Book extract… Cutting the Mustard: How English football was commercialised and the sport was changed for ever | OneFootball

Cutting the Mustard will be launched at Legends, Norwich City FC, NR1 1JE on Wednesday, 6th August. A bar will be available from 630pm with the event commencing at 1900. Copies of Cutting the Mustard will be available for purchase at a special launch price of £12.00 (RRP of £15.00). Robin Ireland will be happy to sign books. Sign up for the event here.

Match Report: Saturday 2 April 1977, k/o 15:00. League Division One, Carrow Road, Norwich City 2 Manchester United 1. Attendance: 24,161.

Norwich City Kevin Keelan, John Ryan, Colin Sullivan, Mel Machin, David Jones, Tony Powell, Jimmy Neighbour, Kevin Reeves, Roger Gibbins, Colin Suggett (Billy Steele), Martin Peters. Manager: John Bond.

Manchester United Alex Stepney, Jimmy Nicholl, Stewart Houston, Sammy McIlroy, Brian Greenhoff, Martin Buchan, Steve Coppell, Jimmy Greenhoff, David McCreary, Lou Macari, Gordon Hill (Chris McGrath). Manager: Tommy Docherty.

Goals Norwich City: Suggett (7), Reeves (33) Manchester United: Powell (o.g., 57)

Going to football matches in the 1970s was seriously scary, unless you were actively looking for a fight that is. As a student at nearby Norwich City College, I remember walking to the ground sometimes covering my scarf to try to avoid trouble. I vividly recall entering Norwich railway station after a match with Aston Villa when one young Norwich fan was sprinting for his life, with blood pouring down his front, with a pack of Villa supporters running after him. I was also in the Barclay Stand when there was a rumour that an away fan was using a Stanley knife to slash at our faces. In December 1975 there was fighting on the pitch between rival supporters at Carrow Road after Norwich had beaten West Ham United 1–0: 34 people were injured and 31 arrested (30 being West Ham supporters).1 This trouble later resulted in barriers and chain link fencing being constructed in the Barclay Stand, and ground modifications such as this, intended to separate fans and reduce the risk of crowd disorder, were a regular feature throughout the 1970s.

But the tension and excitement caused when Manchester United were in town was at another level. The reports from Norwich City vs Manchester United in April 1977 talk of up to 15,000 Reds’ fans invading Carrow Road (it was probably more like 7,000). The BBC televised the match as part of a documentary it was making, and its focus was certainly not on the football being played on the pitch.

Tommy Docherty is well remembered for his time as manager of Manchester United. His sides were entertaining and attacking, and the Doc himself was memorably described as ‘seventies man incarnate’, with his kipper ties and stories of alcohol-fuelled excess.2 But the 1977 team weren’t a patch on the United of the Best-inspired pomp of the Busby years in the 1960s. Docherty had been appointed in December 1972 and oversaw the club’s relegation in 1974, although they roared back into Division One and reached the FA Cup Final in 1976, and did the same in 1977, beating Liverpool 2–1. This proved to be Docherty’s final season. Nevertheless, it was still a strong team which turned out at Carrow Road, featuring the likes of Alex Stepney, Sammy McIlroy, Chris McGrath, the Greenhoff brothers and Lou Macari. They were fifth in Division One, seven points behind the leaders, Ipswich Town, but with three matches in hand. When they visited Carrow Road, United were on a 15-match unbeaten run which had also taken them into the FA Cup semi-finals. Norwich were eight points behind them in 13th place. The Norwich team featured fan favourites Kevin Keelan, Mel Machin, Jimmy Neighbour and Martin Peters.

