Getting a Kick out of Eric Cantona (Part II.III): Memories of Chasing the Double Double in ’95

Let’s now jump forward from Crystal Palace and the Kung-fu nightmare at Selhurst Park in January 1995 to Crystal Palace at Villa Park on Sunday 9th April. Old antagonisms from the league encounter had hardly had time to subside when United were to face Palace again, this time on neutral turf in the FA Cup Semi Final which United had reached by beating Sheffield United, Wrexham, Leeds (yes!) and QPR, while still keeping pace with Blackburn all the way at the top of the Premiership. There was still the very real possibility of winning a third Premiership title on the trot and a League & Cup Double for the second year running. Even without the suspended Eric Cantona it was all to play for.

Oh no, not Palace again

Given what happened before, I’d have preferred different opponents than Palace, but a semi’s a semi. What’s more, by the Spring,I was even more desperate to forget the tensions of life in the BBC, as I was going through the very painful process of ‘downsizing’ my department as so-called ‘efficiency savings’ were biting across the whole corporation, regardless of how well you managed things and however efficient you already were and however good your programmes. I knew I’d be losing friends over this, which caused me sleepless nights, and I also knew this was an ever-tightening process which would never end, as it still doesn’t today, regardless of the impact on people’s lives or the quality of programmes. Thank God for football as an escape from all that. No tensions there.

My Palace pal Nick had once again done the business and this time it would be me in the press box, something I’d never done before. I took a big BBC notebook, to look the part. I wondered about wearing a trilby with a card saying ‘Press’ but knew Nick wouldn’t be terribly amused so I restrained myself.

Villa Park has long been a happy hunting ground for United, a place steeped in tradition, venue of many an epic cup-tie, and it’s a terrific stadium, fronted by a dignified red-brick entrance like a resplendant Victorian, er, villa, with club museum and lounges within. The corridors leading up to the press box were lined with fading old team-photos and action shots, including annoying reminders that for all their reputation as under-achievers, Villa had actually won the European Cup far more recently than United. I had a seat just in front of the radio commentary position, but mercifully, there was no sign of Alan Green, whose relentless hostility to United does nothing to dispel the belief in an anti-United bias at the BBC. Much more pleasing was seeing Frank Stapleton, a highly intelligent centre-forward at Old Trafford in the ’80s, hero of the ’85 FA Cup triumph against Everton when he dropped back to centre-half after Kevin Moran got sent off. He can seem a bit grumpy, but I like his seriousness about football. And United.

The semi was a typically fraught affair, with United below their best, but superior nonetheless, and the tension never let up. A young kid called David Beckham was playing out wide on the right. Not my first glimpse of him, but I watched him closely, always keen to see youngsters prosper. He looked too slow and one-paced for a winger and I was disappointed, but I thought he might do better more centrally. Only goes to show.

Palace scored first, but the unflappable Dennis Irwin equalised with the best single moment of the match, a fulminating free-kick from outside the box which arced into the top corner like a tracer shell. I wonder if the boy David was taking note. Extra time. Palace again in the lead, United again levelled, through another defender, Gary Pallister with a header. So, 2-2, a replay on Wednesday .Yet more agony with Palace. Neither side bring out the best in each other, sadly. But there was worse to come.

Nick was ‘in a panic’ to get home and he shot up over pavements or snaked through barely existing gaps in the traffic as the crowds flooded away from Villa Park. He screamed abuse at some United fans irritated by his careering through, wrongly accusing them of not being from Manchester (blithely ignoring the fact that I’m not either). Home in time to see the highlights, such as they were. Then came the bad news. It was reported that – tragically – a Palace fan had been killed in an incident outside a pub before kick-off. United fans were alleged to have launched an attack on a coach-load of Palace supporters, triggered by taunts over Cantona, with ‘Ooh Ah’ chants escalating into violence with bricks, bottles and beer glasses flying. Who was at fault was hard to say, but it was unquestionably appalling,however you look at it and real bitterness still exists over what happened. Football should be a way of ritualising violence or sublimating it into sporting prowess, not triggering real brutality beyond the pitch, with threats to human life. That truth lies uncomfortably at the heart of the Cantona affair, where little real injury was done in the first instance, back in January, but the passions aroused on all sides had now exploded into a man’s death. What made Paul Nixon’s death even sadder was that the actual match had been played in a fairly sporting spirit, with none of the poisonous atmosphere that curdled the kung-fu match. That changed for the replay.

Round 3: The Replay

The semi-final replay was on the following Wednesday, only three days after Nixon’s death. There had been attempts to postpone the match out of respect, but on police and FA advice it was decided to go ahead rather than let any desire for vengeance ferment even longer.Nevertheless Palace went so far as to advise their own fans not to attend and there was a widespread boycott, which added to my sense of the times being generally out-of-joint. Football is meant to be fun,its rivalries should be about banter and piss-taking, not kicking the shit out of people.

