To this day, I’ve never heard anything quite like the noise I heard from any set of fans of any losing team as I did throughout almost the entire 90 minutes of the FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park in 1991. From a West Ham perspective, the game, which for a large part we were chasing shadows, was a let down.
As season ticket holders, my mate and I had managed to secure tickets for what for this Hammer’s fan was one of the most eagerly anticipated games in my West Ham supporting life. We arrived at a warm and sunny Birmingham more, to be frank, in hope than expectation. Forest, the top tier team, were clear favourites to go on and win the game.
The hope stemmed from the fact that form is not necessarily a guide to FA Cup success and I still naively believed that fans can really make a tangible difference to the level of a teams performance. If travelling fans are the barometer for the successful outcome of football matches then West Ham (and Newcastle) would almost certainly be guaranteed champions league places season after season.
Anyway, as we shuffled through the Holt end turnstiles half an hour or so before kick-off, our fans were already in good voice. The mercurial Brian Clough, who arguably was the Jose Mourinho of his day and whose influence had clearly rubbed off on Martin O’Neill who played under him, stalked the touchline prior to kick off in a way that was intended, I believe, to unsettle the West Ham players.
Clough’s antics were part and parcel of what I regarded to be his arrogant persona. But of course that was the point. Arrogance is often conflated with people who are good at what they do. Clough rubbed it in our faces by being one of the most successful managers in British football league history.
But arrogance wasn’t the West Ham way. Our footballing culture came from a completely different place – of restraint and style; of finesse and gallantry – even if it meant losing in order that these principles were adhered to. Sure, West Ham teams have always had their battlers, fighters and strong tacklers but, good or bad, it was never quite the cultural thing in the way that it was for teams that Clough managed.
Clough’s sides were generally comprised of something altogether stronger – a steely determination as opposed to a soft underbelly. The north-south binary illustrative of direct and ‘strong in the tackle’ teams that symbolized the former, contrasted with the more cultured approach of the latter and was generally how football came to be defined and perceived among competing fans throughout the 1980s through to the early 1990s.
This is very much what the “you dirty northern bastards” retort among West Ham fans directed against their northern counterparts was about during those days. In a way, Clough symbolized professional football in the the north as much as Ron Greenwood or John Lyall symbolized the south. It was to be the latter which was to feed into the management style of Billy Bonds. It’s inconceivable to me that Bonds would have paced the one half of the touchline in the way Clough did during the build up to the game at Villa Park.
So having witnessed Clough shake hands and converse with Forest supporters in the build up to the game, I had already sensed that the Forest team would be more up for it than we were. It’s no coincidence that Clough would often publicly denounce the likes of Brooking or Hoddle, even though secretly he would later admit to respecting the former. The point being, it’s inconceivable that the likes of a Brooking or a Hoddle could ever play for a Clough team. The freedom to express was the antithesis of his man management style.
Gary Birtles who was very much a part of Forest’s European Cup winning squad, once described Clough’s style as one that was predicated on fear. Apparently the manager who had won the premier European club trophy with two different teams, would rarely turn up to training sessions, but when he did the players would know about it. The instilling of fear was the approach that kept the players on their toes. Would this approach have worked with Brooking or Hoddle? I don’t think so.
But I digress. Despite my reservations, the excitement among West Ham fans during the build up to the game was palpable. To be honest, the first half of the game was largely a dull affair and for the neutrals watching the game live on the BBC it must of been boring beyond words. Although in the opening 20 minutes we were not in anyway troubled by our top flight opponents, I also don’t remember a single attempt on goal by either team.
Then, out of nothing, after 22 minutes, Forest’s Gary Crosby broke free and Tony Gale had no option other than to bring him down. Referee Keith Hackett immediately brandished a straight red card and the rest they say is history. By today’s standards the decision would regarded as an extremely harsh one and even then the controversy was such that Hackett went on to receive death threats. The decision set a precedent in that it was the first time anybody had been dismissed from the field of play by denying an attacker a goal-scoring opportunity.
Forest came out at the start of the second half firing on all cylinders, and it was hardly a surprise when, after an incisive move, Crosby put them ahead. At just under the hour mark following another slick Forest move, 19 year old Roy Keane slid in to guide the ball past a grasping Miklosko into the corner of the net. By now a dominant Forest were spraying the ball around to feet almost at will.
The inspirational Stuart Pearce fired the ball in off Ludo’s right hand post from six yards out to make it three. Gary Charles slotted the fourth low into the right hand corner to a Forest refrain of “easy, easy” and that was it. Our dream of a Wembley final against Spurs was over. Nevertheless, the chant of "Billy Bonds’ claret and blue army from a hardcore of about 15,000 fans that was repeated almost endlessly from the first minute of the game, continued way beyond the final whistle.
To this day I have never been so proud of being a West Ham fan. As soon as I got home I played the videotape of the match and remember Sir Bobby Charlton at the end of the game saying words to the affect that he had never before experienced such loyalty from a set of fans. The noise could still be heard in the TV studio well after the game had finished.