I Was There…Rapid Vienna (Old Trafford)

When did you decide to attend the game?
Being just a youngster at the time the decision was really made for me. Living in England we were delighted the match was in Manchester. I lived on an estate predominantly populated by exiled Scots who had moved down in the late 1960s to work in the local pits. We had the biggest Rangers Supporters Club outside of Scotland on our doorstep and the Huns far outnumbered the good guys. But there was still a fair few families who travelled up the road fairly regularly for Celtic games and we had our own wee CSC. The season before we had got a coach up for the UEFA Cup tie at Nottingham so as soon as Old Trafford was announced as the venue I was hopeful we would be going. Much to my delight the bus was organised, tickets arranged and we were all set.

What was the build up like to the match?
There was a lot of anger at how things had panned out. UEFA’s decision was inexplicable and not without the whiff of corruption. The whole debacle was well covered by the media. Rapid’s appeal had become quite a saga and there was general disbelief at UEFA’s final decision. Obviously there is no way you can defend the idiot who threw the bottle but the sympathy was mostly with Celtic. Rapid were widely vilified in the press and Celtic went into the match with a lot of goodwill. With everyone fired up by a sense of injustice I think most pundits anticipated the Hoops going through.
Even down here in England it was a big sports story and a talking point. At school I remember having to frequently endure the ‘joke’ – Who is the Celtic fans’ favourite singer? Chuck-a Can. Given that it was a bottle that was thrown the joke doesn’t really work but it was wasted on me anyway because at the time, as a football obsessed 10-year-old, I had no idea who Chaka Khan was!

It’s the day of the game. What are your memories of the journey to Manchester?
I had two relatives around my age who were also going to the match and the big bonus for us was that we were taken out of school for the day!
I don’t recall much about the actual journey but I can still vividly remember arriving in Manchester. From what I can recall it was a typical dark and damp December evening. The coach had parked in this dimly-lit backstreet. Looking back the whole area was like some caricature of an inner city during those Thatcher years. There were these rundown terraced streets, some houses lived in, some demolished, a lot of wasteland with rubble and weeds and there were empty shops and factories with faded bill posters on their windows and walls.
We seemed to then come onto a busy main road. There was plenty of police about and I remember one guy from our coach getting a stern shove for urinating under a billboard with a poster of Jimmy Saville on it.
There was just a stream of Celtic fans now. I couldn’t see Old Trafford but I knew we were near the ground by the increased number of burger vans and the smell of fried onions!
You could sense even then that the Celtic support were up for this – and not necessarily in a good way. I had been to plenty of games, including Old Firm matches, but already this one just felt very different.
There was plenty of singing and shouting, but that typical Celtic humour, the warmth, wasn’t as obvious as it had been in the past. My experience of past Celtic games was complete strangers asking “How’s it going wee man?” and getting hats and scarves draped round me. Not this time though. The pushing and jostling as we made our way closer to the ground seemed pretty scary. I remember my dad taking a tight grip of the hood of my coat so not to lose me. In hindsight this wasn’t just a football crowd, it was a baying mob thirsty for justice.

Can you describe the scene when you finally reached Old Trafford?
We seemed to get to the turnstile through some sort of tunnel running the length to the stand. Inside it was certainly modern for the time but it wasn’t the sterile corporate arena it is now, it was an excellent traditional ground to watch football. The Stretford End was all terracing apart from a section of seats right at the back and the roof was slightly lower than the other parts of the ground, which also had seats at the rear and terraces at the front. We had tickets for the terracing along the front of the main stand, close to the corner with the Stretford End, where the players tunnel is now. The tunnel in those days was in the middle of the stand between the dug outs. We quickly made our way down to the front, right up against the fence, and in line with the edge of the area. The players were out warming up. I remember shouting ‘Cheats, Cheats. Cheats’ at the Rapid players. Then we started spotting the Celtic players. “There’s Danny McGrain”, “There’s Paul McStay” “There’s Tommy Burns”. I guess if you were going to Parkhead on a regular basis seeing those guys would have been no big deal but it was pretty exciting stuff for us young anglo-based Tims who made only a few games a season!

After five weeks the waiting is over. How are you feeling and what do you remember about the opening minutes of the match?
I was feeling very confident and was just anxious for us to get going. I was still young enough to believe almost everything I heard and thought we would slaughter them. All day I had listened to people on the coach and on the radio say how fired up Celtic would be and how there was no way they would let Rapid get away with this. As far as I was concerned it was going to be a hammering.
We kicked off defending the Stretford End. The noise was unreal. An eardrum bursting mix of cheers, catcalls and whistles. I can’t remember much about the opening exchanges but I can certainly recall thinking pretty quickly that this wasn’t going to be the stroll by youthful naivety had let me believe.

Just 15 minutes into the games and Celtic were dealt a devasting blow. Can you describe the moment Rapid scored?
We were right up at the front holding on to the fence. The view was partly blocked by a copper but Celtic were on the attack down the far end and had swarmed forward. I remember Roy Aitken shooting and then this loud, anguished groan from the crowd as the ball returned off the woodwork.
Within seconds Rapid had raced to the other end of the field. There didn’t seem to be any Celtic player back in their own half. The Vienna forward raced through and slotted the ball past Bonner. The cheats celebrated wildly. A horrible, horrible moment.

How did the team and fans react to this setback?
In a flash that goal killed the tie. From the fans viewpoint all the hope was gone and there was now just anger left. The fact the goal came from Aitken’s shot hitting their post just added to the cruelty of the moment. When the goal was scored I think there was an initial hush which quickly turned into a much vocalised anger.
The players went through the motions but I think they were just over-whelmed by the whole occasion. It was an occasion for cool heads but given everything that had happened you could almost forgive them if they had lost it once Rapid had scored. But from what I can remember it was the opposite and on the night they just seemed to freeze. It, this demand for justice, was too much for them. Rapid were no mugs though, they played the Old Trafford match perfectly.

