The Goldberg Variations. Mark Glanville

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      At that time United fans were regarded as the most violent in the country. In reality they were no worse than many others, but there were so many of them. Ten thousand regularly travelled when the club played away, swamping rival supporters’ ends. It was an environment considered too dangerous by my parents, so I’d watch them from the stands, part of me terrified by the red-and-white-clad northern hordes, a lot of me yearning to be in there with them.

      Twenty minutes’ walk from home we had one of the best sides in the country. The years since I watched Rodney Marsh score his hat-trick against Watford had seen QPR’s fortunes wax as much as United’s had waned. Stan Bowles was a worthy heir to Rodney, and the club had a plethora of fine players to carry on the good work of the late sixties. My parents thought (wrongly) that QPR’s terraces met their safety standards. It wasn’t the Shed, it wasn’t the Stretford End, but I soon got to know the hundred or so regular faces that made up the Loft. I didn’t really support them – love for United brooked no rival – but I was becoming hooked on the thrill of being accepted by clubs that wouldn’t have me as a member, and on the adrenaline that flowed from fear and aggression.

      ‘You’ll never take the Lo-oft!’ was one of the emptiest chants ever heard at a football ground. Chelsea, United, Arsenal and West Ham regularly did. Spurs were the most fun. There were so many of them we never had a chance, but we had a go anyway, holding the citadel just above the entrance while they repeatedly charged, trying to overwhelm the blue-helmeted line that separated us. Inevitably the dam would burst, sending wave upon wave of Doc-Martencd skinheads pouring over us, boots and fists flailing indiscriminately. The big thing was not to go down. We’d retreat, leaving a sinister no-man’s land while the coppers formed a new line and the Spurs fans filled the vacuum. Then we’d regroup and charge back at them, knowing it was futile, but the sheer exhilaration of racing across the terraces, not knowing quite what to expect, made it worthwhile. Eventually we’d merge into the crowd, little pockets of rebels for the Spurs fans to seek and destroy, and the game would continue to the accompaniment of the sporadic explosions that followed whenever they found us.

      If the opposition were less well supported we might go hunting ourselves, though it normally ended in farce, as in the home Cup tie against Orient.

      ‘The only way we’re going to get the Labour Party back into power is by hanging onto our pipes,’ announced one of our main faces, pipe between his teeth, in an imitation of Harold Wilson worthy of Mike Yarwood, but we were supposed to be looking for the opposition firm at the time. A small mob suddenly appeared on the other side of White City Way. They charged into us and a few seconds of the usual indiscriminate kicking and punching ensued until we realised it was Paul O’Reilly’s firm and we were fighting our own side. Occasionally we’d run into individual fans who seemed up for it, but a code of fairness operated and it normally ended up one on one, even if our one tended to be the top boy.

      Music was the catalyst for my first trip to Old Trafford. United v Spurs was my reward from Dad for gaining a distinction in my Grade Five clarinet exam. I practically had to run to match his pace as he headed for Holland Park station like an Olympic walker in training.

      ‘Come on, panther!’

      Just as I’d learned to eat and talk fast, so I’d been forced into an unnatural stride.

      ‘But Dad, the train doesn’t go for an hour and a half!’

      I was speaking to my accompanying breeze.

      By the time I turned into the station he was standing by the lift gate, green cardboard tickets in his hand, blue 1964 Olympics bag over his shoulder crammed with pink Italian sports papers and our packed lunch. As the lift operator pulled the heavy gates apart we heard the vacuum-cleaner sound of a train leaving the platform. And Dad was away, like a sprinter off his blocks.

      ‘Dad! The train’s gone!’

      I was left, talking to a backpacker. There was no sign of Dad. As I reached the platform he was scurrying awkwardly towards the far end in anticipation of the change at Oxford Circus.

      ‘Come on!’

      He turned round anxiously as another train clattered into the station and I was forced to sprint the final yards. Shuffling along the edge of the platform as the train came to a halt, he secured a position by the opening doors and long-jumped on ahead of the opposition to reserve a couple of seats. A copy of The Times was thrust into my hands. It was several stops before I’d managed to restore it to its original, pre-breakfast form, and I’d barely established that Bobby Charlton was fit when we were at Oxford Circus, leaping like TV detectives through the opening doors into the crime scene.

      As the escalator at Euston finally brought us back into the light 1 noticed groups of lads scattered about the concourse, most not wearing scarves, a few sporting tiny badges on which I could just about make out the United ship motif. Scars and earrings complemented the donkey jackets, bovver boots and drainpipe jeans they wore; one or two had United tattoos etched onto the sides of their heads and necks. Amidst them stood a group in dark grey jackets, and creased brown pin-stripes, looking, for all the world, like accountants, but as the mobs dispersed to a far-off platform, they fell into line with them.

      ‘C-O-C-K-N-E-Y, Cockney Reds will never die!’

      The war cry rang round the station.

      ‘Like something to eat, dear?’

      We’d scarcely sat down when out came lumps of food wrapped in silver foil, and a couple of cans of lager. Dad’s wolf-like teeth tore at a chicken breast. He wrenched the metal ring from one of the cans with the sound of a piston firing, and a fine Heineken mist descended over my hair and face.

      ‘Lovely grub!’ he enthused.

      The succulent pink flesh seemed to invite a ferocious response and, as I bit through the bone into the marrow, the shards splintered into the roof of my mouth. I was about to open my beer can politely in the direction of the window-when I noticed a silver-haired man in suit and tie glaring at Dad, so, in filial solidarity, I turned it towards him and released it, to my disappointment, not with a whoosh but an unnoticed phip.

      ‘Looking forward to it, dear?’

      Such a tame phrase could never adequately describe my feelings. I was heading for the seat of my religion.

      After Stoke the weather changed. Sheets of pine-needle rain frapped against the window.

      ‘Here we go!’

      Dad stuffed the silver foil and newspaper detritus back into his satchel and began heading up the train, bumping past scruffy, long-haired locals as the terminus came into view. I jumped off the moving locomotive onto a wet platform, the impetus carrying me into a sprint towards the ticket barrier. For once I was ahead of him.

      As we made for the bus stop, rivulets of grime ran down the dilapidated brickwork of abandoned buildings. But to me, everything was transformed by association with United. Even the orange and white of the double-decker, so different from the plain red of the London variety, seemed as exotic as the singsong local accent that Dad seemed to hate so much. The bleak urban landscape and scattered housing estates glimpsed from motorway bridges looked like futuristic relatives of the Emerald City.

      People began to leave their seats. I looked in vain for floodlights and wondered how long it would be before I saw Old Trafford. It seemed hours before the police let us cross Chester Road, and suddenly, there it was. The headlights embedded in the roof of the stand helped to conceal the stadium’s glory until the last possible СКАЧАТЬ