Exiled In Newcastle
Established Member
Not the 30's one you cheeky sods...
Walsall
For those brought up on the heady success (and sheer beauty) of ‘Wengerball’ it must be hard to imagine that just over 20 years ago Highbury was rocked by demonstrations against both the board and the manager. That is the backdrop to the home cup game against Walsall in 1983.
As a club and as a team Arsenal were in a dreadful state. Massive debts (that would only be assuaged by George Graham’s parsimonious spending) were crippling the club off the pitch, and the lack of team spirit on the pitch was obvious to all. To the fans there was something rotten in the club, and (rightly or wrongly) Terry Neill was seen as the cause.
It had all seemed so different when he was leading Arsenal to four Cup Finals in three years, but the fact that we only won one of them (and never mounted a challenge in the league) was probably a clue that all was not as well as it might appear. On paper we had approached the end of the 70’s with three of the best young talents the club had produces in a long time, the Dublin triumvirate of O’Leary, Brady and Stapleton. Add to that experience from the likes of Pat Rice, Pat Jennings, Sammy Nelson Willie Young and Malcolm MacDonald, and other promising youngsters such as David Price and Graham Rix and the future had indeed looked rosy. Neill (who had been Arsenal’s youngest captain before also becoming our youngest ever manager) looked like he had a team he could take into the 80’s and really challenge Liverpool.
By 1983 those dreams were long gone, as were Brady to Italy, MacDonald to injury and Judas had taken his 30 pieces of silver and trotted off to Manchester. The team that had promised so much was now a mess and the best the fans could hope for was a good cup run – European qualification was just a dream in the 80’s!
That was the backdrop as we took our places on the North Bank about an hour before kick off. Despite everything the feeling on the terrace was generally optimistic (then again the optimism of a football fan is akin to the optimism of someone buying a lottery ticket. You know you’re not going to win, but you still imagine what you’ll do with the winnings!), it was only Walsall after all! How wrong could we be…
Pre-match in those days was so different. Meeting up on the North Bank long before kick off (to ensure the best places – or at least your place) meant that the players names were sung when they came out for their warm up. For this game (and the last few) there had been other, less supportive chants directed against Terry Neill. To a lesser extent there were ‘Sack the Board’ chants but this was more due to the fact they wouldn’t sack the manager rather than any direct anger against the board.
We never thought that Arsenal would actually sack the manager to be honest –a board member had said when asked a few weeks earlier that ‘It wasn’t the Arsenal way’. In fact technically Arsenal had never actually sacked a manager before, even the (managerially) woeful Crayston and Wright had been allowed to jump before they would have had to be pushed. Despite that we weren’t going to stop with our anti-Neill chanting and rhetoric, if nothing else maybe we could shame him into resigning.
This time was different than before though. Up until this game the fans had been vocal, but this time it was more vociferous. For the first time I saw a couple of ‘Neill Out’ banners on the North Bank, and one on the Clock End. Also before the game the anti-Neill chants were more regular than the pro-player chants. In fact the whole tone seemed to have changed from a new manager being a desire to it being an imperative. Still thought we’d see the players spank our opponents though, if for no other reason than to show support for the manager, their manager.
The players returned to the pitch for the match to the normal vociferous reception from both ends of the ground but before kick-off the chants against Neill were getting louder and louder. At the time it was normal for the North Bank and Clock End to goad each other to ‘give us a song’, but after about five minutes the Clock End started a chant of ‘North Bank, who must go’ to which the reply was yet another chorus of ‘Neill Out!’
Now despite the losses of the irreplaceable Brady and the nearly irreplaceable Judas this wasn’t a team of mugs that Arsenal put out, they just played like it. Woeful would be to compliment the performance, as all the problems in the team were played out in 90 minutes. For the record our team that day was:
XXXXX
As the performance got worse the anger increased. By the end of the match if Terry Neill had walked onto the pitch he would have been literally slaughtered by the fans. We’d had enough. Had enough in a way I’ve never seen an Arsenal crowd before or since. It wasn’t enough that the directors had heard us chanting during the game, we wanted to keep chanting. Te game might have been over but Neill still had to go – we all knew it and if the board weren’t going to do something…
I’m not really sure how it happened, but it seemed as though the whole terrace suddenly decamped and headed for the main entrance in Avenell Road. It was never a question of storming the main entrance (well not for me anyway), more that we wanted the Board to know exactly how strongly we felt about the situation, and hanging around on a cold evening just to shout at walls was the best we could do. There were a lot of police around, but whilst the anger was obvious to all it never quite looked like it would descend into any kind of violent disorder.
Then it happened. Someone stood on a garden wall opposite the main entrance and was handed half a brick, which had appeared from someone’s garden. Almost immediately it had gone through one of the windows to the home dressing room. For a second there was an almost eerie silence, then the chanting began again. Louder and more vociferous before and in the end the Police forced everyone away.
Terry Neill was gone within days. Rumours abound that not only was the dressing room disturbed by the demonstration but so were the directors who were horrified at what was happening outside Highbury. I believe that the decision was made at the moment the (half) brick went through the dressing room window to sack Neill and the only reason he lasted a few more days was so the directors wouldn’t appear to have been swayed by public feeling.
