This is a football related post but, for those who have no interest in the "beautiful" game, please bear with me as this is also a human interest tale of a maelstrom of emotions all to occur on one September day in 1989.
I am a Manchester City fan and when Connie (my Man Utd supporting wife) and I first got together in 1988, City were in the old Second Division and United were a First Division team. The fact that the 2 teams were in different divisions meant that there wasn't the same football related ferocity in the air as there had been previously and has been in more recent years. We had made each other aware of our football loyalties right from the start so we both entered into our relationship with our football eyes wide open and never envisaged there would be a problem. Oh how naive we were!
In May 1989 City won promotion from the old Second Division so Manchester derbies were now back on again. On a couple of occasions the previous season Connie had accompanied me to Maine Road for matches and there hadn't been any issues. In September 1989, when the first derby of the season would be played at Maine Road, the football world was very different to today. It was only 5 months since the Hillsborough disaster and the Taylor Report was a long way off being fully implemented. This meant that tickets for the City sections were on sale to City membership card holders but it also entitled the holder to 4 tickets. This was always going to be a recipe for disaster for this derby as the teams hadn't met for over 2 years and the media hype had gone into overdrive fuelling an already volatile football atmosphere in the city.
I had attended many derbies in the previous years with my mates and there was nearly always an atmosphere of real hatred in the ground. I was in the Kippax stand for a derby only 3 years previously in 1986 when it "kicked off" massively around me. When Utd took the lead in the game, around 50 Utd fans, who had made it into the Kippax stand near where I was standing, celebrated their goal. There followed a mass brawl, which I got caught up in, and it took the police an eternity to wade in and sort out the troublemakers. A year later in 1987 I attended a derby at Old Trafford and the City section I was in was pelted with coins for 90 minutes.
In late September 1989 Connie and I decided to attend the Maine Road derby together. In light of my previous experiences I insisted that standing was not safe (this was still in the aftermath of Hillsborough remember) and that we should only go if we can get seats in the North Stand. This was a City section and Connie assured me there would be no obvious celebration from her should Utd score. I went along to the Maine Road ticket office the week before the match and successfully bought 2 seats together in the North Stand using my City membership card.
On the day of the game neither of us wore any football "colours" and I drove to the ground, arriving about half an hour before kick off. We took our seats about 15 minutes before kick off and 2 issues struck me straight away. This was my first game at Maine Road since the Hillsborough disaster and I was horrified to see that City still had fencing around the ground. The only difference was the gates in the fencing were left open. The second issue was the atmosphere. It was very menacing and it was apparent some Utd fans were in the City section where we were seated. I was very uneasy but tried to play it down and assured Connie the police would quickly sort out any trouble.
By the time the teams ran out it was obvious hundreds of Utd fans had infiltrated the North Stand. Around 50 of them behind the goal openly started chanting Utd songs. Connie and I were around half way back in the corner of the stand and pockets of City fans were becoming agressive around us and were making moves towards the Utd fans behind the goal. As the game kicked off so did the fans. The first real trouble occurred in the Kippax Stand opposite where we were. The segregation had obviously failed there as well and we could see brawls breaking out in several areas. This led to the police, who were in our stand, rushing over to the Kippax to help their beleaguered colleagues.
After 5 minutes of the game we had watched very little of the action on the pitch as it was so chaotic off the pitch in the stands. This is when it got even worse in our section. Suddenly there was a surge of City fans from the back of the North Stand towards the Utd fans, who had been chanting earlier, directly behind the goal. There was a coming together and, as punches were being exchanged, Connie was now terrified and in tears. This spread to our section as well and individual fights started in the rows around us. This was the worst football violence I had ever witnessed first hand and it was occuring all around us. I shielded Connie as the blows were coming from every angle and as 2 brawling morons fell into me I took an elbow to the head. Slowly, police started to appear and the trouble subsided slightly in our section but behind the goal in the North Stand the scenes were becoming very distressing as fans were being pressed up against the fencing in the North Stand, as they tried to escape the fighting, and were being helped over the fencing and through the (mercifully) open gates onto the pitch. At this point the referee stopped the game and the players were taken off. Over the next 15 minutes or so Utd fans either voluntarily left the North Stand or were being forcibly ejected by the police. At this point Connie just wanted to go home. I persuaded her to stay to see if it would calm down.
Once the players were back out on the pitch, it had calmed down but Connie was now possibly the only Utd fan left in the North Stand. I was on the point of calling it quits and going home when City took the lead and then scored again within a minute. All the fans (with the exception of Connie of course) now appeared to be in their designated areas so there was no trouble after each goal. City won the match 5-1 but my joy was dampened by events off the pitch. There was one bright moment for Connie as we were seated in line of Mark Hughes' volleyed goal early in the second half, however, she was too traumatised to even move.
The events off the pitch on that particular day were disgraceful and, needless to say, we never attended another derby game together. The total breakdown of segregation on that fateful day has led to segregation between us on derby days for the last 23 years i.e ,we don't even watch Manchester derbies in the same house!
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