Reds v Newcastle 1981 came up on my FB feed this morning

Barnsley fc v Newcastle United fc 17th October, 1981 #barnsleyfc #newcastleunited #football

There are 25 minutes of Yorkshire TV coverage of this match. This was another of the many highlights of that period in our history. It's well worth a watch for the silky football played by the team at that time. Newcastle had loads of chances of course but when you've got centre halves like Evans and McCarthy in your team you've got a good chance.

Footage at the start shows a packed crowd outside the away turnstiles "locked out" according to John Helm but surely this can only be because it was an all-ticket game and these people didn't have one? If it was pay on the day they could have let more in because there was plenty of standing room free down near the fence. In that case the police or whoever made the decision to keep them out could have caused serious trouble outside.

Oh for a time machine to go back and relive all this again....

 

Remember it well. That period 78-82 will never be bettered (certainly not with this lot in charge).

 

The Geordies ran rampage around the local area,mini buses full of them descended on the pubs in Hemsworth ,all hell broke loose fighting everywhere was like the Wild West , walk back into town was scary too,there was bother everywhere

 

Well they wouldn’t have been happy seeing their team get beaten by little old Barnsley, would they, or having to lower themselves visiting Oakwell at all.

 

Yes, must’ve been 20 of them that jumped out of a removal van on Wellington Street post match. I quickly disappeared up Castlereigh Street lol.

 

I don’t know why they started the bother,because during the match they had been told by our bovver boys in form of song ,”after the match your going to die”,”your going home in a Barnsley ambulance”,they was going to get their”fukcing heads kicked in” and they was in the. “Valley of death”
lol just a few I can remember,one was quite a jolly one where everyone bobbed about to the 2nd verse

 

They weren't locked out. They brought about 5,000 that day and they did what many followings did barnsley then, turn up at the turnstiles at 2.55pm. I understand they turned up en masse in an attempt to break down the exit gates to gain free entry...... Wednesday did something similar two hours before kick off in 1979 and took up positions in the Brewery Stand.
Saturday night around town after the Newcastle match was strange. I think 8 pubs remained closed and not as many folk ventured in from the surrounding villages.

 

Can you imagine the value of some of our players if they were around now?

 

We all know what Ronnie was capable of and Banger usually takes second place behind him. However, watching these highlights, it’s obvious that Ian was more than just a Powerful shot. Look at the way he weaves his way past players as well as getting off a few trademark blasts at goal. When he left us it was for peanuts compared to what we should have got for him.

 

Class player for us. Not sure what fee Leicester paid us for him but £250k seems to be what I remember. Such a shame that team got broken up and the catalyst seemed to be Trevor Aylott leaving in the summer of 82 because his missus wanted to return south I believe.
He's since said that he always regretted leaving.

 

If only we could have kept that exceptional squad together at least one more season. I’m certain they would have got us to the First Division and with the obscene money issues of that league still some years away we might have stayed there for a few seasons

 

I was a cadet in St John Ambulance back then. After the games we hung around in the stadium until all the spectators had left, as usual. We then walked home towards town, me, my dad and one other St John Ambulance volunteer. As we came out of the ground and started up the hill there wasn’t anyone around. But we could hear a commotion somewhere. Then as we neared the shop at the top all hell broke loose. About 20 Geordies came running across from towards where the Metrodome is now, pursued by the police, with a couple of them on horseback. The ones on horseback were indiscriminately cracking heads (and faces) with their truncheons. Obviously, I don’t know what went on before it got to this stage, but the violence was all one way. The Geordies were just trying to get away.

Once it stopped there were bodies all over the floor. One lad looked awful, as he now had a fractured skull. Another had his top lip hanging off, in that it was split all the way through up the middle and about 3 inches along, with the whole lot hanging off. The most grisly thing I saw until I started my nurse training (I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want me to tell you the things I subsequently saw that trumped it!). But it was awful. Blood everywhere. A lady leaned out of the window above the shop with a box of tissues. I readied myself to catch them, but then one of the Geordies lifted me straight up to grab them…by my ankles! Thankfully I kept my balance and remained straight up.

A short while after this a senior policeman came round to take a statement from my dad. He must have been CID cos he smelled like he’d bathed in aftershave. Everybody I’ve ever met from CID smells the same. My dad was shitting himself. To 11 year old me it was simple. The football fans were running away, the police were attacking them, and with force. But my dad just said it’s not wise for people like us to make a statement that gets a policeman in trouble. I don’t know what he told them, but I’ve never seen my dad as nervous.

But it gave me a story to tell my mates at school on Monday.

 

Was this the game with the infamous parrot incident?

 

That's the game... the parrot story is a myth. Some Newcastle fans threw an aerosol canister on the fire at the Manx.

 

Think the Ring O’Bells on Wellington Street (now Istanbul restaurant) got wrecked that day too.

 

That's right... it was one of the worst affected.
Rumour has it that the pool table got hurled outdoors..

 

Sounds like a warm up for Orgreave. I bet the Geordies had been up to something though

 

Some warm up .... four years prior lol

 

Perhaps it was a long lead-in

 

Yes, you’d imagine so, but the image of the police indiscriminately cracking heads and faces with some force will stay with me forever. It was all over and done quite quickly and then I think the police had realised what they’d done. The horses disappeared and other police then started tending to the injured with us (I say ‘us’ but my involvement was mainly standing there horrified). It was very tense though, as the Geordies were naturally angry with the police. My dad said he’d never been as happy to have the white bag over his shoulder, making him stand out from the police, although I remember the other bloke having to quickly point at his bag when a Geordie grabbed his shoulder.

I don’t miss the aggro that we saw week in week out in the 70s and 80s, that’s for sure.