The second-half would not be remembered for the football but rather for the now infamous incident in which a so-called Celtic supporter attacked the Rapid keeper. What had the atmosphere been like up to that point?
It was exceptionally hostile. There was undoubtedly a real desire for vengeance among the Celtic support. The Rapid goal just added to people’s frustration and of course the drink had been flowing for most of the day. I would say it was the most angry I have ever seen a Celtic support. We were perhaps too concerned about venting our anger at Rapid rather than just supporting Celtic.
I also remember there being loads of Mancs in the crowd and on that same night United were up at Tannadice playing Dundee United in the UEFA Cup. There was a small electronic scoreboard which kept flashing score updates from that game and loud cheers greeted every United goal (I think they won 3-2). That gave the whole thing a slightly surreal edge.
Also, people think the guy who attacked the goalkeeper was the first Celtic fan to invade the field that night but he wasn’t. It was actually a young relation of mine, Sean. Sean had (has) a notoriously weak bladder and on the way up to Manchester, after a couple of cans of cola, his toilet needs caused the coach to stop just 15 minutes into the journey.
Anyway me and Sean, who would have been 12 at the time, were down the front of the stand and not long after Rapid scored he starts moaning again about needing to go to the toilet. We’re packed in tight down the front and the chances of him fighting his way back to the toilet block and back to the same spot – and staying dry – are pretty slim. So he manages to grab the attention of a trackside policeman. Just as I’m thinking ‘you’re wasting your time there’ the copper has opened the gate and Sean’s on the side of the pitch. The next thing I know he’s jogging off along the touchline towards the dug outs and that’s where I lose sight of him. About five minutes later I see him sprinting along the touchline back to the gate and the copper lets him back in. He had been sent to a copper in front of the dugout area and allowed to use toilets in the tunnel area where he had walked right past Davie Hay and the Celtic subs. He insists to this day that the Rapid bench thought he was a hooligan and tried to get him arrested.
I was pretty jealous of Sean getting so close to the action and at the Scottish Cup final later that season I tried the same tactic. I had this vision of me waving at Davie Hay and the Bhoys as I jogged past the dugout on my way to the Hampden loo. However, Strathclyde’s finest weren’t quite as accommodating as their Manchester counterparts and my desperate pleas to use the toilet were met with an unsympathetic “You should’ve got your mammy to bring a spare nappy for you”!

What do you remember about the attack on the goalkeeper?
I didn’t see the guy come on to the pitch as I was following play but we were ideally placed to see what happened once he reached the keeper.
I think he came on from the section of the Stretford End close to the main stand side corner flag. There was this initial roar as he got to the keeper and I remember the shoving and swaying as those around us jostled for a view of the incident. The Celtic fan seemed to swing his legs at the keeper – who was holding him off at arms length. Two policeman then got there and they were joined by a third a few seconds later. They were in the back of the goals, the nets were pretty shallow, trying to pull this idiot off the keeper. I remember one guy next us was shouting “kill the cheating bastard” but generally most were too stunned to say anything. The three coppers – wearing these big long black coats and your traditional bobbies helmet – then dragged the guy away. I’ve no idea how long the incident lasted but at the time it seemed to go on for ages. In reality it was probably seconds. As the guy got dragged away there were a few people cheering him but most people couldn’t believe what they had just witnessed. My Dad was a few rows back from us and up to that point had been happy for us to be within viewing distance of him but after the attack on the keeper he came down and took us to the back of the terracing, close to the exit. I guess he feared what might happen next and if there was to be serious trouble the last place you wanted to be was down the front and against the fence.

What do you remember about the rest of the match?
The result was now a total irrelevance. Thanks to the action of that nutter there was no way we would be in the next round – irrespective of the score. The Celtic players knew this and the game petered out. In fairness though even before the attack on the keeper we never did look like scoring and Rapid were comfortable winners.
Us younger ones were still caught up in the drama of the attack. The implications of what had happened went over our heads. We just joked about kicking the cheats in the balls. My dad was talking to a couple of old boys at the back of the stand and they were all disgusted. They seemed pretty distraught by the whole thing, all three of them standing their shaking their heads. Unlike me they knew the harm this had done to Celtic.

After the final whistle there was of course a second attack when another ‘supporter’ evaded the police and managed to kick a Rapid player as he made his way down the tunnel. What do you remember about that incident?
To be honest we weren’t even aware of it until the next morning. As soon as the final whistle had went we headed out of the ground. Nobody on the coach could be bothered with the radio so the first we knew of the attack in the tunnel was the following morning.
If I remember rightly both of those arrested for the attacks were English – or at least were living in England. I’m not denying they were genuine Celtic fans but I doubt they were regular match goers at that time. I’ve no idea of what became of them but it sad what they did to the reputation of our club.

What was the journey home like?
The only noteworthy incident was an attack on this Ice Cream Van outside the ground. There was an argument between the guy in the van and someone accusing him of short-changing him. The next thing there is about 10 people around the van, rocking it violently. The guy inside is being thrown all over the place and he tries to stop the rocking by throwing out ice lollies and cans of pop. It’s 10pm in mid-December and you have these grown men scrambling about the floor picking up these ice lollies. It was a crazy scene.
The coach journey was very quiet thanks to a mixture of post-booze fatigue and the events of the night. There was no radio, no singing, nothing. There were a couple of stragglers who almost missed the bus but we came across them by accident at a set of traffic lights. Once everyone was on board they just seemed to get their heads down. It was all pretty sombre. I would usually have a read of the match programme but on that night I couldn’t face it. I think by then even I had realised that this was a very bad night for Celtic.