Fantastic! Thanks for posting that. It’s from a few months before I entered the world, but I saw Spud play for a couple of years at the end of his career. Watching that a few things jump out at me. Firstly, Bob Earnshaw was a bit good, wasn’t he. Very pacy. Also, by the time I was going it was (usually) possible to watch one half in the Ponty and the other half down the other end of the Brewery stand. In this clip the Ponty seems to have decamped all the way round to the Kop. For those who were going to Oakwell back then, was this a common thing? When Tranmere scored not many on the Kop seemed to celebrate, so I’m guessing most of the people in there were Reds fans anyway. Did fans mingle like that? I’m presuming that apart from local derbies, clubs at our level back then didn’t have big away followings, which made it easier, but when there were more than usual, was there ever any trouble? Or were the away fans free to walk the other way and watch the second half from the Ponty? I stood on the Kop with my dad a few times in around 1980, as it was packed in the Ponty, which made it hard for me to see, unless we managed to get a place where I could sit on a crash barrier. I remember watching two goalless draws from the Kop, a last game f the season against Plymouth and one against Charlton. I think the Charlton game was our last one because it got a bit nasty in there. There weren’t many Charlton fans, but were quite a few Barnsley fans in there and words were exchanged, so the police formed a line around the Charlton fans. A year earlier I was stood on the Kop with my uncle, my cousins and a mate, as my uncle had slipped the turnstile operator a few bob to let us kids climb over the turnstile. This was a game against Stockport where we lost 1-0. We didn’t stay in the Kop though, because we started out with more Reds fans in there than Stockport fans, but then a couple of coachloads of Wednesday fans turned up, cos their game had been called off, so they came to Oakwell. The Reds fans in the Kop, including us, jumped over into the Terrace.
The Charlton game you mentioned was, I believe, the 80/81 season. I can recall there being some trouble at the level crossing after the game when around 30 or so Charlton fans launched an attack on a gathering group of Barnsley fans. As a result of the brief incident a pensioner had to receive first aid, and was eventually taken to hospital, after being hit by quite a large piece of concrete. It was also Charlton fans that glassed a lass in the Queens Hotel a couple of years later. I can recall reading about it in the Chron.
