Retro Football

I recently entered the David Welch Student Sportswriters' Award 2013, in which I had to write three 800-word pieces on any topic related to sport. I didn't win, but my Director of Studies liked the articles. A victory of sorts. Anyway, here is the first of those articles. This article is probably the most similar to my regular style of blogging, but any feedback would be appreciated as I attempt to seamlessly move from blogging into vaguely serious writing. Much obliged. Ed.

One of the joys of the Internet, when it isn’t being populated by Gangnam Style and misguided tweets, is the wonderful glimpse into a radically different time that a younger man can glean by watching a few videos of archive football, and exploring the context.

It was a few weeks ago, when I was reading about the intense Leeds v Chelsea rivalry of decades past, prior to their Capital One Cup clash, that I typed into the search filter the two words that anyone who grew up in the 1970s will be familiar with: ‘Dirty Leeds’.

            The entry that was thrown up was an FA Cup third round match from 1978, played between Manchester City and Jimmy Armfield’s Leeds at Elland Road. Admittedly, being fascinated by David Peace’s extraordinary novel, The Damned United, I was slightly disappointed not to stumble upon a relic from the Don Revie Empire that, thanks to Peace, feels so familiar. Nonetheless, what a world I encountered! I felt like Aeneas travelling to football’s Underworld.

            Six seconds into the seven-minute video, it’s quite clear we’re not in 2013 anymore, Toto. Gordon McQueen brings down a Manchester City forward with a tackle that is reminiscent of an uncontrollably frustrated nine-year-old in the playground. Five-match ban, it must be! He’s not given it! The evocative tones of Barry Davies ring out.

            ‘That surprises me, but the referee’s view is better than mine’.

            Already it’s hard not to laugh, yet be strangely admiring of the game. For a generation that, due to the gratuitous violence of films and video games, is supposed to be immune to the shock-factor, it’s quite an adventure to stumble upon a match of Association Football featuring the Brobdingnagian Leeds United of the 1970s.

 I should have known that things wouldn’t be quite as they seemed. For a start, the goalkeepers weren’t wearing gloves. In a match played in January. Like I said, it’s hard not to be admiring.

A minute later, the grainy video, like a war film with the soundtrack performed by Barry Davies, ratchets up another notch. McQueen punches his own goal-keeper, Peter Harvey, square in the jaw.

You can almost see the referee saying ‘that’s your first warning’. I’m not so sure Howard Webb would be so lenient.

Not long after Manchester City scramble (how else?) into a two-goal lead, an almighty pitch invasion occurs. It doesn’t seem to have the same violence and menace of pitch invasions performed in anger in the twenty-first century, nor does it have the same joyous outpouring of those carried out in celebration. It’s almost a Carry On Football approach to getting the game stopped, hundreds of parkas frivolously filling the pitch. And then the obligatory horse rides on.

This is what YouTube was made for. It’s not just an insight into the raucous behaviour of football fans and players alike in the era; it’s a history lesson for those who study the game. Full-backs don’t simply ‘jockey’ their winger into the corner in the manner of today, they dive straight in. The pace of the turnover from defence into attack is at times frightening. And the back-passes! The first time I watched The Big Match Revisited with my father, I ended up inadvertently blurting out my shock at the unpunished back-passes, until I bashfully discovered their outlawing in 1992.

Meanwhile, back with the pitch invasion and facing increasing levels of parkas, the referee wanders over to the side of the pitch. He takes up the PA’s microphone. Maybe he’s going to sing? The Wings’ Mull of Kintyre was number one at the time. That might appease the hordes of parkas. Alas, no. He implores them all to get back in the stands, and after a while, the video informs us, they do. It’s a pitch invasion with a touch of respectfulness.

The match ends, thankfully, without another mention of Gordon McQueen, and the venture into 1978 sadly ends there. But what good is this without context?

I turn my attentions to that other great font of knowledge for any slightly obsessive football fan, Wikipedia, and follow the rest of the rounds with a few clicks of the computer mouse. Manchester City were knocked out in the next round, which seems to make my attention on the match at Elland Road disappointingly futile.

Scanning to the bottom, Ipswich Town were the winners of that FA Cup. Their first ever, and, to date, only triumph. Another nugget of trivia that sports fans obsess over like no other.

After writing up my trip down memory lane, I check the scores on 2013’s FA Cup (with Budweiser) Third Round Saturday. Leeds are drawing 1-1 with Birmingham in the nondescript tie of the round.

Reliving the 1978 FA Cup easily beats living in the present.