250 Days. Daniel Storey

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СКАЧАТЬ an experienced – and very capable – central defender, seeing Cantona’s frustration was only likely to make Shaw step up his strategy. You could hardly blame him. Palace could not hope to contend with United on ability.

      ‘It was all Shawsy’s fault as well,’ Shaw’s teammate John Salako later said with his tongue inserted in cheek. ‘Richard was the best man-marker ever. He had a job to do on Eric and he did it so well Eric got so frustrated he literally booted Shawsy up the arse. Eric lost the plot.’

      Three minutes into the second half, Peter Schmeichel launched a goal kick forward and Shaw and Cantona clashed again. Shaw was certainly the first to commit an offence – the linesman flagged to indicate as such – but it was Cantona’s kick-out at Shaw that earned the wrath of the officials. It clearly constituted violent conduct, and Wilkie was left with no choice but to show Cantona a red card. On the touchline, Ferguson was incandescent with anger.

      Later, in court, Cantona would accept Wilkie’s decision to send him off but complained at his treatment by Shaw. ‘In my opinion, his decision was correct,’ he said in a statement read out by his barrister David Poole, ‘although I had been repeatedly and painfully fouled in the course of the match.’

      One of the direct results of the Cantona incident was that the rule was changed regarding post-red card events. Until the end of the 1994/95 season a player in English football would leave the field at the nearest point following their dismissal. Then followed what was a potentially long walk around the perimeter of the pitch to the tunnel, often passing large swathes of opposition supporters who had free rein to offer their own personalised farewell messages. From August 1995 onwards, players left the field in a direct line towards the tunnel. In hindsight, it is extraordinary that it was ever different.

      It does not condone Cantona’s subsequent actions, but the atmosphere at Selhurst Park was notoriously raucous and there is no doubt that any opposition player making the walk in front of the Main Stand would have faced many hundreds of taunts and foul-mouthed tirades.

      But for Cantona, that abuse was worse than usual because of who he was, where he came from and which team he played for. Twice Cantona can be seen looking up to the stands in response to particular fans, but after a momentary pause he walks on.

      ‘It wasn’t just the tackles and shirt pulling he had to deal with that night that pushed him over the edge,’ said then-teammate Gary Pallister in 2015. ‘It was the culmination of a lot of abuse Eric had to put up with at every ground he went to.

      ‘You wouldn’t believe the kind of vile verbal abuse that was directed at him when we arrived at opposition grounds and got off the bus. Even when we went to the horse races, Eric couldn’t escape it. I remember at one race meeting he was being spat on from a balcony in the enclosure above where we were standing. He was a target, there was no doubt about it.’

      One of those supporters delighting in Cantona’s ignominious and premature departure from the pitch was 20-year-old Matthew Simmons. Eye-witnesses said that Simmons had rushed down 11 rows of the Main Stand in order to get as close as possible to the Frenchman to abuse him, though Simmons would later claim that he was merely leaving his seat to visit the toilet.

      The language Simmons used is also open to interpretation. Rather comically, he claimed to police in a follow-up interview that he had used the words ‘Off, off, off. Go on, Cantona, have an early shower.’ A slightly different account was heard in court by a witness attending the game as a neutral, and who quoted Simmons as shouting, ‘You fucking cheating French cunt. Fuck off back to France, you motherfucker. French bastard. Wanker.’

      It is worth noting that the court sided with the witness and that Simmons’s evidence was clearly unsound, to the extent that even Cantona’s prosecutor Jeffrey McCann fully agreed on that point. It later transpired that Simmons had a conviction for assault with intent to rob and was a British National Party and National Front sympathiser. There is also a theory that Simmons was not even a Crystal Palace supporter, but a Fulham fan who for some reason had chosen to attend the game. On that point, the truth will surely never be known.

      Cantona had been subjected to a series of racist taunts and the strongest verbal abuse from someone intent on provoking a reaction. If Shaw was the star in Act 1 of The Temptation of Cantona, Simmons took over the role in Act 2.

      Simmons would cause greater controversy having been found guilty of using threatening words and behaviour during the Cantona incident, earning him a £500 fine and a 12-month football banning order. When he appeared for sentencing, Simmons leapt over the bench and kicked and punched the counsel for the prosecution. It earned him a seven-day prison sentence for contempt of court. As he was led away, Simmons shouted a final parting message: ‘I am innocent. I swear on the Bible. You press. You are scum.’

      Whatever was said, Cantona’s reaction was shocking. Pausing for a second to identify his target, the forward launched a flying kick at Simmons’s chest and connected emphatically. Falling awkwardly to the floor – as is inevitable when you have propelled yourself near horizontally in such a manner – Cantona then waded in with multiple punches as Simmons fought back. Around them, Palace supporters watched on in astonishment and fear.

      Cantona’s teammate Paul Ince also got involved; scalded with hot tea thrown from someone in the crowd, he responded with punches of his own. It was Manchester United’s kit man Norman Davies, tasked with escorting Cantona to the tunnel, who eventually dragged the Frenchman away with the help of a steward. Schmeichel raced over to try to calm Cantona down. It is interesting to see the goalkeeper pointing at the Palace support in an accusatory manner even in the midst of what had just occurred.

      Back at the scene of the fight, Manchester United players gathered near the home supporters to vent their displeasure at the abuse that they believed had been responsible for sparking the furore. In front of them, a row of stewards wearing hi-vis jackets provided a human barrier between fans and players. The entire incident lasted seven seconds. Its ramifications would last for years.

      ‘I just stood there transfixed,’ Pallister told the Manchester Evening News. ‘I was in total disbelief at what I’d seen. I just couldn’t believe it. I can remember seeing Norman Davies attempting to stop Eric beating the living daylights out of the fan. Thank goodness he managed to pull him away.’

      Kitman Davies deserves great credit for his pacifying role. Having eventually frogmarched – weak pun unintended – Cantona down the touchline without further incident and got him into the safety and sanctity of the away dressing room, Davies’s job was not finished. He guarded the door from the inside, blocking a still irate Cantona from breaking out and continuing the altercation.

      ‘He was furious,’ Davies recalled. ‘He wanted to go back out again. I locked the door and told him, “If you want to go back out on the pitch, you’ll have to go over my body and break the door down.”’

      Having finally relented, Cantona drank a cup of tea that Davies had made for him and went for a shower. United’s kitman had prevented a dire situation getting even further out of hand. He would thereafter be known as ‘Vaseline’ among the players, having seen Cantona slip out of his grasp to kick Simmons.

      The first official reaction to the incident came from Chief Superintendent Terry Collins, who said that Cantona and Ince would be allowed to travel home but should expect to be called to police interview within the next 48 hours. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it in my life,’ Collins said. ‘There could have been a riot.’ On that point, it was hard to disagree.

      That same evening, the Football Association issued its own statement: ‘The FA are appalled by the incident that took place by the side of the pitch at Selhurst Park tonight. Such an incident brings shame on those involved СКАЧАТЬ