Nick was one of the 2000-or-so who ignored the club’s advice and he got me a ticket easily enough. He then drove me up to Birmingham once more in typically cavalier fashion in bright Spring sunshine. As it happens we were hit by another car, but it wasn’t his fault as confirmed by a cop who happened to see the whole thing. Still, it hardly steadied the nerves. We parked near the stadium and walked through the local park where I could see a long row of damp triangles on the graffiti-ridden brick wall. Fans had been standing shoulder-to-shoulder in traditional solidarity, only to mark their territory with copious amounts of lager-fuelled piss.

There was a strange muted atmosphere in the ground. The Palace boycott left huge gaps everywhere except at the Holte End to my right. I was in the main stand, just below the Press Box and I pondered, who were the real Palace fans, those who came or those who stayed away? Before kick-off both managers appealed for calm, peace and reconciliation and there was a respectful one-minute’s silence. Shamefully, I could hear a couple of idiots having to be shushed in the United end.The game not surprisingly lacked the passion and intensity of the Sunday encounter but United looked better in their more familiar red strip which somehow made them look bigger, bolder and more enterprising. It was still not a vintage display but it was nevertheless no surprise when Steve Bruce, back from suspension, powered us ahead with a bullet header direct from a corner after half an hour, followed just before the interval by a second from Pallister, another powerful header.

Setting aside my prevailing sense of doom about this season I joined a downcast Nick at half-time in the press room where I tasted the somewhat rubbery sandwiches (no prawns in sight) and enjoyed the Sky TV replays of the goals, tactfully not rising to Nick’s whinges. I was delighted to see an old hero of mine looking very cheerful, Paddy Crerand, the craggy veteran of the Sixties Glory Days, one of the finest passers of the ball I’ve ever seen. He’d been to the forefront in defending Eric and I was tempted to ask for his autograph, but Nick frowningly deterred me, saying it was ‘against protocol’ in the press room. I knew Paddy wouldn’t have given a stuff about protocol, but I didn’t want to blow my cover as an interloper either so I desisted. For the record I was representing ‘Soccer Digest’. You might not have heard of it either.

All United had to do in the second half to reach a record 13th FA Cup FInal was keep their discipline. Even an under-par performance like this should secure that. But the recent tradition of this fixture ensured that it wasn’t going to be that simple. Palace had been getting more and more niggly and reckless in their tackling (those like me with longer memories could recall that it had been the same in the 1990 FA Cup Replay when Palace ‘put themselves about a bit’). Soon three players had been booked, two from United, and then Gareth (‘No More Mr NIce-Guy’) Southgate crashed through Roy Keane in a late, wild, sliding tackle close to the touchline on the far side. In a moment of madness Keane retaliated, violently and stupidly stamping on him. Bedlam – Palace players roared in, one seizing Keane by the throat, punches flying. So much for ‘peace and reconciliation’. The ref coldly sent Keane off then one of the Palace ruckers too. Now it was 10-a-side, and with a much nastier edge all round, but United eased home, 2-0. If the game began in a flat atmosphere now I felt utterly deflated, despite reaching another FA Cup Final. It was that sort of season. Later I was to hear that Alan Green had called Keano ‘a lout’ on FiveLive. I couldn’t even rouse myself to indignation about that, although if I ever met him at a BBC seminar on the digital future I might have given him a one- digit gesture.

Afterwards Nick, long reconciled to defeat, asked me if I was elated, the normal response to reaching a Cup Final, but sadly I was not. In this season of all seasons to see yet another unseemly brawl on the pitch, to see yet another player sent off, just left me shaking my head with disbelief. We travelled home in subdued mood, Nick switching his attention now to the threat of relegation for Palace, this being the year four teams would drop as the Premiership shrank from 42 to 38 teams.In fact Palace did go down, and I could hardly weep over that after this traumatic season.

As we drove back to London I tried to raise my spirits with the thought that we still had a very real chance of winning that historic Double Double.Once the disconsolate Nick had dropped me off I began to feel the tingle. Maybe we really could do it, even sans Cantona.

