Don’t Make ‘Em Like They Used To (I Think They’re Better Than Before!)

by Brian Kennedy

(first published in the October 2009 Monaghan United match programme)

Nothing is more responsible for the good old days then a bad memory. Nostalgia has always been the file that removes the rough ages from the past and is something we always look fondly upon when we reminiscence about better days. This is indicative whenever people talk about football.

Apparently there have been at least 573 matches that ended 6-6 in the 1950s and the twelve goals scored were four hat-tricks by players in their early 60s!

The same can be said of football stadia and their infrastructures. Hark back in time and everyone has a story of a terrace so packed that it seemed the entire city had come along. An away end of thousands, five feet from a jovial goalkeeper, who engaged in good humoured banter throughout the ninety minutes. A camaraderie that would never be matched. Even in the League of Ireland crowds were huge in the sixties. Don’t believe me? Ask anyone who went to Kilcohan Park back in the day.

I watched my first game in England from behind rows of steel bars and mesh fencing in 1979. It was Stamford Bridge and as an Arsenal fan I was in the away end. I spent 90 minutes being swayed from side to side, losing my footing on the dilapidated terrace and actually praying the Gunners wouldn’t score as the impending crush forward might actually kill me. I also bore witness to some inhumane vile chants directly aimed at both Irish players Liam Brady & David O’Leary. “Fenian Bastards” and “No surrender to the IRA” being the order of the day. Grown men with no affinity to anything other than xenophobia.  To make matters worse the home support even turned on midfielder Eamon Bannon. His crime? Being Scottish.

Watching a game from behind a wire fence. Sitting on bolted down pieces of wood which clubs classed as a seat. Sectarian chanting. Bananas on field. Rule Britannia and England for the English. Good ole days?

Football didn’t do family. Taking your son to a match was a time honoured tradition no doubt and many is the man here who beamed with pride the afternoon he brought his offspring to Kilcohan Park or the RSC for the first time, but a family enclosure in 1979 was being surrounded by a few relations on a terrace akin to those in the Colosseum.

Hooliganism? That was a hoot wasn’t it? Let’s arrange a fight before a game, smash up a local pub, rush the home side’s end and pulverise each other until we’re drenched in blood, and then desecrate the train on the way home just for good measure.

Heysel was the spark. Bradford the flame. Hillsborough would be the bonfire that finally changed British Football. As ever it took a tragic loss of human life to achieve this. Be it hooligans running riot, a decaying wooden stadium, or incompetent policing, the Taylor report would become the single most important legislation in English football history.

Immediately after the Hillsborough Disaster, the Home Office set up an inquiry under Lord Justice Taylor. Its remit was “to inquire into the events at Sheffield Wednesday football ground on 15th April 1989 and to make recommendations about the needs of crowd control and safety at sports events.” The inquiry, which was held in Sheffield, began on the 15th May 1989 and lasted thirty-one days. The rest is history.