This is where the story ends
May 1977. Knowing Me, Knowing You was at number one and Britain would shortly be outraged by the Sex Pistols trying to upstage Elizabeth II. But never mind the street parties – for football fans that warm spring of Jubilee year was all about Liverpool v Borussia Moenchengladbach, Tommy Docherty running off with Mary Brown and a contentious climax to the First Division season.
That winter had proved particularly snowy. The season’s final fixtures eventually took place on Thursday 19 May, just forty-eight hours before Cup Final.day. One relegation place remained. with Coventry, Bristol City and Sunderland all on 34 points; matters were complicated by the first two playing each other at Highfield Road. Sunderland’s superior goal difference meant they could stay up by winning away against Everton, and also survive if both games finished level. A defeat would only put them down should the two Citys contrive somehow to draw.
Neither Sunderland nor Bristol City ever looked particularly comfortable after being promoted the previous May. City’s exciting striker Paul Cheesley scored their headed winner at Arsenal on the opening day, but his season – and ultimately career – was ended seven days later when he fell awkwardly on an Ashton Gate pitch still rock-hard from that summer’s drought. Sunderland lost 4-1 in Bristol shortly afterwards, continued patchy form led to Bob Stokoe’s sacking and replacement Jimmy Adamson oversaw nine consecutive defeats. By the start of February they looked doomed.
City were beaten 1-0 at Roker Park on 11 February with Mel Holden scoring for Sunderland in a rare Friday night fixture. Their first goal since November proved so catalytic that they lost only three more times all season. Alan Dicks’ side, meanwhile, occupied bottom place with ten games left before renewed resilience and workrate saw things gradually improve. Wins against Tottenham, QPR, Leeds and Liverpool meant the escape was back on.
Many of Dicks’ players – former-Leeds hard man Norman Hunter being one notable exception – were either Scottish (Peter Cormack, Tom Ritchie, Gerry Gow, Don Gillies) or Bristol-born products of City’s thriving youth programme. John Shaw played most of the season in goal behind a regular defence of Gerry Sweeney, Geoff Merrick, Gary Collier and Hunter. Midfield options, meanwhile, included Gow, Gillies, Trevor Tainton, Jimmy Mann and Clive Whitehead. New signing Chris Garland helped inspire their revival. The feather-locked former City junior had re-signed from Leicester during mid-season to provide support for Cormack and Ritchie up front.
Coventry seemed eminently beatable. Memories of Jimmy Hill’s Sky Blue Revolution were fading fast; their inspirational 1960s manager had resigned after he secured them promotion to Division One, becoming first a TV executive and then – in typically inimitable style – Match of the Day presenter. Hill subsequently rejoined Coventry as managing director. His reputation would be seriously tarnished by the events of that sultry Midlands evening.
The facts are these.
- Kick-off was delayed by fifteen minutes because of “heavy traffic and crowd congestion outside the ground”. This meant Sunderland’s game at Everton started – and finished – sooner.
- Coventry scored quickly and went 2-0 up just before the hour, Tommy Hutchison getting both. Gow pulled one back immediately and then Gillies equalised after 79 minutes.
- A result of Everton 1, Sunderland 0 (it actually finished 2-0) was announced over the tannoy and displayed on Highfield Road’s electronic scoreboard with five minutes left, encouraging both teams to play out what time remained with very little enthusiasm. The situation, as Andy Lyons later wryly observed in When Saturday Comes, “just cried out for one maverick to seize the ball and make a dash for goal, shouting ‘To hell with mediocrity, you’re all whores’.”
This tame conclusion – after what had hitherto been a ruggedly combative game – still rankles with Sunderland fans. They have blamed the Coventry chairman ever since for behaviour they regard as no better than match-fixing. Hill’s role in delaying kick-off has never been properly established, but it’s on record that when Sunderland’s result came through he raced to the Highfield Road announcer’s box screaming “Get it on the board!”
Coventry were later found guilty by the FA of “influencing the outcome of a game by erroneous or foul means.” The club were fined and Hill reprimanded.
Half the 37,000 crowd travelled from Bristol. It was the city’s biggest ever exodus for a football match. These – with thanks to www.otib.co.uk – are their memories.
If you don’t tell then I won’t
“I was at Hartcliffe School. Our Maths teacher was a Gashead and used to get terrible stick for it. We had him last lesson on Thursday afternoon. He asked who was going to Highfield Road that night, and when six of us stuck our hands up he gave us all a two hour detention.”
“My school (Chase in Mangotsfield) was forced to close as hundreds of kids and teachers knocked off early. I bumped into one of my teachers going into the ground and he said ‘If you don’t tell then I won’t’.”
“I was at King Edmund’s in Yate and one of our teachers borrowed the school minibus to take 12 of us to the game.”
“I bunked off school for the day and got filmed by HTV boarding the coach at Ashton Gate.”
“I was at Whitefield School which was rock solid Gas. We had double science on the afternoon of the match and our teacher (who used to get loads of stick for being Red) was desperate to go to the game. He announced at the start of the lesson that we should raise our hands if we were going to Coventry and we would be allowed to leave through the field at the back. We all looked at each other for a second so he said ‘Boys, if you put your hands up we can all leave now.’ Every one’s hand went up, he went to Highfield Road and we all went down Vassall’s.”
You’re bloody everywhere
“I was 17 and had been in my first job for about a year. I worked with four or five other City fans of the same age and at lunchtime that day we still didn’t know if the boss was going to let us go early to get the train to Coventry. We all made a pact that if we weren’t allowed we would go anyway and say ‘stuff your job’.”
