Getting a Kick out of Eric Cantona (Part II.II): The Kung-fu Aftermath

The day after Eric Cantona’s astonishing Kung-fu kick at Selhurst Park in January 1995 I had to attend an all day BBC senior management seminar on ‘The Digital Revolution’. Roy, the deputy head of Children’s TV, a Manc and life-long United supporter came up in a state of agitation about it all and it was the main topic of conversation off and on all day, especially when it became known that I’d ‘been there’ last night. The press coverage had been massive, with the famous still of the infamous leap on every front page. Again I found myself defending Eric, whilst ‘not condoning’ his actions, a phrase one was to hear endlessly from anyone trying to speak up for Eric amidst the wild excesses of public condemnation. I complained about the BBC coverage the night before, but seeing it later on it just seemed part of a wider moral panic. In the end the whole thing was actually deeply unsettling, in ways people who care nothing for sport could never understand. To me United should always uphold what is best in football, skilful, expressive, artistic, creative play that lifts the spirits, and at his best that’s what Eric the King delivered. But United should also uphold the highest standards of behaviour and sportsmanship, and sadly at his worst Eric simply didn’t. Yet to add to this complex of contradictions, I mainly thought, whatever, he’s a brilliant player, a true Red Devil, he’s United, I’m standing by my man.

That evening I watched yet more massive coverage of the Cantona saga on all channels. I was joined by my 9-year-old daughter Kathie, who’d had a better day at school, fortunately. Now she was fascinated by the Kung-fu kick, especially knowing that I’d ‘been there’ to see it. All her life she’d grown up surrounded by reminders of United past and present and still often slept in my old replica Busby Babes V-neck red shirt (from 1959) and she knew all about my adoration for Eric, to the point where it almost felt like he was part of the family. We discussed the rights and wrongs of it all, including taking into account the fact that a man had charged down from Row 11 to the front to scream foul-mouthed abuse at Eric, hence the reflex act of self-defence, as I saw it. Having to negotiate difficulties of her own at school and having seen the consequences of bullying it was good for us to reflect together on these tricky questions about provocation and retaliation. Plus the pictures, endlessly replayed, were unquestionably compulsive viewing. I promised that I would take her soon to see United and Eric if he returned. Unfortunately that was a big ‘if’.

The following day United announced the suspension of Cantona until the end of the season, in what looked like a pre-emptive cringe. The club hierarchy were later to regret it when the FA then extended the ban to a savage eight months.

The media coverage over the next few days was extraordinary, on radio, multi-channel TV, Ceefax, the burgeoning internet, and of course all the papers, ‘serious’ press no less obsessed than the tabs. It was all so different from Harry Gregg’s time when the media world was so much smaller with only two TV channels, but one still has to shake one’s head at the scale of the reportage and – worse- the pontificating. What helped put this minor scuffle in perspective the following day was watching the deeply moving and distressing live coverage of the 50th Anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death-camp at Auschwitz where 1.5 million people had been systematically put to death on an industrial scale. This was television output at its best, as was the sobering ‘Remember ‘ Season on BBC2. Yet I shouldn’t be too pious about all this as I was still simultaneously hoovering up media coverage of what was happening to Cantona as much as anyone. Media scrambles both lead and follow public interest with a sometimes out-of-control amplifier howl-round effect, and this was one of those occasions. Even when you know it’s happening, it’s hard to step aside.

At the weekend all eyes were on United and how they would cope with a tricky fixture against Wrexham in the 4th Round of the FA Cup without their talisman Cup Final hero. More significantly, how would the Old Trafford crowd respond to the deluge of calls for Cantona to be banned for life? The first part was easy, a crushing 5-2 victory, featuring two goals from ‘Mr. Reliable’, Dennis Irwin. I wasn’t there but I was thrilled to see that United fans were out in force, continually chanting in support of ‘Dieu’, defiantly wearing their No.7 shirts with ‘Cantona’ emblazoned on the back, and many with slogans of support painted on their faces.

At last maybe the tide was turning in his favour. Saner voices were beginning to be heard acknowledging that Eric had genuinely received some very nasty provocation from the man he’d kicked,Matthew Simmons who had barrelled his way to the front to yell ‘fuck off back to France, you French motherfucker’ (he was clearly the master of alliteration, if nothing else). Simmons himself claimed he’d actually only yelled, ‘Off, off, off! Go on Cantona, it’s an early bath for you’, but another witness said that Simmons actually shouted, ‘You fucking cheating French cunt. Fuck off back to France, you motherfucker. French bastard. Wanker…’, which at least has the authentic ring of ‘Sarf’ London.