This way the ticket office – in the toilet

For the Premiership it all came down to the final game of the season at West Ham on Sunday 14th May, 1995. United had had a pretty good run-in since the semis, winning four and drawing one, meaning that if Blackburn lost or drew to Liverpool away at Anfield and United won at Upton Park, we would take the title for the third year running. That would in turn set up the possibility of doing the League and FA Cup Double for the second year in succession at Wembley the following week. However, without Cantona we had been mis-firing too often, not sealing victories in normally winnable matches. There were hopes that Andy Cole was finding his feet at last , scoring 5 goals in the previous 5 league matches, and some more youngsters were beginning to make their mark, including Beckham (despite being dropped for the cup replay) and Paul Scholes who’d recently got a winner against Coventry. Nicky Butt was already quite a regular and Gary Neville was probably at the front of the queue amongst the famous ‘kids’ at this point, holding down the right-back position he was to make his own for at least the next decade and beyond.But the inescapable truth was that United missed Cantona, still deep in disgrace and under suspension until October.

Upton Park had never been a very lucky ground for United and I’d seldom seen victories there, despite regular attendance for United fixtures since 1960, when I saw a chirpily relaxed Harry Gregg only a week after his little altercation with the fan at Luton. How very different to Cantona’s situation a week after his moment of madness. The best recent result I’d seen at Upton Park had been a 3-1 win in 1989, when a leggy Lee Sharpe was starring …at left back.

To say I was nervous wouldn’t even get close to how I felt before United’s date with destiny in 1995. Before leaving home there was some aggravation with Kath over home-work but that was curiously a nice distraction and resolved easily enough, and she then serenaded me with some surprisingly tuneful violin playing. For once I was also a little less stressed at work because Michael Jackson,the controller of BBC2, had phoned on the Friday to confirm some big commissions in the coming months, which would help our finances enormously, and save some jobs. He said he wanted me to know how much he valued my department and our output, which was fantastic to hear in those desperately insecure times when there were savage cuts all round.It always made the whole weekend so much easier when you heard things like that. Of course I told everyone as soon as I could, to give them all a good weekend as well.Funnily enough, one of the projects which came to fruition the following year briefly involved Eric, his Dad and Uri Gellar. More of that next time.

As I set off – ticketless- to Upton Park for once in many ways things couldn’t be better, at home and at work, and even on the football front. Earlier in the week I’d seen United in the first leg of the FA Youth Cup Final against Spurs at White Hart Lane, only losing 2-1 and generally looking very accomplished and at ease on the ball, slickly passing and moving. One Philip Neville was the captain.

The future looked bright, but how would things go in this ‘cup-tie’ of a match at Upton Park?

The kick off here and at Anfield was 4pm, to suit Sky and to ensure neither team had an advantage. The weather had been cool but with sunny periods, although by the time I got there I felt a chill in the air.Could be nerves. There were touts hanging around with their usual gruff, suspicious, cagey, corner-of-mouth manner, but prices were astronomical, not just the usual mark-up for United but way over ‘face’. Eventually my pathetic hang-dog insistence that I really had no more than £100 broke one geezer down and he settled for £110. He made me understand what a saintly act of self-sacrifice he’d performed as we scuttled off to the Men’s toilets. We squeezed into a stinking cubicle and he handed me the ticket and I bundled him over the wad of notes, the most I’d ever paid for a football match. I figured if United won a famous Premiership title here it would bring a memory to last a lifetime so it was worth it. That was the rationale, but it didn’t quite work out like that.

Upton Park is a small, compact and noisy ground in the East End of London, where the stands heave with mainly white working class men roaring the Hammers on, menacingly close to the pitch. West Ham as a club has always stood for good, progressive football, turning out an almost endless stream of quality players, year in year out from their famous youth academy (including Rio Ferdinand and Michael Carrick from the current United squad) but their fans have never matched those footballing ideals. ‘Progressive’ is hardly the word you’d apply then, for as usual there were the signs held up to greet ex-Hammer Paul Ince, who’s black of course, to call him ‘Judas’, it never being forgotten how he angled for his transfer to United back in 1989.(Ironically, United fans began to see how they felt only a few weeks later when Ince was off to join Inter Milan. Even worse was when he heaved up at Anfield a couple of years later, keen to kiss the badge there).

The Title Decider

The first half was a bitter disappointment as United looked disjointed and nervous in the extreme. Inexplicably, Fergie had left out Mark Hughes, such a warrior in tight situations like this.As United kept piling forward and the ball came straight back one longed for someone to hold the ball up and play in the other attackers. It cried out for the composure – and the indestructible thighs – of ‘Sparky’ . Who could forget his last minute thunderbolt against Oldham in the FA Cup semi-final at Wembley the previous year, which kept the Double alive? As United failed to take chance after chance, chief offender being Andy Cole, things were to take a turn for the worse. The West Ham fans started chanting ‘Shearer, Shearer!’ as word filtered back that Blackburn had taken the lead at Anfield. When West Ham also scored I pretty well gave up hope, seated among Hammers who exulted in the Reds’ plight, just as they had in in ’92 when they helped tilt the title to Leeds United (starring one Eric Cantona…) with a shock 1-0 victory despite already being doomed to relegation. There’s never been much love lost between United fans and West Ham, and this was getting excruciating.

