FOOTBALL! SPECIALS
Those old train journeys
IT WAS the 20th October, 1965. I was 11-years-old attending my first away game. I travelled by train with my Dad from Coventry to Bolton Trinity Street to attend Bolton Wanderers v Coventry City in the old Second Division. The fare was 25s for adults and 17s for ‘Juveniles’.
Although I didn’t realise it at the time I, and the other 500-or-so passengers, were part of a pioneering initiative.
At a time when the issue of football hooliganism was beginning to take root – with railway vandalism to be one of its most enduring problems – the idea of a club chartering their own trains was new.
I travelled on what was called a ‘Sky Blue Special’, one of many ground-breaking ideas put into play by the Sky Blues during the 1960s.
British Railways – as it then was – had long provided reasonably priced ‘Football Special’ services to cater for the away supporter. From Coventry, the London Midland region in 1964 advertised a ‘Cheap trip to Watford’ for 13s 6d (about 67 pence after decimalisation!).
Other journeys cost 22s 6d to Huddersfield and 26s to Leyton Orient, both in 1966.
Nationally, however, there had been instances of what came to be known as ‘hooliganism’ as early as the 1950s.
The Manchester Guardian on December 28th, 1957 ran a story ‘Football Trains to Continue – despite the Hooliganism’.
The report told how the communication cord was pulled by Everton supporters returning from Bolton on a ‘Special’ service. It was delayed for 90 minutes during which time fans dispersed onto the lines in darkness.
Six windows were broken but of greater concern was the breach of passenger safety which could have been fatal.
For much of the next decade there were many reports of vandalism on ‘Football Specials’ operating out of Liverpool.
In January 1964, British Rail decided to stop the services, citing damage to nearly every ‘Special’ they had run that season, and the repeated pulling of the communication cord.
Fans of Liverpool blamed Everton supporters. They were by no means the only culprits, however. In November 1967, the railway authorities in Manchester responded to reports of £1,000 damage to an overnight express, returning from London, by Manchester United supporters, announcing that all ‘Football Specials’ would be cancelled.
The following year the National Union of Railwaymen warned that their Guards would shun ‘Football Specials’ if the problem persisted.
It would also be wrong to think that vandalism took place only in the North.
On the 23rd September, 1969, it was reported that British Railways were considering a ban on Tottenham’s Specials after 11 coaches were wrecked by 500 Spurs fans.
They were keen to add some much-needed proportion, however, amid widespread coverage of wrecked carriages in the national newspapers.
They announced they had run 886 Football Specials the previous season and had trouble on only 19 of them.
From the late 60s, it became more common for Transport Police to travel on these services and in 1969 the Home Secretary, James Callaghan, announced a scheme whereby a number of a club’s own stewards could travel free of charge to deter the hooligans.
While reports show the problem continued well into the 1970s and beyond, the authorities became far better organised in managing the issue.
At the beginning of the 1978-79 season, it was announced that the damage
bill had dropped considerably from a figure of £100,000 in 1975.
This was attributed to the deployment of 12 British Transport police on every Football Special. They also revealed that the industry had no desire to end the Specials since they were profitable!
It appeared that vandalism was something that seemed most frequently to affect public property. Spurs’ answer, to their own hooligan element, was for the Supporter’s Club to announce their own plans to run their own Specials.
Coventry’s ‘Sky Blue Specials’ had been running for some years then, with their own stewards, and no cases of vandalism had taken place. The provision of entertainment on board was another factor.
Music was relayed to each carriage along with games of Bingo – the advert for the trip to Charlton Athletic in February 1966 was even billed as the “Bingo Express”.
I don’t recall them running after the late ’60s by when car ownership was much higher and clubs began to favour coach travel.
British Railways carried on, but by the 1990s, after the privatisation of the railways, ‘Football Specials’ were no longer of interest.
In 1975, Minister of Sport Denis How- ell, a former football referee, had set up a Working Party who recommended that trains should be closely controlled by Supporters’ Clubs.
The final straw was perhaps reached in September of the same year when fire wrecked a train returning to Liverpool from Leicester, while Chelsea fans smashed up a train returning to London from Luton.
British Rail immediately cancelled all ‘Football Specials’. From hereon, travel on match days would only be possible by normal services.
Unfortunately, this meant that the hooligans began to adapt to new ways of travel. A number of the most infamous hooligan ‘firms’ even took their names from rail services, notably West Ham’s ‘Inter City Firm’.
As the authorities were to find out, trouble on the ‘Football Specials’ at least kept the problem away from the general public.
The heavy police presence at major railway stations on match days in the 70s and 80s brought about an ugly atmosphere for the general traveller. Eventually, however, hooliganism was largely contained. After the arrival of all-seater stadia and the mega-rich Premier League after 1992, it was even claimed football had gone upmarket. The presence of extraordinary large numbers of CCTV cameras in the UK was perhaps as big a factor, enabling the police to pursue offenders long after the events took place.
It could never be claimed that hooliganism has gone but today the problem is far removed from the chaos that once existed.