THE FANZINE FILES #6 England 1975

While THE66POW is still unable to broadcast any new material, due to Covid-19 restrictions meaning that the games I'd usually be attending are either being played behind closed doors or have been cancelled, with non-league football having been declared as null and void... all that I have to offer you is a series of repeats, featuring archive material, from fanzines, magazines, programmes, books and other websites that I have either contributed to, written for, or edited over the years.

As regards what the future holds, for both the game of football as a spectator sport and this blog itself... your guess is as good as mine. Anyway, 'new normal' service, whatever that might be, will be resumed presently, in the meantime, here's yet another article from A Man For All Season, chronicling the first two England games I ever attended, way back in 1975.

'For My Country', it's a snappy title isn't it? I stole it of course, from the UK Decay song of the same name... some people swear by them, but I personally prefer to swear at them. They offer nothing new or different musically and their apparent profoundness and political correctness by numbers bores me to tears. 

But each to their own an whatever floats your boat. 

Following the England football team or showing the slightest of inclinations towards even the merest hint of patriotism is considered to be massively uncool and unfashionable, but who ever wanted to be at the vanguard of cool or fashion anyway? Not me.

Apparently, in the eyes of an increasingly PC world, supporting the English national team makes you one or both of two things: 1) A violent thug and/or 2) A ribald racist. 

Well, I make no apologies whatsoever for not ticking either of those boxes that would qualify me to fit into anyone's pigeon-holed and stereotyped image, or for being a football fan, who is completely apolitical and has friends encompassing a myriad of shapes, sizes, colours, religious creeds and social classes... and who, for the record, is actually quite crap at fighting. I've given it a go, it's a rites of passage thing that comes with the territory of being both male and a teenager, but I quickly found out that I am allergic to pain and my curious lifestyle choice of only ever wrangling with people who were bigger than me, was a non-starter.

And though you'll have trouble taking my word for it, there are thousands of other supporters with similar views to m own at each and every international match that is played at Wembley Stadium.

Of course, there are a whole lot of the other sort of knuckle-dragging Englishmen present too... and they get all of the headlines along with the kind of exposure that enhances their hard-man reputation and appeals to and attracts more of their like-minded ilk to tag along too. But it wouldn't sell many newspapers if they featured more people like myself instead of the marauding mob types... can you imagine it? 

Admit it, I'm boring you to tears and you'd prefer to read about rioting and rucking instead, wouldn't you!? The press in this country lament about 'the English disease' and demand draconian measures to punish all football fans, but by perpetuating their stories and effectively glamorising the whole crazy scene, they are as culpable as anybody else for the problems that exist. 

Their livelihoods depend on glorifying in the unsavoury elements of the game. Without the fuel of publicity fanning the flames, there wouldn't be half as many crack-pots at football matches. But then the journalists would have nothing left to write about but the game of football itself, thus exposing their own limitations on that score which would would probably see them all jostling for a position in the dole queue instead of competing for the most (overly) dramatic headlines. They're all too busy fighting,

for a good place under the lighting, as the Clash once sang, but hey, it's considered wrong by the in crowd, to profess to liking or listening to them anymore. Well don't go moving my goal-posts to suit your own narrative, I'd like mine leaving exactly where they already are, ta very much. 

As I touched on earlier, I was bitten by the bug of watching England games in 1975, amidst a period of time that was sandwiched in between two World Cup tournaments that the national side never qualified for, though our old rivals and friendly neighbours Scotland did... and boy, didn't they savour being able to rub that particular fact in. In fact their 1978 World Cup finals song "We're on the march with Ally's army" even contained the line: "And England cannae do it 'cos they didnae qualify", following the rather ambiguous claim that they were really going to: "Shake 'em up, when we win the World Cup, 'cos Scotland are the greatest football team!" For the record, they didn't and they weren't. The misplaced optimism was always prevalent in Rod Stewart's effort the same year: "Ole ola, Ole ola. We're gonna bring that World Cup back from over tha'", although the celebrity Scot (born and raised in Muswell Hill, London) possibly knew what was really on the cards in Argentina, when he also released "I was only joking" that very same year.k

UEFA European Championship Group One

Wembley Stadium

Malcolm MacDonald 2, 34, 52, 56, 87

Attendance: 68,245

Still buzzing from my first England experience a month before, I forgave my granddad for going to the Wales game in midweek with his brother instead of me, when he tipped me the nod and told me to get warmed up for the visit of Scotland to the national stadium. Willie Ormond's side had been eliminated from the previous year's World Cup on goal difference alone, in a group that they remained unbeaten in, even though it contained Brazil. But hey! This was England...the conquerors of the 'mighty' Cyprus and we had our secret weapon... Malcolm MacDonald! "Err... Granddad, where's 'Supermac'?", "Well it's like this, that bleedin' Don Revie saw his surname and assumed that he must be a Jock and he's been looking for an excuse to drop him, so he's not in the team". Granddad, you had absolutely no right to tell such a big fib to an impressionable twelve year old, you have no idea how long I believed that morsel of information for, or how daft it made me look when I told my mates at school. 

