I am looking at images on a small black and white television in my rented accommodation in Essex of Leeds United players and our then Messiah, manager Howard “Seargeant Wilko” Wilkinson, celebrating the award of the old Second Division Champions trophy at a friendly game at Elland Road with Italian side Genoa. I have finished my first full day of work as a Librarian with Essex County Council. Leeds are back in the top flight. I have achieved two ambitions – promotion for Leeds United and getting proper professional employment (or should just be “a proper job,” something which takes me out of the “eternal student” bracket.
I punch my fist at the TV screen and cry out “Yes”! I had made it. Work seemed to have gone well at the branch library where I had started my job. Leeds had gone up. (“Nanna nana na! Leeds are Going Up to the tune of the KC and Sunshine Band single would be the soundtrack to promotions two and three decades later) Only now did I feel I could properly celebrate promotion as on the train down from Aberystwyth where I had qualified from the then College of Librarianship Wales, the back pages of the tabloids were screaming for us to be deducted points and therefore denied automatic promotion because of the three days of rioting involving our supporters around our final day fixture at Bournemouth on the May Bank Holiday weekend where we got the victory that secured promotion and the Second Division League title.
I punch my fist at the TV screen and cry out “Yes”! I had made it. Work seemed to have gone well at the branch library where I had started my job. Leeds had gone up. (“Nanna nana na! Leeds are Going Up to the tune of the KC and Sunshine Band single would be the soundtrack to promotions two and three decades later) Only now did I feel I could properly celebrate promotion as on the train down from Aberystwyth where I had qualified from the then College of Librarianship Wales, the back pages of the tabloids were screaming for us to be deducted points and therefore denied automatic promotion because of the three days of rioting involving our supporters around our final day fixture at Bournemouth on the May Bank Holiday weekend where we got the victory that secured promotion and the Second Division League title.
It felt that once again and not for the last time we were having to negotiate the parallel lines of triumph and disaster. On this occasion, I feared that the behaviour of a section of our fanbase which for much of the 1980s had made the name “Leeds United” a byword for the hooliganism and violence which scarred English decade throughout that decade would derail our success. Fortunately, nothing came of these threats as the trouble had all occurred outside Dean Court, Bournemouth’s ground apart from a warning from the Football League that should such scenes recur, we would be expelled from the League.
That weekend’s debauchery was actually an aberration for our support as the club’s rigorously enforced membership and ID scheme had largely screened out the most notorious and prolific offenders plus an antiracist initiative headed up by Leeds City Trades Council and supporters groups had driven the pestilence of far right, BNP elements from Elland Road which had so frequently shamed our club. My most sickening football memory outside of disappointment on the field was witnessing bananas being hurled at black Aston Villa players prior to our Third Round FA Cup tie in January 1988 from the Lowfields Road terracing, and black players from opposing clubs were frequently greeted with the chant “Trigger, Trigger! Shoot that N…. r!. It also helped that decent fans came back to Elland Road to double our attendances in the Sergeant Wilko era and that the club started to sign Black players.
But I used to say to myself in the 1980s that I dread the day Leeds would get promoted because of fan reaction and as it turned out, Bournemouth that May Bank holiday weekend proved to be the perfect storm. The whittling away of a comfortable lead to one of just goal advantage necessitating a win to be sure (as it happened nearest challengers Newcastle United’s 4-1 defeat at Middlesbrough guaranteed us promotion), temperatures of 26C, a long weekend off work for many, alcohol on the beach and the procession of thousands of Leeds fans without tickets who travelled down against the expressed advice of the club all contributed to the Battle of Bournemouth described so vividly by Billy Morris.[1]
That weekend’s debauchery was actually an aberration for our support as the club’s rigorously enforced membership and ID scheme had largely screened out the most notorious and prolific offenders plus an antiracist initiative headed up by Leeds City Trades Council and supporters groups had driven the pestilence of far right, BNP elements from Elland Road which had so frequently shamed our club. My most sickening football memory outside of disappointment on the field was witnessing bananas being hurled at black Aston Villa players prior to our Third Round FA Cup tie in January 1988 from the Lowfields Road terracing, and black players from opposing clubs were frequently greeted with the chant “Trigger, Trigger! Shoot that N…. r!. It also helped that decent fans came back to Elland Road to double our attendances in the Sergeant Wilko era and that the club started to sign Black players.