But he was gone – that was the main thing.
Walsall
For those brought up on the heady success (and sheer beauty) of ‘Wengerball’ it must be hard to imagine that just over 20 years ago Highbury was rocked by demonstrations against both the board and the manager. That is the backdrop to the home cup game against Walsall in 1983.
As a club and as a team Arsenal were in a dreadful state. Massive debts (that would only be assuaged by George Graham’s parsimonious spending) were crippling the club off the pitch, and the lack of team spirit on the pitch was obvious to all. To the fans there was something rotten in the club, and (rightly or wrongly) Terry Neill was seen as the cause.
It had all seemed so different when he was leading Arsenal to four Cup Finals in three years, but the fact that we only won one of them (and never mounted a challenge in the league) was probably a clue that all was not as well as it might appear. On paper we had approached the end of the 70’s with three of the best young talents the club had produces in a long time, the Dublin triumvirate of O’Leary, Brady and Stapleton. Add to that experience from the likes of Pat Rice, Pat Jennings, Sammy Nelson Willie Young and Malcolm MacDonald, and other promising youngsters such as David Price and Graham Rix and the future had indeed looked rosy. Neill (who had been Arsenal’s youngest captain before also becoming our youngest ever manager) looked like he had a team he could take into the 80’s and really challenge Liverpool.
By 1983 those dreams were long gone, as were Brady to Italy, MacDonald to injury and Judas had taken his 30 pieces of silver and trotted off to Manchester. The team that had promised so much was now a mess and the best the fans could hope for was a good cup run – European qualification was just a dream in the 80’s!
That was the backdrop as we took our places on the North Bank about an hour before kick off. Despite everything the feeling on the terrace was generally optimistic (then again the optimism of a football fan is akin to the optimism of someone buying a lottery ticket. You know you’re not going to win, but you still imagine what you’ll do with the winnings!), it was only Walsall after all! How wrong could we be…
Pre-match in those days was so different. Meeting up on the North Bank long before kick off (to ensure the best places – or at least your place) meant that the players names were sung when they came out for their warm up. For this game (and the last few) there had been other, less supportive chants directed against Terry Neill. To a lesser extent there were ‘Sack the Board’ chants but this was more due to the fact they wouldn’t sack the manager rather than any direct anger against the board.
We never thought that Arsenal would actually sack the manager to be honest –a board member had said when asked a few weeks earlier that ‘It wasn’t the Arsenal way’. In fact technically Arsenal had never actually sacked a manager before, even the (managerially) woeful Crayston and Wright had been allowed to jump before they would have had to be pushed. Despite that we weren’t going to stop with our anti-Neill chanting and rhetoric, if nothing else maybe we could shame him into resigning.
This time was different than before though. Up until this game the fans had been vocal, but this time it was more vociferous. For the first time I saw a couple of ‘Neill Out’ banners on the North Bank, and one on the Clock End. Also before the game the anti-Neill chants were more regular than the pro-player chants. In fact the whole tone seemed to have changed from a new manager being a desire to it being an imperative. Still thought we’d see the players spank our opponents though, if for no other reason than to show support for the manager, their manager.
The players returned to the pitch for the match to the normal vociferous reception from both ends of the ground but before kick-off the chants against Neill were getting louder and louder. At the time it was normal for the North Bank and Clock End to goad each other to ‘give us a song’, but after about five minutes the Clock End started a chant of ‘North Bank, who must go’ to which the reply was yet another chorus of ‘Neill Out!’
Now despite the losses of the irreplaceable Brady and the nearly irreplaceable Judas this wasn’t a team of mugs that Arsenal put out, they just played like it. Woeful would be to compliment the performance, as all the problems in the team were played out in 90 minutes. For the record our team that day was:
XXXXX
As the performance got worse the anger increased. By the end of the match if Terry Neill had walked onto the pitch he would have been literally slaughtered by the fans. We’d had enough. Had enough in a way I’ve never seen an Arsenal crowd before or since. It wasn’t enough that the directors had heard us chanting during the game, we wanted to keep chanting. Te game might have been over but Neill still had to go – we all knew it and if the board weren’t going to do something…
I’m not really sure how it happened, but it seemed as though the whole terrace suddenly decamped and headed for the main entrance in Avenell Road. It was never a question of storming the main entrance (well not for me anyway), more that we wanted the Board to know exactly how strongly we felt about the situation, and hanging around on a cold evening just to shout at walls was the best we could do. There were a lot of police around, but whilst the anger was obvious to all it never quite looked like it would descend into any kind of violent disorder.
Then it happened. Someone stood on a garden wall opposite the main entrance and was handed half a brick, which had appeared from someone’s garden. Almost immediately it had gone through one of the windows to the home dressing room. For a second there was an almost eerie silence, then the chanting began again. Louder and more vociferous before and in the end the Police forced everyone away.
Terry Neill was gone within days. Rumours abound that not only was the dressing room disturbed by the demonstration but so were the directors who were horrified at what was happening outside Highbury. I believe that the decision was made at the moment the (half) brick went through the dressing room window to sack Neill and the only reason he lasted a few more days was so the directors wouldn’t appear to have been swayed by public feeling.
But he was gone – that was the main thing.