Norwich were lucky enough to have Peters playing for them between 1975 and 1980; he joined when the club were third in the Second Division and pushing for promotion. Peters did not fancy playing Second Division football, but he liked the set-up at the club and John Bond’s playing style, so he gambled on promotion. As Peters later wrote, Bond had assured him that ‘With you in the team, promotion is practically guaranteed.’3 And the Canaries’ manager was dead right. The World Cup winner’s contribution was immediate. With ten matches left in the season when he arrived in March 1975, Norwich went on to lose only two more, with Peters himself contributing two goals (in 1–0 victories over Nottingham Forest and Portsmouth). Norwich gained promotion after finishing third behind Manchester United and Aston Villa.

Against Manchester United in April 1977 there were first-half goals for Norwich from Colin Suggett (in just the seventh minute) and the young Kevin Reeves (signed from AFC Bournemouth in February 1977 for a reported £50,000), whose goal after 33 minutes involved him rounding Martin Buchan before slotting past Alex Stepney. Despite an own goal by Tony Powell in the 57th minute, when the defender, under pressure from Stewart Houston, looped a header over Kevin Keelan, City held on to claim the two points.

But the match is not remembered for the score but for what happened after it had finished. The mufcinfo website sums this up succinctly: ‘Utd. fans tear at the Barclay stand throwing missiles & using planks as weapons. An 18-year-old Utd fan from Bradford climbs on the stand before falling 40 feet onto the concrete below. He was helped by St John Ambulance before he was attacked by the home fans.’4 There is a YouTube clip of the game entitled ‘Hooligans’. It is two minutes forty-five seconds long but features no football action at all. The scene is set by the commentator at the beginning: ‘The match ends and to the delight of Norwich and to the horror of the police, Manchester United has lost for the first time in 15 games. The duel on the field may be over but as far as some of the visitors are concerned, the battle has only just begun.’ Cue grainy images of young men leaving the stand, kicking at fences and running down steps. To chants of ‘United’, two young men are seen on the roof of a stand whilst missiles are being thrown at the helmeted police. In turn the police shove at the departing fans whilst emergency vehicle sirens can be heard in the distance. ‘It’s the worst riot ever seen in Norwich. With the Barclay Stand walls wrecked and the perimeter fences on fire, the Manchester United supporters are herded back to their trains and coaches.’5

A considerable number of middle-aged men have delighted in publishing books about their time in the various football ‘squads’ and gangs of the 1970s and 80s. I guess there is always a market for books about violence and toxic masculinity. Richard Kurt and Chris Nickeas’ account of following Manchester United in the 1970s is certainly more entertaining than most. They describe the damage caused to Carrow Road and captured so vividly on the BBC’s cameras as a ‘nail in the coffin of the Red Army’,6 in that it was the riot after the Norwich game that led to the police, government and clubs getting their act together to challenge the disorder. ‘Steve from Huddersfield’ is quoted by Kurt and Nickeas describing the scene after the final whistle as ‘like a film set scene, after a victorious army has sacked a small town’.7 You know what, for a lad now attending the University of East Anglia in the ‘fine city’, it was simply terrifying.

The Manchester United manager’s response was as blunt as ever after the game. When asked what he’d like to see done to football hooligans, Tommy Docherty said, ‘I’d like to try the birch, and take it from there, but the authorities are afraid to do this.’8

Notes 1 James Woodrow (as compiled for the Norwich City Football Club), Norwich City Football Club: The Archive (Severn, 2022), vol. II, 6 December 1975. 2 Richard Kurt and Chris Nickeas, The Red Army Years: Manchester United in the 1970s (Headline, 1997), p. 4. 3 Martin Peters, The Ghost of ’66: The Autobiography (Orion Books, 2006), p. 246. 4 Available at: https://www.mufcinfo.com/manupag/match_data/match_sql.php?my_match_date=1977-04-02 (accessed 14 May 2025). 5 Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ytRC9rnnwI (accessed 14 May 2025). 6 Kurt and Nickeas, The Red Army Years, p. 165. 7 Ibid., p. 166. 8 Jon Spurling, Get It On: How the ‘70s Rocked Football (Biteback Publishing, 2022), p. 304.