Roger Haigh

I spent my first seven years living in Rusholme. We lived in a flat over the Nat West Bank (probably the District Bank in those days), about 50 yards from the Clarence on Wilmslow Road.

Match days were memorable for the volume of Traffic at the junction of Great Western St and Wilmslow Road. Most people had to use public transport, so Wilmslow Road was a procession of buses and coaches.

We were close enough to the ground to hear the crowd noise. Football sounded very exciting.

My parents were both from the Huddersfield area, Dad was a lapsed Town fan, but I never wanted to watch anyone but City.

My first visit to Maine Road was just after my eighth birthday. It was against Spurs at the start of the 56-57 season. City had won the Cup the previous season so there was a good turnout for the first match of the new season. The result was a 2-2 draw.

When I was in my last year at Junior school both City and the Rags used to give away tickets for reserve team matches, so every fortnight my friends and I crossed Manchester to visit the Academy.

Once a Blue, always a Blue!

Memories

Come the 1959/60 season I convinced my parents that I was old enough to attend first team matches. City had about five years, each one like the present (94/95) season. Relegation was always a threat, but eventually the escape attempt failed and the unthinkable happened.

There weren't a lot of high spots in those days. The 6-2 victory over the Spurs double winning side was one to remember. City had a string of big money signings but money definitely didn't buy success. Denis Law cost over £50,000 and stopped for a year before defecting to Torino and subsequently the swamp. Gerry Baker was signed on the back of scoring ten goals in a Scottish Cup game against a team of part timers - his brother Joe went to Turin with Law. Bobby Kennedy cost £45K (read £5M on todays values). Peter Dobing and Alex Harley were very successful, but moved on quickly. Harley scored loads of goals, was sold for three times what he cost, to Birmingham, and was dead within a few years. He was equivalent to Paul Stewart in terms of fleeting success followed by desperate failure, and Tommy Caton in terms of his untimely death. Dobing was one of the most stylish players to grace Maine Road.

The "Sack Mac" brigade were delighted when Les MacDowall was sacked at the end of the 62-63 season, but they were unimpressed with the unimaginative promotion of George Poyser from assistant manager. The "Swales Out" campaign wasn't the first time City fans had protested in large numbers.

The relegation season (62-63) started badly and got worse. City lost 1-8 at Wolves in the first match. I remember being at a reserve game and watching in horror as the score shown on the old scoreboard continued to rise. Bert Trautmann was sent off for kicking the ball at the referee in the home game against West Ham when City lost 1-6. Colin Barlow graced the Academy in those days - the David White of the sixties, not intended as a compliment. In previous seasons City had called up Dave Ewing at the end of the season to stave off relegation. Dave had retired at the end of the previous season and he was sorely missed. This season saw one of the most bitter derby matches ever. With only two matches left and both teams at the bottom of the table, City had to win, a draw was OK for the Rags. Alex Harley scored for City and the Rags equalised from one of the most dubious penalties ever, almost as bad as the one they got against Southampton this (94/ 95) season. The ball was half way up the scoreboard end, Law(?) was kicking shit out of Harry Dowd who grabbed his leg in self defence. Not a welcome decision! 52,424 watched that one and there were a lot of people locked out. Another 1-6 against West Ham sealed our fate in the last match of the season. City finished with 31 points, the Rags had 34.

I followed the Blues through the bad years in the second division. I'm probably the only person who doesn't claim to have been in the crowd for the Swindon match (8,015). The only good memories are the 19 goals in three home matches at the end of 1963 and Derek Kevan's partnership with Jimmy Murray which produced loads of goals before Murray's injury. A particularly memorable match was the 5-2 win at Preston with Kevan scoring a hat trick. Alec Dawson played for Preston in that match, he was a former Rag who once punched a goal against City in a Derby match. Anyone else remember the "Who's the bastard with the big fat arse / Dawson / Dawson" to the tune of Camptown Races?? He was the Mark Hughes of the day, even down to the oversized behind.

Come 1965 Poyser had gone and after some delay (sounds familiar) Joe Mercer and Malcolm Alison were appointed. Joe was recovering from heart trouble (and the sack(?) following the relegation of Aston Villa and Sheffield United), Malcolm was described as professional gambler. He had managed Plymouth after TB and the removal of a lung had ended his playing career. What a choice! The appointment was not the most popular ever made and a dismal friendly against Dundee didn't bode well for the future. I've not seen many goals where the ball has hit both posts before going in, it happened against Dundee.