In the immediate aftermath of the crisis there had been much play on the line that it was a case of ‘The Shit Hitting the Fan’, but as more came to light about the ‘victim’ some could see that maybe it was not quite so clear cut. It had by now emerged that Simmons, a crop-headed, self-employed glazier had some sympathies with the fascistic National Front and the British National Party. He also had a criminal conviction for assault with intent to rob, having hit a young Sri Lankan petrol station cashier with a three-foot spanner and only escaped a murder charge after slipping, missing the intended target (the Sri Lankan’s head) and planting the spanner in to the Sri Lankan’s shoulder. It was clear the national conversation about Eric was far from over.

There was a lighter side to all this, thank goodness. Teacher friends of mine with no interest in football told me that weekend about a joke flying round their school the day after the match,which of course they were eager to pass on:

‘What have Eric Cantona and Camilla Parker Bowles got in common? They both got their leg over at the Palace!’

Meanwhile the News of the World had two big scoops, which I could hardly resist reading on my return to the office where I skimmed through all the weekend papers. They had an interview with Eric’s mother who described his remorse for what had happened and revealed that the final trigger for his action was indeed the use of the word ‘Motherfucker’ which he took as an insult to her. To a man of his Marseilles background such an insult was utterly intolerable, as it might reasonably be to many others amongst us.Then, more remarkably, she revealed that Eric has got a serious speech impediment, which I’d never heard before. A ‘senior psychiatrist’ said that sudden uncontrollable outbursts are typical of someone with his particular problem. At one stage he could not string simple sentences together and even at the age of 22 he was still privately receiving therapy at a special school. Apparently the French ‘Spitting Image’ show had a Cantona puppet (which Eric was known to delight in), complete with stutter.Back in the office I showed the article to a colleague who himself had a speech impediment and he confirmed the basic truth of the claims relating to outbursts of extreme anger in the face of provocation or humiliation. Strangely I have never really seen further comment on whether this is true about Eric, nor has there been much mention of his mother’s claim that Eric was actually full of remorse. Most accounts stress how unapologetic he was, and still is, over Selhurst Park, which appeals to his more macho fans: take no shit, dish it out, never say sorry.

Programme Review and the BBC

Every Wednesday I used to attend the Weekly Television Review Board in a conference room at BBC Television Centre when heads of department and channel controllers gathered to discuss the output over the previous 7 days, chaired by the managing director. Each week we’d be set ‘homework’, two or three programmes for detailed analysis, when anyone could be called on for their views.Some people dreaded it as there were many very competitive characters around, big beasts in the jungle waiting to pounce or jockey for position, but personally I loved it, maybe because mine was a small department and no-one saw me as much of a threat. In some ways I was regarded as a sort of licensed critic, able to comment very honestly on genres way beyond my own patch. Hence I was determined to raise the subject of the Cantona coverage, not just in Sports output, but generally, especially in the News. I knew it would catch everyone’s attention when I said I’d like to comment on the coverage having been at the match and seen the kung-fu kick at close quarters. Initially I got a throaty laugh of slightly nervous approval (what’s he going to say now?) when I conceded up front that ‘the fundamental truth is that what happened was exciting’. Then luckily someone helpfully chipped in that the ‘presence of cameras magnified the impact of the event’, which I agreed with. With such dramatic pictures it was probably inevitable that there would be lots of coverage, but there was a loss of proportion about the significance of what happened. Then I said that on the specific point which everyone kept asserting, as if to justify the over-kill, that Cantona’s action was ‘unprecedented’, I said it was simply untrue. I myself had by chance also witnessed an even worse assault by a United player, some 35 years before. People craned forward at the long cabinet-style table, all ears. I said I had seen Harry Gregg, heroic survivor of the Munich Air Crash, assault a fan at Luton in 1960. In fact Gregg had actually knocked the man out, which was far worse in a way than anything Cantona had done, but the difference was that there were no TV cameras then, so no-one remembers the incident.I reinforced the point that the existence of exciting pictures had warped critical news judgement.