He also further embellished my understanding of the England manager's selection process methods telling me that: "He doesn't like picking Charlie George, because he's a big hard player who used to rough his dirty Leeds players up". Maybe that statement was actually true, but it needs to be noted that the lovable 'owd rascal, was originally from a place called north London, before he'd moved up to East Retford to marry a local lady, AKA my grandmother.

Given the strict conditions that we'd obtained our match tickets under, to avoid any Caledonian rowdies entering our part of the ground, I was taken aback that half the population of 'Bonnie Scotland' seemed to be strutting their stuff all around us.

Billy Connolly is reckoned to be everyone's favourite Scottish comedian, but on this particular afternoon, I much preferred the antics of the Stirling born clown act: Stewart Kennedy, who Willie Ormond had chosen to play in goal... on what was to be the last of his five international appearances.  

When the first couple of goals went in, sporadic fights broke out in our not so 'exclusive' bit of the ground... from then on in, nobody needed any kind of excuse to vent their anger anymore. Kennedy's slapstick capers inside the opening six minutes had acted as a trigger for the invading away fans to blow a fuse and I think that it's probably fair to say that the Rangers keeper was fortunate that his goal was so far from the maddening crowd, so to speak.

Gerry Francis thumped the first goal home from twenty yards out, while the Scots keeper took on the mantle of a mime artist scaling an invisible piece of rope as the ball flashed past him. "What the f*ck was that Kennedy, the hand-jive? Catch the f*cking ball you w*nker!", bawled an angry Scotsman in response to the first blow, moments before the mime artist did a passable impression of a dying-fly struggling to extricate itself from a large cobweb, as Alan Ball sent Kevin Keegan away on a run whose cross evaded the yellow shirted custodian as Kevin Beattie met the ball with a text-book header, while the bamboozled Kennedy collided with the upright. Six minutes gone, 2-0 to England.

"Oh well... no need for 'Supermac' today, this lot are even worse than Cyprus", I turned and said to my Granddad. Now neither of us were telepathic, but I could read his thoughts crystal clear, as he glowered at me with an expression that said: 'We're surrounded by some very angry Scottish people, would you please refrain from talking!' or words to that effect. 

But thankfully, nobody seemed interested in us as the opposition fans imploded and began squabbling, pushing and doing the hostile stuff amongst themselves. Colin Bell scored five minutes before the interval, when he struggled to control the ball on the edge of Kennedy's area, but still managed to get his shot away. Game over? Well, not quite yet.

The match referee: Rudi Gloeckner, perhaps mindful of the fact that this would be Alan Ball's last ever international match, had treated the way that Arthur Duncan's cross had 'accidentally' come into contact with the England captain's arm, shortly before Bell had made it 3-0 'very sympathetically'... but these sort of things even themselves out over the course of a season (aye right!), so stop moaning and get on with the game. AKA phew! We got away with that one.

England should've put their foes to the sword, but this was one of the better Scotland sides I can recall from my own living memory, with class acts like Danny McGrain and Kenny Dalglish amongst their ranks, while it had still been 2-0 Derek Parlane had hit the post, while Alfie Comm had gone close too.... and shortly before half-time Bruce Rioch pulled a goal back from the penalty spot, when Ted McDougall had gone to ground after tangling with Colin Todd as he tried to shoot on the turn. 

"Do you want to slip off at half-time, to avoid all of the argy-bargy there's going to be at the end?"

This time it was my turn to shoot a look that conveyed a firm message: "Not f*cking likely Granddad!"

Some people get their thrills from fairground rides, or drugs or (on the evidence of today's events) running amok and smashing up anything, everything and anyone, but I was fascinated by it all and the fear factor was actually a bit of a high in a perverse sort of way.

Both sides went close from the restart, with Francis fizzing the ball over the bar at one end, while Duncan took the ball past Ray Clemence at the other, but scuffed his shot into the side netting.

The comedy aspect of the game returned for England's fourth goal. A free-kick routine that saw Bell roll the ball through Ball's legs for Francis to fire home, but the referee ordered the kick to be retaken because he hadn't blown his whistle yet.

, 

So the same three players, repeated the exact set-piece and as Francis' shot went into the Scottish goal via a deflection, Kennedy was playing an impromptu game of statues. "How f*cking much has Revie bunged you for this Kennedy!?", bawled the same angry Scotsman who'd been on the keepers case all afternoon. If only I'd been a couple of feet taller, ten years older and had filled out a bit more, I might've turned and told him that the entire visiting fence had just been mugged, let alone their goalkeeper, but I hadn't, so I didn't.

Keegan beat Kennedy with a looping header that bounced back off the bar and dropped to Watson, who hit the loose ball against the upright, with the open goal at his mercy, but goal-poacher David Johnson, fresh from netting a brace in the 2-2 draw v Wales a few days before, was on hand to nudge the ball into the net for England's fifth goal.