TT BLOG

Clive Hayward – @Byehorse

Clive blogs about European football

EUROPEAN NIGHTS

Tonight

All eyes (well, some eyes) will be on Bilbao for this evening’s Europa League Final. You know the Europa League, right? It’s not actually a league. It used to be known as the UEFA Cup, and before that, The Inter City Fairs Cup.

The Inter City Fairs Cup owed very little to British trains and more to trade fairs. Originally, a city was only allowed to enter one team. The first competition, which bizarrely took 3 years to complete, saw a final between a Barcelona XI and a London XI. Given that the Cockneys had an Orient player at right back (George Wright), it’s not a massive surprise that the trophy went to Catalonia, thanks to a 6-0 second leg hammering.

The competition has fluctuated in popularity over the years. It’s always been the second ranking trophy but the likes of Liverpool, Leeds, Newcastle, Arsenal and even Ipswich have had memorable wins. The two-legged final has gone the way of the away goals rule, FA Cup Replays and proper shinpads, but millions will tune in tonight to watch plucky underdogs Tottenham and Manchester United do battle for some valuable silverware and a place in next season’s “Champions League”.

NB- They won’t be champions of anywhere. And that’s not a league either.

A Few Years Ago

I know what you’re thinking. Has Hayward lost his mind? This is supposed to be a Torquay United website. What the hell has European Football got to do with us?

It’s a very fair point. But look, it’s the closed season as far as we’re concerned. We’re trying to keep the content pumping, and a big game in the Basque Country seemed as good a place as any to start. Please relax, by the way. I’m not going to make any jokes about sexy football or lingerie. What do you take me for?

I’m also sorry to disappoint you if you thought I would unearth loads of “Torquay in Europe” anecdotes. I just don’t think there are any. Apart, perhaps, from a pre-season friendly against Red Star Belgrade (I couldn’t be bothered to go). Or that weekend in 1994 when I followed Don O’Riordan’s team on a Guinness and curry-fuelled odyssey across Ireland. We started on a Friday night at Don’s old club, Cherry Orchard, in one of the rougher bits of Dublin. There was a lovely train ride over to Galway on the Saturday, where I had 14 pints and a midnight game of scrabble with our bemused landlady’s daughter. It was up to Sligo Rovers on the following day and then back across country to Dublin before a hungover flight back to Exeter on a distinctly rickety little South West Air plane accompanied by about 6 other people including a green-round-the-gills nun.

Many, Many Years Ago

I started watching football in the mid-seventies. It wasn’t a great time for English football. Ajax and then Bayern Munich were winning 6 European Cups between them (or 5 if, like me, you’re a Leeds fan!). The national team was in a slump with multiple failures to qualify for World Cups and Euros. Scotland also came to Wembley and won on a regular basis.

So when our teams started doing well in Europe again it felt like a really big deal. I discovered Radio Two. Although the mornings were blighted by Terry Wogan and Pete Murray, it got a lot more exciting on Wednesday nights. It seems crazy now, when there is sport all evening now on 5 Live, but at that time you would normally only get commentary of the Second Half.

I remember West Ham’s run to the final of the Cup Winners Cup, beaten by a very good Anderlecht side. I remember hearing exotic names like Ujpest Dozsa, Dinamo Tbilisi or Eintract Frankfurt, and learning where they came from. Bryon Butler or Peter Jones would commentate down sometimes-crackly phone lines from a foreign field, and the whole thing was incredibly exciting for an 8 year old.

Sometimes I was allowed to get up to watch Sportsnight. Still half asleep, I would sit on our black leather settee and watch the Rediffusion. That title music still send shivers down my spine 50 years later. Leeds scrapping for a draw in Barcelona. Liverpool prevailing over St Etienne. Charlie Magri top of the bill at Bethnal Green. The Horse of the Year Show! When you’re watching things for the first time, they are so much more special.

Probably the peak of my childhood TV was in 1977. Liverpool had had an incredible season. They had some team. Keegan, Kennedy, Heighway, Neal, Clemence. They won the league, then had an FA Cup final against Tommy Docherty’s Man U. We watched it at my Grandad’s in Paignton. It was a real treat in those days to sit down and watch a full game. 90 minutes seemed like such a long time. Liverpool, in their black and white change strip, missed out on their possible treble. It was a crazy 4 minutes that settled it. Early in the second half Stuart Pearson put Man U one up. Jimmy Case equalised immediately, but Jimmy Greenhoff poached a winner in the 55th minute.

Fast-forward 4 days, and we were back at Grandad’s for the European Cup Final. Thousands of Liverpool fans had jumped on trains for a long and uncomfortable journey down to Rome in the hope that the Reds could equal Matt Busby’s achievement of 1968. Their opponents were then-mighty Borussia Monchengladbach. West German footballers were, of course, sweeping all before them at that time. They were reigning world champions and Bayern Munich had won three (2) in a row. Could Keegan and co recover from their Wembley disappointment?

It was a great game. My grandad was not one of nature’s optimists. He’d had a fairly unglamorous life, and although Terry MacDermott scored a screamer in the first half he assured me that Alan Simonsen’s equaliser just after half time would lead to a German win. No chance! The old warhorse Tommy Smith thumped in a header from a corner and it was all Liverpool from then on. Keegan had given Berti Vogts a torrid time all night, and in his final game before following in the Beatles’ footsteps to Hamburg he sent the Scousers home happy with a third.

It was a glorious night. I was hooked.

Even though UEFA, TV companies and the big clubs have done their best to kill the magic in recent years, with wall to wall coverage of games people are past caring about between teams paid more for a training session than my grandad earned in his lifetime, European Football still offers something a bit different.

The Future

The Europa Conference League is a much-derided competition. Much in the way that Aveley is not a place, this is yet another cup competition that is not, repeat not, a league. Although it feels like a way of filling the schedules of digital sports broadcasters, it does open up the possibility of new experiences for supporters of some very lowly clubs- who might otherwise miss out. Ask Djurgarden fans. Crazy as it sounds, they brought European football to Shrewsbury- where The New Saints played their home game against them. The Swedes went on to have a great run, taking over Stamford Bridge before bowing out only a couple of weeks ago.

Last July, on a whim, I went to watch Cliftonville play the Latvian side Auda. They were a little bit outclassed, but kept the scoreline to 2-1. I was actually in Belfast to watch some cricket and I didn’t know the game was on until the afternoon: but it was a fun night. Will we ever see it at Plainmoor? Probably not, but if we ever do, I want to be there!