But I used to say to myself in the 1980s that I dread the day Leeds would get promoted because of fan reaction and as it turned out, Bournemouth that May Bank holiday weekend proved to be the perfect storm. The whittling away of a comfortable lead to one of just goal advantage necessitating a win to be sure (as it happened nearest challengers Newcastle United’s 4-1 defeat at Middlesbrough guaranteed us promotion), temperatures of 26C, a long weekend off work for many, alcohol on the beach and the procession of thousands of Leeds fans without tickets who travelled down against the expressed advice of the club all contributed to the Battle of Bournemouth described so vividly by Billy Morris.[1]
Sparked initially by over intrusive policing of beach parties on the Friday evening, the disturbances morphed into full scale rioting on the Saturday as a marauding army of Leeds fans stormed towards the ground (emptying supermarkets and off licences of booze on the way) hoping to gain entry to an 11,000 capacity stadium (even now as a Premier League venue, it holds just 17,000 less than half the capacity of Elland Road). They almost overwhelmed the Dorset Constabulary who thus had to call in outside reinforcements in the form the London Metropolitan Police’s Special Patrol Group (SPG) who were in effect riot police who had earned notoriety for beating to death the 33 year old school teacher Blair Peach from New Zealand in the disturbances surrounding the Southall anti-National Front protest in April 1979. True to form, the SPG took no prisoners, cracked skulls in the manner of the French CRS or Italian Carabinieri and repelled the assault on Dean Court. After the game and long into Saturday night and Sunday morning, the trouble spread to the neighbouring towns of Poole and Christchurch as Leeds “fans” commandeered taxis and continued their boozefests.
Quite apart from the nihilism of such crowd madness and the reputational damage it inflicts on everyone associated with Leeds United, punishing the innocent as well as the guilty, such behaviour prevents us normal fans from properly processing the major “ups and downs” experiences. Just as I did not properly celebrate promotion until three days after it was achieved, so when our relegation to League One was all but confirmed by Ipswich Town’s late equaliser at Elland Road in April 2007 (I was behind the goal on the South Stand when Alan Lee’s header hit the net and my inner being like a bullet), so the resultant invasion of the pitch by our lunatic fringe prevented me from properly mourning what was the lowest point in Leeds United history.
The fin de season events on Britain’s South Coast apart, the 1989-90 season ranks as a personal triumph for me. It was the first season that I watched Leeds United at home on a regular basis. Ease of connection between Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria railway stations meant that the journey from Aberystwyth to Leeds was now reduced to four hours affording me enough latitude for the last train from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth at 8.30pm. Being a witness to and follower of the redemption of Leeds United in the form of promotion back to the top flight after a sentence of eight seasons’ exile under the tutelage of Howard, another far thinking Yorkshireman ,and captained by another red haired Scotsman in the person of Gordon Strachan remains the most important football experience of my life. Even above celebrating the Division One title two years later that promotion season had made possible. Above going to the World Cup in 1982 with Northern Ireland. Above the Champions League and UEFA Cup semi-finals in the pre-crash era at the turn of the millennium. If ever I entertain regrets about leaving Northern Ireland, I just have to think about and recall the rebirth of Leeds United and the part played by the twelfth man at Elland Road that historic season and my presence at it. It was at our final home game against Leicester that I really felt the hands and motions of history as a late Strachan special secured us a 2-1 victory which, as it turned out, was the goal that guaranteed promotion.
