30- The Madchester semi's and Bobby D's back!

The Manchester music scene was all the rage back in the early 1990's, or Madchester as it was known. Some of it I did like such as The Happy Mondays, who would come to Elland Road to do a massive gig in the summer, I don't think they were big footie fans though. The Stone Roses were, but their allegiance sadly was with the red half of the city, which was a shame as I liked their music and alas the same applied with New Order. Predating them all The Smiths were a band split 50/50 Morrissey and Rourke favouring Man U and Marr and Joyce favouring City. Still at least one of Old Trafford' s most famous sons was Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, despite all their success I'm not quite sure how they've lived with that burden for all these years.

As I mentioned in chapter 20, our first home opponents of the 1990/91 season were Manchester United - the occasion passed without a whimper, it was a 0-0 bore draw, Elland Road wasn't even full to capacity and I never saw a cross word exchanged. Through the excellent "Leeds United The Wilderness Years" site, I've seen footage of the "Red Army" piling into Leeds in the late 70's early 80's and it's a highly-policed series of scuffles (to be fair a couple of episodes contain equally "tasty" visits from Manchester City, including the hoologan-ravished FA Cup 3rd round tie in January 1978). Although I can't be sure, I'll take a stab at it, I think our absence between '82-90 dissipated the antipathy towards them. It's a simplistic theory, I get that, but during that eight-years a new generation of Leeds fans would have come on board, or matured, or graduated onto the Kop blissfully unaware of the shenanigans that raged when they came to town in the 1970's and very early 80's.

I reached this conclusion by gauging the reaction of my own children, still at home, to "them" e.g. Manchester United, a name I can barely speak and only type grudgingly. Harry was 19 and Ben was 16 when Bielsa's Leeds ground out a nil-niler against them in April '21. Prior to that, our last LEAGUE action against them was on 18th October 2003 when a Roy Keane goal settled it. Harry was two and Ben wasn't even born. Due to the Covid restrictions, they watched the match on TV and I'd say were no more or less bothered than they were for the game against Brighton the following weekend. Indeed notwithstanding a couple of tongue-in-cheek barbs about "getting Big Sam in" when they hammered us 6-2 before Christmas, it barely registered on the scale, although I think most of us accepted that that result is what life under Bielsa is about and the rough comes with the smooth rather than it being an unforgivable act of incompetence which would have had us calling for the Argentines head!

Something had stirred in the months that spanned August 1990 to February 1991 as far as they were concerned. I didn't attend the December clash at Old Trafford due to the snow and a row over the number of away tickets denied Leeds fans the opportunity to see the first leg, which we lost 2-1. Hamstrung by the post-Hillsborough restriction on terrace capacity, not to mention promotion, Leeds restricted away fans to around 1700 - an open pen near to what is now known affectionally as "The Cheese Wedge" in the South East Corner (this wasn't completed until the summer of 1991). Manchester United reacted angrily to this by offering Leeds the same number of tickets for the 1st leg which meant the front paddock of the Scoreboard End at Old Trafford looked pretty empty on the telly.

Understandably in my mind, the moral high ground belonged to Leeds on this occasion. Off the top of my head, I can't remember what the capacity of Old Trafford was that season but their biggest league crowd was 47485 against Arsenal, so at the time it could hold 15000 more than Elland Road could. Obviously with the segregation, just 34050 had attended the first-leg. The second leg was a 32000 sell-out and I took my place on the Kop confident that we could turn them over.

We'd seen off Manchester City four-days earlier in the semi-final of the Northern Area section in the Zenith Data Systems Cup. Barely 11000 had shown up to witness our 2-0 win and no, I was not one of them. Those who had bothered to have gone would have seen striker Bobby Davison make his long-awaited comeback from injury as he was named as sub that evening. Although I liked "Bobby D" I was not convinced he could hack it at the top-level, some Derby fans I knew said he'd been great for them in the lower-Divisions, but was "too slow" for the First Division. Obviously Howard Wilkinson didn't think Davison was quite ready to face the Red half of Manchester so the man from South Shields no doubt looked on with the rest of us from the stands.

It was a cold, grey late February afternoon. The game was televised on ITV's "The Big Match" with Brian Moore and Jimmy Greaves commentating. It was a typical cup tie played on a terrible pitch. After 90 minutes of huffing and puffing, we looked to be heading out then Gary Speed unleashed a thunderbolt Kop-End bound and their veteran keeper Les Sealey somehow parried it away....only for them to break forward Bd Lee Sharpe sprung the offside trap to round John Lukic and lift the ball into the opposite net.

Sealey went berserk in his penalty area before a hail of coins rained down from the Kop- I remember them whizzing past my ears as I was stood near the front. Sharpe meanwhile did this crappy little dance in front of the 1700 travelling fans who were piling into each other and roaring their heads off with joy. It was all too much for some Leeds fans and despite very public pleas all week the dreaded "Munich" song was spat out with venom from some of my fellow Leeds fans, in reference to the Munich Air Disaster 33-years-earlier in which eight Manchester United players and three of their staff were amongst the 23 who died.

There was an urban myth circulating for many years that John Lukic, who was in goal for Leeds that day survived the same air crash as his pregnant mother had been on board. However seeing as Lukic wasn't born until 1961, this was impossible and the mix-up came as one of the 21 survivors was a Mrs Vera Lukic, the wife of a Yugoslav diplomat and not John's mother.

Unfortunately this would not be the last time references to the tragedy would blight the reputation of Leeds fans. The hostilities were well and truly renewed from that day onwards.