Rams won but my pal got a bit of a pasting
I READ Lee Knowles’ letter regarding Bill Curry (“Story showed gulf between players and fans”, September 20) with some nostalgia.
As a schoolboy I recall going to the home match against Liverpool in 1961 with a couple of school friends. This was in the days when fans would get the trolley bus from the Market Place to a stop near the ground and there would often be several Rams players on the bus.
My recollection of this particular match is not a pleasant one, though, apart from the result. I was on the Normanton Terrace directly behind the goal and the majority of the Liverpool fans, of which there were many, were on the Osmaston Terrace. However, at half-time, and with Liverpool about to kick towards the Normanton end in the second half, their fans decided en masse to move from the Osmaston end to the Normanton end, running the whole length of the pitch. The half dozen or so police officers who tried to stop them were overwhelmed by the vast numbers and consequently the Normanton Terrace became jam-packed and somewhat dangerous. A lot of these fans did not appear to have any shoes on so I surmise that they were probably from poor families.
A very unpleasant situation then arose during the second half when Bill Curry was unceremoniously bunded into the pop side railings and one of my friends decided that it was a sending-off offence and proceeded to chant “Off, off, off!”.
Not a wise thing to do with so many Liverpool fans now crammed into our end and one of these “fans” clearly took exception to this and head-butted my friend without warning. With blood now streaming from his nose and forehead we decided to leave the game immediately but he didn’t want to be treated by the St John Ambulance staff at the ground, preferring instead a walk to the DRI’s A&E department to get as far away as possible from any further trouble which may have ensued at the end of the game.
Fortunately, nothing was broken but his face was a mess for a couple of weeks.
I think this was the start of the football hooliganism period and, yes, Ron Yeats should have been sent off.
Anyone attending that match will no doubt remember the half-time stampede, Bill Curry being strechered off and, of course, Mick Hopkinson’s unstoppable rocket into the top corner of the net.
Charles Southey, Allestree