The other stand out moment for me as a spectator that season was Gord’s last minute winner in the 4-3 win over Hull City; a match in which we had twice conspired to lose leads before falling behind 2-3 in the last ten minutes before an equaliser from Imre Varadi and then Strachan’s last gasp strike turned agony into ecstasy. This was yet another example of Leeds United coming up with ever more ingenious ways of torturing its supporters! But what really made this occasion was that it came on the weekend of Nelson Mandela’s release from his twenty-seven year stretch at the hands of the soon to be democratically vanquished apartheid regime in South Africa. Earlier in the season, the Berlin Wall had fallen. Both these iconic, emancipatory moments hopefully presaged a bright new era for humanity as well as the rebirth of Leeds United.
So, in that spring and summer of 1990, I settled into the groove of work and real grounds for optimism for the future. Receiving a proper salary for a proper full-time job finally heralded my entry into the adult world. If not particularly exciting, the daily rhythms of performing the duties of an Assistant Librarian were physically and psychologically grounding. I was now in an organisational system in which I would surely progress. Or so I thought.
That summer was also the summer of the Italia 90 World Cup. The Republic of Ireland made their tournament debut under the stewardship of Leeds United great and England World Cup winner Jack Charlton. They navigated a path to the Quarter-Final stage without actually managing to win a game within ninety minutes. Their standout moment was the winning spot kick in the penalty shootout at the end of the round of sixteen tie with Rumania taken by David O’Leary, later to be a central figure in the turn of the millennium tumult at Elland Road.
England also came so agonisingly close to reaching their first major tournament final since their World Cup success in 1966 losing to the eventual winners West Germany also in a penalty decider; something that was to prove the millstone around their necks as promotion play offs are for Leeds United.
Much lauded as the event which transformed the ugly duckling of (certainly English) football of the 1980s into The Beautiful Game of today, much of the football served up at Italia 90 was poor, especially in the latter stages with the Germans winning a scrappy final with Argentina with a late Andreas Breheme penalty. What made that tournament such a cultural moment was its soundtrack of the wonderful voice of the operatic singer Luigi Pavarotti and his Three Tenors ensemble. Their stirring almost haunting song Nessun Dorma which was the theme tune of Italia seem to implant an association between high culture associated with opera and the more popular culture of football in the minds of the refined bourgeois classes which led to their number flocking to and hegemonising what were previously regarded as proletarian spaces – football grounds. The introduction of all seater stadia and higher ticket prices in the wake of this middle class love in with football certainly had the effect of pushing out of football venues its previous young, predominantly male, working-class clientele.
Back in Essex, storm clouds begin to gather. My immediate line manager tells me that certain library assistants are “not confident” of my ability to perform the routine library housekeeping tasks that should be their roles not that of a library professional. This all sounds like “telling tales out of school” but then then my manager escalates the situation by informing Essex County Council Libraries’ Personnel team who then extend my probationary period. The nit picking increases over a failure of mine to fill out old fashioned Browne library tickets and to check out and return books quickly enough and to pass on messages regarding volunteer rosters for the Housebound Library service that I am responsible for (I know that that is not true but my word does not count against theirs)
My final probationary meeting is held on 26th November 1990; four days after the forcing out of 10 Downing Street of Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher. The meeting or more properly kangaroo court is presided over by a power dressed female Thatcher clone. After my boss gives a forensic demolition of my performance (in his opinion) in my seven months of employment; she tears into me saying that my colleagues had seen “diminishing returns”, talked about me being “a mismatch” to the job and opined that I needed to see the Social Services; a common refrain from somebody universally renowned for her vindictiveness and incompetence. I reflect years later that, just as that occasion in the Chemistry Lab at Feragh Presentation School, I had the moral, if not legal, justification to, in the words of the Leeds terrace chant, “go fucking mental,” and physically attack this demon. Instead, I dissolve in tears at this evisceration of my sense of self and then the termination of my employment, a life sentence from the library profession as Essex was the only possible reference to any prospective future employer. That at no stage was I questioned about my professional knowledge and aptitudes but instead was adjudged to have failed the Taylorian, time and motion aspects of the job tells you all the need to know about deskilling of professional work and the parasitical role of personnel or Human Resource managers in organisations.
