by s1ty m » Tue May 05, 2026 11:33 am
An excerpt, plucked randomly from the chapter about the 2 cup finals in 1981:
Allison had been dismissed by early October, 1980, with City failing to win any of the first dozen games, the wait for the first success going as far as October 22nd, when, under the new chap, John Bond, brought in from Norwich City, we went crazy and actually won an actual game of football, as we sat humiliatingly at the foot of the table, marooned on a miserable 4 points. At that point, I was fully prepared to entertain the prospect of metaphorically machine-gunning the school harpies, with every Monday morning bringing a fresh gauntlet of taunting to endure, a ‘tauntlet’, perhaps, City’s never-ending crapness becoming an unwelcome constancy that tried my patience to bitter extremes and fully tested my love for them, an ordeal that would pale into a mere jolly jape compared to the extremis of the 1990s. That first win would be at home to the team for whom I have enthusiastically and happily developed a lifelong hatred, a loathing that has extended (present tense, please note) deep into adulthood: Spurs. The season would end amidst an extraordinary 5-day period in sunny May, the denouement of which, on one particular Thursday night, would become the principal reason for my lifelong commitment to an intense despising of the north-Londoners, a loathing I have never reconsidered, so complete and set in a pillar of polished black granite is it; to be blunt, they can sodding well sod off.
The immediate transformation of City after Bond arrived is better documented in other more worthy tomes, so I won’t dwell on it too much here, other than to summarise what became something of an unexpected but wholly welcome joy, all reflected by the vanishing school tauntlets and my re-emergence as a gobby, exiled Manc, gleefully shoving our increasingly better fortunes down the throats of those who previously delighted in my misery like prancing ghouls; you give it, lads, you can take it too, then? No, they never could. Bond made three key acquisitions: Gerry Gow, Bobby McDonald, and a player Dad and I had watched and admired over many years at Coventry, Tommy Hutchison, a superb winger, rake-thin, long legs and bags of flair. With the new signings and Bond’s obvious chutzpah, we rose like Lazarus and found ourselves zooming up the table, narrowly beaten (robbed by the referee) by Liverpool in the League Cup semis, then, amazingly, arrived in the final four for the big one, the FA bloody Cup, the furthest I had seen us travel in that grand old competition, at least in my City-conscious days; we had won it in 1969 when I was five, though I have no memory of it. We had grabbed a very late equaliser at Everton in the quarters, Paul Power netting brilliantly in front of a delirious City horde, the scenes still to this day raising good bumps for many. The following Wednesday night, I sat in my bedroom listening to the reply on a small transistor radio, running up the road screaming at the final whistle. Yes, I did that. I couldn’t believe it, to be honest. Dad was there, and he reckoned it was epic. I’ll bet. Predictably, we then drew the team no one else in the draw wanted, England’s then-best side, Ipswich Town, a game Dad and I watched from the Holte End at Villa Park, a thirty-minute drive from our home in Coventry. Power’s extra-time free-kick sent us wild, and I have expressed elsewhere and often that the final twenty minutes of that match were the best support I ever saw City receive from what is, after all, a fabulous and massive fanbase. I think Ipswich just gave up in the end. Their fans, like thousands of mill chimneys, were silent and, I think, like their excellent team, were cowed by the sight and sound of City fans owning Villa Park, a partial pitch invasion included, the deafening noise bringing the boys home safely and back to Wembley. I think it was as if the sheer will of the City fans that afternoon was, somehow and magically, a factor in lifting the team to a level where it could pull off a highly unlikely upset. Nothing was missing from this special afternoon; City brought the lot. Even now, it is probably my favourite afternoon following my club, which, given the recent harvest years, may seem an absurd thing to report. No, it isn’t, you had to have been there, it was unbridled, unleashed pandemonium in that Holte End, and the City fans were as good as anything I have seen from any set of fans, ever, anywhere on the planet. What I mean is that in terms of the sheer quality of support, it was my favourite game. I think that’s fair, a balanced qualification; 93:20 was the best, of course it was.
Cup final week was upon us, and we had secured a single match ticket courtesy of Dad's season ticket-holder status. I remember the first programme of the season would contain a voucher sheet, suggesting that fans might want to collect tokens from each home match as proof of attendance, a completed sheet somehow upping their chances of getting a Wembley ticket should they get to a cup final. Such admirable optimism, borne from the early 1970s when we were mightily competitive, but borderline laughable come 1980. Only, it wasn’t, evidently, based on the turnaround in the 1980-81 season’s fortunes. In the event, the completed voucher sheet proved worthless, and I remained ticketless as the match loomed large. I arrived home late on the Tuesday evening, having been at someone’s dreadful house ‘party’, the usual teenage crapulence punctuated by a handbags-at-ten-paces fight, Woodpecker cider, some great music as per the time, and some lads applying unreasonable pressure to girls. ‘Oh, what’s this?’ said Dad as I sat down in the lounge to account for my lateness, that is, lie, him pretending to find something down the back of his chair. In his hand was a cup final ticket for the coming Saturday, and, dear reader, I assure you that you don’t forget moments like that. And there it was, a standing ticket once again, exactly as with ’74 and ’76, for the upper section of the east terrace. This time it was printed in purple and yellow, but it still retained the same old ticket format on the same thick, vaguely oily paper, not entirely unlike real money. It was like a million-dollar note at that moment, rather than the £3.50 face value described in the bottom left-hand corner, about £13.50ish in today’s money…and an absolute snip, then? One of Dad’s sister’s workmates in Manchester had sold her the ticket, for face value, because she could no longer go to the game, so my aunt, Anne, bagged it for me and had sent it down to Dad, who had waited for its arrival before presenting it. Wonderful. For this incredible demonstration of love, plus his obvious delight at the prospect of taking his lad to Wembley for the showpiece game in English football, I reciprocated by behaving, as I had for the previous couple of years, like a total shit. I am sad about that, and had he taken Rick instead of his arsehole son, he would have been fully justified.
After the ball was centred, after the whistle blew...
