-up that included Bobby Moore, Rodney Marxh and George Best.

 George Best tribute - some nice clips with a, er, Polish tribute song:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bobby_Moore

I stood on my own in the Shed end as the ground slowly filled up…And kept filling up. We were packed in like sardines, and I must have been moved a good twenty yards from where I originally stood, moved by the undulating sea of people. This was commonplace in those days, especially for local derbies like this. It would take Britain’s worst sporting disaster and the death of ninety-six people at Hillsborough in 1989 to change all that. My feet barely touched the ground and I couldn’t move my arms. I saw little, Chelsea  won 2-0 and everything was fine with the world. This was simply the way it was. There's something at the back of your mind thinking 'hhmm, this could be dangerous', but you accept it because being crammed in to huge terraces was part and parcel of the sport.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hillsborough_disaster

Hillsborough may have been coming, but it wasn’t the first stadium disaster in Britain:

The first Ibrox disaster in 1902 – twenty-five died:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibrox_disaster

Bolton Wanderers’ Burnden Park disaster – 1946 – thirty-three died, 500 injured:

http://www.boltonrevisited.org.uk/s-burnden-disaster.html

The second Ibrox disaster - sixty-six dying in 1971:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/teams/rangers/8230503/The-Ibrox-Disaster-of-January-2-1971-which-claimed-66-lives-was-a-tragedy-waiting-to-happen.html

Fifty-six people died and 265 injured at Bradford City’s Valley Parade in 1985:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bradford_City_stadium_fire