When Football Came Home by Michael Gibbons

Author:Michael Gibbons
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pitch Publishing
Published: 2016-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

11

That Nation Again

AT 9.20am on Saturday 15 June 1996 a white van drove on to Corporation Street in Manchester city centre. The vehicle was then parked and abandoned on double yellow lines outside a branch of Marks and Spencer, near the Arndale shopping centre. Within minutes it received a ticket from a traffic warden. At around 9.40am a coded warning telephoned through to Granada Studios on Quay Street made it clear that this was something more serious than a parking offence. The area, packed with tens of thousands of Saturday morning shoppers, was evacuated and experts arrived to try and remotely defuse the van’s cargo. There would not be enough time to stop what was coming.

The estimated 3,300lb bomb, the biggest detonated in Great Britain during peacetime, exploded at 11.17am. A mushroom cloud plumed above Manchester, stretching 300 yards into the sky. ‘If it [the area] had not been cleared there would have been many, many deaths,’ said Assistant Chief Constable Colin Phillips. ‘It is an absolute miracle no one was killed.’

There were 212 people injured as broken glass and debris showered down behind the evacuation cordon a quarter of a mile from the van. One woman’s face needed over 300 stitches, at which point the doctors stopped counting. Twelve buildings were severely damaged, several beyond repair. The cost of the damage was estimated at £700m. Five days later the Provisional IRA admitted to carrying out the attack. The actual perpetrators have never been found.

In London the Trooping of the Colour was taking place to celebrate the Queen’s official birthday. John Major left the event to lead the condemnation of the attack, which had arrived in the week of the Stormont peace talks in Northern Ireland. Overall the sense was one of relief. Life – outside Manchester at least – would go on as planned. In Burnham Beeches, Terry Venables prepared to take his team to Wembley to face Scotland.

The England versus Scotland fixture is the oldest in international football. In an effort to increase the popularity of the game north of the border a challenge match took place on St Andrew’s Day in 1872 between a select XI from the English FA and the Queen’s Park club in Glasgow, who would represent Scotland. Four thousand people paid a shilling to enter Hamilton Crescent in Partick, the home ground of the West of Scotland Cricket Club. They were witnesses to the first ever international football match. The game finished in a goalless draw.

The match became an annual event and started a rivalry marked by brilliance, controversy and rancour. In 1928 Scotland landed a blow on the jaw of England at Wembley, hammering their hosts 5-1. The team earned the nickname ‘The Wembley Wizards’ for a performance that passed straight into legend back home. England scored the biggest victory in the history of the fixture in 1961, winning 9-3 at Wembley. The Scottish goalkeeper Frank Haffey was later immortalised in the zinger, ‘What’s the time? Nearly ten past Haffey!’ He never played for his country again, and the stereotype of hapless Scottish goalkeepers was born.

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