City's most successful seasons followed. Unfortunately the need to supplement pocket money with a part time job, and subsequently the lure of the local amateur league meant that I didn't get to Maine Road as often as I would have liked. Local soccer started in September and finished before Easter so I got to games at the start and end of the season. There were many occasions when an unfit pitch (ours was like a swamp even in Summer) meant a mad dash to the Academy. One such game was the "Ballet on Ice" game against Spurs, although I nearly missed that having had a close encounter with a very large truck on an icy Claremont Road. 1952 Morris Minors were worse than the Tottenham team when it came to handling slippery conditions.

At the start of the 67-68 season I was living in Chadderton, between Oldham and Manchester. Among my mates were a number of Oldham Rugby League fans so I signed up for the annual trip to the RL Cup Final, which coincided with what appeared then to be an insignificant match at Newcastle. As the season unfolded it became obvious that the Newcastle match might be a major point in City's history. I couldn't unload my ticket for the RL Final, so as most of the blue half of Manchester headed north to Tyneside, I headed south for Wembley. I didn't even get to see the highlights of the Newcastle match as the game was shown on ITV on the Sunday afternoon when we were in transit home after celebrating City's triumph in Southend.

I saw enough games to collect tokens for Cup Final tickets for the matches against Leicester and West Brom. There was also a trip to Vienna for the Gornik match. The match in Vienna was played in the worst rain I'd ever had the misfortune to be in. I think the stadium was completely open, certainly the side where we sat was uncovered.

There was the prospect of another League Championship in 71-72 but two events conspired to prevent it. The first was the arrival of Rodney Marsh, which has been often blamed for City's eventual fourth place. It certainly didn't help as Allison swapped players in and out to accommodate his new signing, silly points were dropped at Coventry and Ipswich as City lost three and drew two of the last nine games. The match which lost the title was on April 1st (typical timing!) against Stoke at Maine Road. Joe Corrigan was injured and missed seven games, and his replacement Ronnie Healey played abysmally in a 1-2 defeat. City played brilliantly against Derby in the last game of the season and were top of the table after the final Saturday, but Liverpool and Derby had to play each other in the final match and one of them had to get enough points to overtake City. The final table had Derby with 58 points, Leeds, Liverpool and City had 57.

Come 1973 I was off to Oz so it was support from long range. Christmas presents were Rothman's Annuals, Birthdays coincided with the start of the season so a subscription to the football Pink were the order of the day. I saw a lot of City on TV as all the Oz channels picked up UK football from different channels so the goals, at least, were on TV. City had Wembley appearances against Wolves and Newcastle which were only shown in highlight form on Oz TV.

In 1979 I was back in the UK for a holiday. Having checked the fixture list, it looked as if European football would be on the agenda, but defeat against Borussia Monchengladbach meant otherwise. That was City's last European venture and the Anglo-Italian Trophy has been the European competition we've been closest to recently.

While in England I got to as many matches as possible. I saw the last match of the season, 2-3 against Villa. City were well in control until half time when Dave Watson went off injured. Kaziu Deyna scored both City's goals and looked World class. Sadly this was the exception rather than the rule. This was Colin Bell's last match. It turned out to be the last match for many, including Dave Watson and Mike Channon, as Malcolm Allison dismembered an aging team and brought in such players as Mick Robinson (£765K), Steve MacKenzie (£250K for a player who hadn't played first team football), Stuart Lee, Bobby Shinton, Kevin Reeves and Barry Silkman. Gary Owen and Peter Barnes were given long contracts in 1978, but sold in 1979 to finance Alison's disastrous spending spree (And of cource £1.4M Steve Daley... [Svenn]). Some would argue that the Club has never properly recovered from Allison's excesses in the transfer market.

City made their first ventures into the European market round that time. Kaziu Deyna exuded class but the pace and aggression of the English game was a problem for him. For the start of the 1979-80 season we had another foreigner in Dragoslav Stepanovic, a Yugoslavian signed from a German team. He didn't speak English so he was an obvious choice to captain the team.

The Spurs Cup Finals were memorable but there wasn't much to cheer other than that. Relegation following the Luton game was hard to take, and the following promotion was marred by the Bradford fire disaster, which grabbed most of the press coverage dedicated to football that weekend.

