A Shot from Wales: 'Forgive your enemies but never forget their names.....'

Looking back I suppose the portents weren’t great. The very late entrance of ‘Shrimpers’ to La Fontaine confirmed that the M25 had been up to its old tricks……with the shockwaves from the early morning accident near Heathrow washing up on the beach at Leatherhead until after lunch.

And I can’t say I noticed the lack of illumination as we entered the ground at 2.40pm. The magnetic attraction of the ‘burger bar’ and the much awaited tiny portion of chips (20 chips for £2…..it’s the charge for service I guess) was too strong.

As we left the field at half time, one nil down and with Darren Jones sent off for an attempted assault on one of the Southend forwards, I did offer the musing that ‘now would be a good time to have a floodlight failure’……..it’s bound to work I ruminated and it would surely send the travelling hoards home feeling cheated….yes, Aldershot ‘you are a disgrace to the Football League. Get back to the Conference you pathetic little club.’

''And so as I walked back up Redan Road to my car after the truncated game and looked down on the semi-illuminated football ground, my thoughts returned to Cinderella…..and Buttons…..''

From ‘It was a pantomime….first published by A Shot from Wales on 29th December 2011 following the abandonment of the Aldershot Town v Southend Utd, Boxing Day fixture due to a floodlight failure.

1977/78 was another ‘play-off’ year (if only)……

In a season when Southend were promoted and Aldershot finished fifth the Shots demolished the Shrimpers at the Recreation Ground on March 25th, 3v0.

But this game features in my ‘top 50 Aldershot FC memories’ not for the Brodie and Dungworth (2) goals but for a mindless act that, typically for the seventies, was simply 'accommodated'…...

We entered the Rec at the Redan Hill end (remember this was before segregation)…..a queue had formed for the adult turnstile, so as my ‘big’ brother and I waited to enter the ground, our ‘little’ brother was already through the junior gate and heading down towards the South Stand.

From a distance it appeared to be no more than the usual scuffle between rival fans. But as we got closer we could see that it was our ‘little’ brother who was being attacked by a very large and ‘booted’ skinhead.

We quickened our pace and ran down the path through the gardens and in no time we were upon the ‘fan’…..the Southend thug was wrestled off our brother’s head and we dragged him across to a policeman, who had been standing, just watching the incident…..

’This idiot has been smashing our younger brother’, we advised, awaiting the call for assistance to remove the ‘animal’ from the Rec.

‘Jolly good, on your way son…..enjoy the game’…..the complacency no more than a harbinger to the tragic events that in the next decade would rip the heart out of so many lives.

The chronology is sadly well defined. A history dating back to the ‘60s when Mods and Rockers played out the First Leg at the seaside; Brighton or Southend or Great Yarmouth, with the return fixture at Stamford Bridge or the Den.

Then the ‘70s saw the emergence of organised hooligan groups (Firms). Burnley offered the Suicide Squad and West Ham the infamous, Inter City Crew.

But the events that unfolded before our television eyes at Heysel, on 29 May 1985 would be the tragic dynamic for change. 39 Juventus fans were crushed to death after Liverpool followers broke through a line of police. They ran toward the Juventus fans in a section containing both English and Italian supporters. The fence separating them collapsed. Fighting broke out. Fans fled. A wall collapsed……

English clubs were banned from European competitions until 1990.

The Popplewell Committee was set up as a consequence of a riot at Birmingham City when a young boy lost his life. The disturbance that followed was described by Justice Popplewell as more like ‘the Battle of Agincourt than a football match’.

Shortly thereafter the Bradford City Fire was added to the Popplewell brief. Despite not being hooligan related the terrible event was undoubtedly a direct result of the amateurish and disturbingly arrogant demeanour of football authorities across the UK at that time.

‘Football may not be able to continue in its present form much longer’.

When 96 innocent fans died in the tragic events of Hillsborough on April 15th 1989 the Government were forced into action.

The passing of the Football Spectators Act 1989 changed the landscape of our game….probably for ever.

And as our second goal hit the back of the Southend net on Tuesday night my thoughts returned to March 1978 and the incident that said so much about the past frailty of our great game…..

But were my feelings of elation coloured with retribution or were they simply an explosion of satisfaction fuelled by the ironic ‘injustice’ of the victory…..

Well I’m sorry Southend, my inner warmth was created by something no more complicated than a 2v0 win for a ‘tin-pot’, small town club in a football match against a pretty useless side from a Thames estuary resort; where so many aspects of life collide and a place that John Betjeman would have described , at best, as ‘interesting’.