At my induction, this demon was all over me with false friendliness and about she came from “God’s Own Country” – Yorkshire. Bradford to be precise. So, stewing as I did in bitterness in the coming months and years, she was for me to become Number One legitimate target for the YRA – the Yorkshire Republican Army. The YRA refers to a terrace chant sung for decades at Elland Road which goes “YRA. We’re Yorkshire’s Republican Army. We’re barmy. We fear no foe. We are the YRA!). A truly horrible, but familiar place to be in.
Leeds made a decent return to the top flight in the 1990-91 season finishing fourth although hopes for successes in Cup competitions were dissipated in February 1991, going out of the FA Cup to Arsenal after three replays, most disappointingly 3-1 on aggregate to Manchester United on aggregate in the Rumblelows League Cup semi-final and also of the now discarded Full Members Cup. But a decent platform for the next move. By contrast my platform had been taken from beneath my feet. I had to regroup again.
Quite apart from the nihilism of such crowd madness and the reputational damage it inflicts on everyone associated with Leeds United, punishing the innocent as well as the guilty, such behaviour prevents us normal fans from properly processing the major “ups and downs” experiences. Just as I did not properly celebrate promotion until three days after it was achieved, so when our relegation to League One was all but confirmed by Ipswich Town’s late equaliser at Elland Road in April 2007 (I was behind the goal on the South Stand when Alan Lee’s header hit the net and my inner being like a bullet), so the resultant invasion of the pitch by our lunatic fringe prevented me from properly mourning what was the lowest point in Leeds United history.
The fin de season events on Britain’s South Coast apart, the 1989-90 season ranks as a personal triumph for me. It was the first season that I watched Leeds United at home on a regular basis. Ease of connection between Manchester Piccadilly and Victoria railway stations meant that the journey from Aberystwyth to Leeds was now reduced to four hours affording me enough latitude for the last train from Shrewsbury to Aberystwyth at 8.30pm. Being a witness to and follower of the redemption of Leeds United in the form of promotion back to the top flight after a sentence of eight seasons’ exile under the tutelage of Howard, another far thinking Yorkshireman ,and captained by another red haired Scotsman in the person of Gordon Strachan remains the most important football experience of my life. Even above celebrating the Division One title two years later that promotion season had made possible. Above going to the World Cup in 1982 with Northern Ireland. Above the Champions League and UEFA Cup semi-finals in the pre-crash era at the turn of the millennium. If ever I entertain regrets about leaving Northern Ireland, I just have to think about and recall the rebirth of Leeds United and the part played by the twelfth man at Elland Road that historic season and my presence at it. It was at our final home game against Leicester that I really felt the hands and motions of history as a late Strachan special secured us a 2-1 victory which, as it turned out, was the goal that guaranteed promotion.
The other stand out moment for me as a spectator that season was Gord’s last minute winner in the 4-3 win over Hull City; a match in which we had twice conspired to lose leads before falling behind 2-3 in the last ten minutes before an equaliser from Imre Varadi and then Strachan’s last gasp strike turned agony into ecstasy. This was yet another example of Leeds United coming up with ever more ingenious ways of torturing its supporters! But what really made this occasion was that it came on the weekend of Nelson Mandela’s release from his twenty-seven year stretch at the hands of the soon to be democratically vanquished apartheid regime in South Africa. Earlier in the season, the Berlin Wall had fallen. Both these iconic, emancipatory moments hopefully presaged a bright new era for humanity as well as the rebirth of Leeds United.
So, in that spring and summer of 1990, I settled into the groove of work and real grounds for optimism for the future. Receiving a proper salary for a proper full-time job finally heralded my entry into the adult world. If not particularly exciting, the daily rhythms of performing the duties of an Assistant Librarian were physically and psychologically grounding. I was now in an organisational system in which I would surely progress. Or so I thought.
That summer was also the summer of the Italia 90 World Cup. The Republic of Ireland made their tournament debut under the stewardship of Leeds United great and England World Cup winner Jack Charlton. They navigated a path to the Quarter-Final stage without actually managing to win a game within ninety minutes. Their standout moment was the winning spot kick in the penalty shootout at the end of the round of sixteen tie with Rumania taken by David O’Leary, later to be a central figure in the turn of the millennium tumult at Elland Road.