In mid 1985 I had a brainstorm and returned to the UK. It certainly wasn't because of City's startling form. I arrived back in time to see City beat Hull in the second leg of the Full Members Cup. Money was still tight at Maine Road and the team was crap. Gordon Davies, Mark Lillis and Trevor Christie were hardly names to strike fear in the hearts of opposing defences.

The success of the Youth team in the mid eighties held promise for the future but too many were drafted into a poor first team and none fulfilled their potential. Steve Redmond went downhill from the age of nineteen, David White did a fair impersonation of the character in the Wizard of Oz which had no brain. Brightwell and Lake have had progress interrupted by injury, while Andy Hinchliffe upset HK and was shunted of to Goodison where he did very little until Joe Royle started to play him in midfield. Others who flattered to deceive were Ian Scott, Paul Moulden who left amid rumours concerning Mel Machin's daughter, and Andy Thackeray who went to Rochdale and is still there.

Since then there's been promotion at Bradford, the five-one and not much else to celebrate. An exception is the 10-1 against Huddersfield. As I said earlier my parents were both form the Huddersfield area and all my relatives still live there. My cousin was the only person on the Kippax that day who wasn't over the proverbial moon when David White scored his third, and City's tenth goal. It was strange game. City could have been three down before they started to play.

Since then we've suffered Mel Machin, Kendall and his Evertonian cronies (remember Wayne Clarke and co?), Ellis and Reid with Route One football, and Brian H's eccentricities. We're now (June 95) looking for the new Messiah to lead us out of the shadows.

Players to remember:

Dave Ewing, Bill Leivers, George Heslop, Tommy Booth and Dave Watson.

It's pure coincidence that I was a centre half! Dave Ewing could beat two players before putting the ball on the Kippax roof. Bill Leivers could put the ball and the two opponents on the roof. He was never the same player after he got a pair of contact lenses, I guess he could see the ball then.

Bert Trautmann, Joe Corrigan and TC are three of the finest goalkeepers to ever play football. Corrigan was a product of a coaching regime which changed him from one of football's sick jokes into an England international.

From the dismal sixties I recall Peter Dobing, Alex Harley, Derek Kevan, Matt Gray and Ken Barnes.

From the Glory Years there's a whole team of stars. Bell, Lee and Summerbee are the names on the video, but Mick Doyle and Alan Oakes were the engine room of the team. Both had come through the junior teams at Maine Road and both had suffered badly at the hands off the boo-boys when they first made the senior team. Good to see class prevailing over stupidity.

The players I remember from recent years are mainly for the wrong reasons. We saw Paul Stewart shine for half a season before he convinced himself he was bigger than the rest of the team. At least the money we got for him bought the team which won promotion last time round. There was the Everton contingent - Wayne Clarke, Adrian Heath, Alan Harper et al. We saw Michael Hughes, described as the best player from Northern Ireland since the bearded alcoholic from the swamp, bollocked by Sam Ellis for trying to pass the ball, and subsequently sold for a pittance because of the European transfer arbitration system. He shouldn't have wanted to leave Maine Road. Ian Bishop was another to remember - hero of many, me excluded! and swapped (with Tricky Trev) for another Evertonian. I thought Bishop played one good game for City - the 5-1, but he was always missing for long spells and still plays the same way at Upton Park. Andy Dibble has made many headlines over the years - concentrating on the football side there's his brilliance against Villa in the match when Paul Lake was first injured, and a cracking performance at the swamp in the 1-1 in 1990(?). There's the other side of his character as displayed at Notts F (Gary Crosby), the Cup game at Newcastle and the 0-3 against the Rags. His activities off the field (and under the table) will also be remembered!

Recent years have also been memorable for the injury epidemics which have seen more hamstring injuries in two years than in the previous twenty. Knee injuries have been prevalent recently. There's also the suspicion that the training methods applicable to sixties Olympians are not the best for nineties footballers.

On the positive side there's Uwe Rosler, Paul Walsh and Peter Beagrie

- all Horton signings (allegedly!). There's the undoubted, but often unseen ability of Phelan and Curle. There are also some good young prospects in Flitcroft, Lomas, Edghill, Thomas and Foster. I suppose Nicky Summerbee fits in that category too.

The 94-95 season has come and gone. City are still in the Premiership and the managership has been advertised. Hopefully the next few weeks will see a latter day Hercules clean out football's equivalent of the Augean Stables.