I was listened to respectfully, but I can’t claim it made much difference, although shortly after I got a huge round of applause on a totally different topic, when I demanded a ‘right of reply’ to Monty Python star Terry Jones’s series on ‘The Crusades’, pointing out that I am said to be descended from the legendary Rowland of Oakeley, supposedly knighted by King Richard the Lionheart at the Siege of Acre in 1191. I guess they saw I was now on a crusade of my own – on behalf of King Eric.

I’m very conscious that many United fans think that the BBC has long been biased in its treatment of the club, a view held very strongly by Fergie himself, based on his own grievance regarding reportage of his son’s involvement in transfer activities.The rights and wrongs of that are probably never going to be resolved but the BBC will never back down, that’s for sure, and nor will Fergie who continues his boycott until he gets an apology. Then there is the insistence that Match of the Day is stacked with ex-Liverpool players and staffed by Scousers (as it happens in the mid-90s a key editorial figure was actually a United fan, but we’ll let that pass). In the ’90s there was certainly some evidence that Cantona and others came in for disproportionate criticism from the likes of Jimmy Hill. To make matters worse the then Head of Sport was Brian Barwick, a known Liverpool supporter, later widely suspected of rigging the Sports Review of the Year in 1999 to ensure that United’s Treble Winning side did not become ‘Team of the Year’, as they manifestly should have done. I can’t say whether he was really in a position to do so, but that’s the perception. As it happens I liked the guy and always got on well with him as a fellow football fan.Maybe he felt in some way it would help his (failed) aspirations to become Controller of BBC1 if he courted potential allies beyond the field of sport, but I always found him to be very straight, and untroubled by my pretty-obvious support for United. He used to tell friends of mine that I was a ‘top man’, which was flattering, even coming from a dipper, more so in retrospect when he later became chief executive of the FA. Not that it became much to boast about as things worked out for him there.

On the wider question of any inherent anti-United bias at the BBC ,there’s no simple answer, before or after the Cantona affair. When Sir Matt Busby died in January 1994, Alan Yentob, then controller of BBC1, quickly put out a major tribute programme, which certainly did the great man justice. When I thanked Alan (who’s now creative director at the BBC and best known as presenter of the BBC1 arts series ‘Imagine’) at Programme Review, he surprised me by saying that as he grew up in Manchester he regularly used to go to Old Trafford in the 50s and loved watching the Busby Babes from the Stretford End. In a way the film was his personal tribute. Top Man, as you might say.

Another straw in the wind at the BBC in the ’90s. I remember the then editor of the flagship current affairs series ‘Panorama’ once telling me that she could always tell when United had won over the weekend because if they had the mood in the office come Monday morning would be terrific.Could have been Michael Crick, of course, sprinkling a little of his ‘Betrayal of a Legend’ happydust around.

Hoping for the Double Double

Here is not the place to go through all the ramifications of what happened to Cantona in the next few weeks and months, the club suspension, the FA ban, the court case, the astonishing custodial sentence ( two weeks in prison, virtually unheard of in assault cases like this where little physical damage was actually done, regardless of how spectacular it looked on TV) and the reduced sentence on appeal leading to community service coaching boys and girls to play football, something he loved doing. I’m not even going to mention seagulls and trawlers (were people really so thick they didn’t understand him?) All this has been documented very fully elsewhere, including the way United fans took up the cause, waging a brilliant campaign of support, seeing injustice at every turn in the way Eric was treated, a view I happened to share. But it is worth looking at the way the rest of the season played out.

Right to the very end, despite the loss of the goal-maker, goal-taker king, there was still the very real possibility of United not only delivering the third Premiership running, but also an historic Double Double, something no other team had ever done, including Liverpool in their glory days. In some ways the lessons that Cantona had been slowly passing on to his increasingly awe-struck team-mates were beginning to come to fruition and losing him was not the end of the story. The crisis certainly rocked the club, but somehow the players kept going, not with quite the flair and aura of unstoppability they had with the imperious Eric inspiring them, but nor were they caving in. The campaign went all the way to the wire, with two trophies at stake right to the end.No Eric, but not No Hope.

Next we’ll look at how the rest of season panned out in 1995: Double Double, or Double Disappointment?

Written by Giles Oakley. Read Part I and Part II.I.