England also came so agonisingly close to reaching their first major tournament final since their World Cup success in 1966 losing to the eventual winners West Germany also in a penalty decider; something that was to prove the millstone around their necks as promotion play offs are for Leeds United.
Much lauded as the event which transformed the ugly duckling of (certainly English) football of the 1980s into The Beautiful Game of today, much of the football served up at Italia 90 was poor, especially in the latter stages with the Germans winning a scrappy final with Argentina with a late Andreas Breheme penalty. What made that tournament such a cultural moment was its soundtrack of the wonderful voice of the operatic singer Luigi Pavarotti and his Three Tenors ensemble. Their stirring almost haunting song Nessun Dorma which was the theme tune of Italia seem to implant an association between high culture associated with opera and the more popular culture of football in the minds of the refined bourgeois classes which led to their number flocking to and hegemonising what were previously regarded as proletarian spaces – football grounds. The introduction of all seater stadia and higher ticket prices in the wake of this middle class love in with football certainly had the effect of pushing out of football venues its previous young, predominantly male, working-class clientele.
Back in Essex, storm clouds begin to gather. My immediate line manager tells me that certain library assistants are “not confident” of my ability to perform the routine library housekeeping tasks that should be their roles not that of a library professional. This all sounds like “telling tales out of school” but then then my manager escalates the situation by informing Essex County Council Libraries’ Personnel team who then extend my probationary period. The nit picking increases over a failure of mine to fill out old fashioned Browne library tickets and to check out and return books quickly enough and to pass on messages regarding volunteer rosters for the Housebound Library service that I am responsible for (I know that that is not true but my word does not count against theirs)
My final probationary meeting is held on 26th November 1990; four days after the forcing out of 10 Downing Street of Prime Minister Margeret Thatcher. The meeting or more properly kangaroo court is presided over by a power dressed female Thatcher clone. After my boss gives a forensic demolition of my performance (in his opinion) in my seven months of employment; she tears into me saying that my colleagues had seen “diminishing returns”, talked about me being “a mismatch” to the job and opined that I needed to see the Social Services; a common refrain from somebody universally renowned for her vindictiveness and incompetence. I reflect years later that, just as that occasion in the Chemistry Lab at Feragh Presentation School, I had the moral, if not legal, justification to, in the words of the Leeds terrace chant, “go fucking mental,” and physically attack this demon. Instead, I dissolve in tears at this evisceration of my sense of self and then the termination of my employment, a life sentence from the library profession as Essex was the only possible reference to any prospective future employer. That at no stage was I questioned about my professional knowledge and aptitudes but instead was adjudged to have failed the Taylorian, time and motion aspects of the job tells you all the need to know about deskilling of professional work and the parasitical role of personnel or Human Resource managers in organisations.
At my induction, this demon was all over me with false friendliness and about she came from “God’s Own Country” – Yorkshire. Bradford to be precise. So, stewing as I did in bitterness in the coming months and years, she was for me to become Number One legitimate target for the YRA – the Yorkshire Republican Army. The YRA refers to a terrace chant sung for decades at Elland Road which goes “YRA. We’re Yorkshire’s Republican Army. We’re barmy. We fear no foe. We are the YRA!). A truly horrible, but familiar place to be in.
Leeds made a decent return to the top flight in the 1990-91 season finishing fourth although hopes for successes in Cup competitions were dissipated in February 1991, going out of the FA Cup to Arsenal after three replays, most disappointingly 3-1 on aggregate to Manchester United on aggregate in the Rumblelows League Cup semi-final and also of the now discarded Full Members Cup. But a decent platform for the next move. By contrast my platform had been taken from beneath my feet. I had to regroup again.
Notes
[1] Billy Morris Bournemouth 90: 1 (Eighties Leeds)
⏩Barry Gilheany is a freelance writer, qualified counsellor and aspirant artist resident in Colchester where he took his PhD at the University of Essex. He is also a lifelong Leeds United supporter.
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