“I decided to go on the morning of the game, picked up my girlfriend from work at 1pm and set off. I had no idea where Coventry was and simply followed the convoy of red and white up the Fosseway.”
“Five of us got off work early and drove to Coventry in my clapped out old 850cc Mini. We were among many who arrived late due to the heavy football traffic.”
“My girlfriend at the time picked me and my mate up from the Railway Tavern in Charfield after some breakfast rough cider and dropped us in Wotton to get the Jenkins’ coach. The run up the M5 was incredible with massive numbers of City fans heading up there.”
“We had a coach from Bristol Telephone Exchange where we all worked. I managed to get a ticket for my brother in law who was a docker. He turned up with about 50 cans of beer and our foreman told him it was a dry coach and only let him on after confiscating the beer and putting it in the boot of the coach. I never heard the last of it.”
“When we arrived I asked a policeman where we should go as we were from Bristol. He said ‘Anywhere mate, you’re bloody everywhere’.”
Farcical but wonderful
“We filled the large open terrace behind the goal, the stand opposite the main stand was pretty much all red and the home end under the double-decker stand was half City.”
“I paid on the turnstiles at about 5.30. There were already massive queues and when we got in the ground was rammed. City fans were on three sides, there must have been over 15,000 in there.”
The local bobbies marched us train travellers down a dead end street and so we got in the ground late.”
“We got in having heard that the match was delayed and made it to the top of the terracing just as the game was kicking off.”
“There seemed to be a collective holding of breath from all 36,000 in Highfield Road as Donnie Gillies steadied himself and then cool as a cucumber smashed the ball home.”
“We were all convinced we were doomed. We were 2-0 down at half time and being played off the park. Amazing when we got two back in the 2nd half and watched the last 10 minutes elapse with no competition. If I remember correctly it wasn’t just a case of the two teams passing the ball around unchallenged, I think they were actually passing to the other team’s players too.”
“When we equalised there was only going to be one winner, and with all four sides of the ground bouncing away to ‘Drink Up Thy Zider’ Jimmy Hill couldn’t wait to get that score up.”
“Geoff Merrick had to sit the game out injured. He was an occasional smoker and got through 20 of his own fags and 20 of a friends’.”
“The players stopped competing. The ball would be passed out from the keeper to a defender who would pass it to a teammate whilst the opposing forwards watched on with no attempt to close down or intercept. It was farcical but wonderful. It was one of the most memorable matches I ever witnessed.”
“I certainly only noticed the lack of competitiveness, tackling etc for the last few minutes. Mind you, the emotion amongst the City fans was such that it was hard to concentrate on what was going on on the pitch.”
“At one point the ball crossed the halfway line to boos from both sets of fans and was quickly withdrawn to our side of the centre circle.”
“Ian Wallace was the only player who tried in the last ten minutes. If he’d scored a lynching would have ensued.”
“The length of time has become exaggerated over the years. According to Jimmy Hill the City match actually kicked off just five minutes after the Everton-Sunderland fixture and the final score of that match was put up with about 4 minutes remaining at Highfield Road. But those minutes were indeed a farce, bar Ian Wallace who somehow didn’t seem to have got the message.”
“At the final whistle there was jubilation from both sets of supporters and then on the electronic scoreboard came the words ‘Everton v Sunderland – score correction”. A hush fell and everyone stopped and looked up at the board. Then it flashed up ‘Everton 2 Sunderland 0’ and the place went mad.”
Crazy excitement
“At the end of the game the City players threw their kit to the crowd. I ended up with Peter Cormack’s socks and had to hang them out of the window on the way home as they smelled terrible.”
“There were grown men standing on the barriers, supported from below by other fans, arms outstretched to the skies with tears rolling down their faces.”
“I got thrown over the railings onto the pitch at the end by some chap shouting ‘Get on there then, babber’.”
“At the end we charged on the pitch and celebrated alongside the Coventry fans even though there had been a lot of trouble during the game.”
“I don’t remember how or why, but I was sat in the stand next to a Coventry fan. Throughout the game we argued to the point of almost coming to blows on several occasions. Then at the final whistle we both stood and hugged each other before going onto the pitch together, singing and dancing.”
“We were in the packed upper stand with Coventry fans in the enclosure below us. The banter was fierce. Then when it went up on the scoreboard that Sunderland had lost we were almost blowing kisses to each other.”
“The final ten minutes were amazing and at the final whistle the two sets of fans that had wanted to kill each other for the previous couple of hours were literally dancing around on the pitch, hugging each other with high fives, handshakes and crazy excitement.”
“I managed to get on the pitch thanks to a rather large chap standing by the fencing and offering leg ups to all and sundry. It didn’t matter what scarf you had tied on your wrist, it was just plain celebration.”
“After the shot of Alan Dicks in the dressing room the camera pans out to the pitch and there’s me with my kid brother on my shoulders. The club did a ‘where are they now’ article and we had to send them a picture of him on my shoulders again. Gert lump weighs a ton these days so we had to cheat with him sitting on a wall.”
“I recall walking across the park after the game with thousands of others and seeing a City fan holding a gert big bottle of champagne in his mouth with one hand while pissing with the other, all as he walked without breaking stride. A very skilled act, I thought at the time.”
“After the game City and Sky Blues fans were partying together in the streets and pubs for hours and hours.”
Memories, good days, bad days
“I spent the night hiding behind the sofa, listening to Radio Bristol and finding the whole thing unbearable.”