Things improved in the second half, helped by the introduction of Hughes and hopes revived when 20-year old Gary Neville flighted over a perfect free-kick which Brain ‘Choccy’ McClair bulleted home with a header, making it 1-1. To make things even better Liverpool equalised at Anfield. Were the old enemy going to do us a favour? Back in Upton Park incident piled on incident as United poured forward, desperate for that elusive winner, creating chance after chance. Paul Scholes was the next sub, much to my delight as from what I’d seen of him I thought he was an absolute gem.In those early days I’d seen him as a goal scorer and here he certainly flung himself into the fray like a hardened veteran. But one thing that really showed, apart from the impact of Cantona’s absence, was how United were missing Ryan Giggs, out injured for some time and only touch and go for Wembley in a week’s time.It has always slightly annoyed me how consistently people have under-estimated Giggsy and taken him for granted. Even now, approaching the end of his remarkable career he’s being ‘re-discovered’ – for the umteenth time. I believe if he’d been fully fit in the Spring of 1995 we’d be looking back at Double Double winners for that season. But in the end, despite the prodigious efforts of every single United player, including all the kids – in that deathless phrase – it was ‘not to be’. So near, yet so far. All we needed was one goal and we’d have won the league.

When I wrote abourt ‘Supporting United: 50 Years of Disappointment’ for RoM, I didn’t focus much on ’94/’95, not because it didn’t matter, but because it did. Failure at Upton Park hit me like…a Hammer.

As I left the stadium oppressed by the near-hysterical East Enders celebrating their team’s success in blocking United from winning the Premiership title I heard that there had been another goal at Anfield. Liverpool had done their bit, they’d preserved the integrity of the competition and beaten Blackburn knowing it could have – should have – handed the title to their most hated rivals. Full marks to the dippers. I’ll always hold them in respect for that win on the last day of the ’94/’95 season. How they must have celebrated when they not only beat the soon- to- be- crowned Champions, they could laugh at United’s massive, massive last-gasp failure. Talk about 50 years of disappointment, this felt like a whole century rolled into one.

It was only the next day that I could face watching the highlights of what had admittedly been a fantastically exciting match (but not bloody £110-worth). United had so many chances to score and the West Ham keeper Ludek Miklosko played a blinder. The worst offender was poor old Andy Cole, who’s never really been allowed to forget it, despite the huge pile of medals he later won with United, including the Treble in ’99, when his exquisite chip helped win the Premiership title against Spurs on the last day of that season.

What made the West Ham draw even harder to accept was that one of their players clearly flicked the ball away from Steve Bruce’s head with his hand just as he was about to score. To compound the injustice Brucey was booked for protesting about the penalty that wasn’t given. Refs had a lot to answer for in 1995, one way and another. Things ‘even out over the season’? Tosh.

There was much talk of the game at work on the Monday, many having watched it on TV, and a merciful absence of crowing among my friends. It was still too raw for that. Several people had clocked just how unpleasant West Ham fans were, full of bile, unhealthily-complexioned faces contorted with hatred. Interestingly, there were later surprisingly brief reports that after the United match there was a riot in one of the pubs near Upton Park. I dreaded hearing that it was Reds taking out their bitter disappointment on the locals, but no, it was entirely Hammer on Hammer, hammering it out for no discernible reason. One report said there had been over a hundred arrests, but I never heard anything more about it. I pondered to myself how the media would have treated it if indeed it had been United fans on the rampage. Not that I’m bitter.

Never too downhearted for long, I was delighted that Monday night when I listened to the end of the FA Youth Cup Final Second Leg on United Club Call, probably as expensively as attending Upton Park. United had won 1-0 to level the scores on aggregate and it went to penalties after extra time. The United kids sealed it 4-3, winning the trophy for the second time in three years. The crowd had been over 20,000, more than many Premiership matches attract and the future indeed looked bright. One Cup Final won, now for the Big One.

The Final Disappointment

I was only able to see the FA Cup Final against Everton on TV but in truth I didn’t miss much. I’d hoped there would be perfect symmetry with United’s 1-0 victory over the Blues ten years before, when I was there to witness Norman Whiteside’s wondrous goal with that beautifully flighted, curving shot beyond Neville Southall. In fact there was symmetry, but not of the kind I wanted. This time it was Everton who won 1-0. Not much to say about it. United were poor, as if spent from their heroic failure at Upton Park a week before, and it was a scrappy game. Hopes were raised when the clearly half-fit Giggs came on as sub, but it was to no avail. I was shouting at the screen for Fergie to give Scholes a go, which he did, bringing him on as a late sub as well, but that was equally to no avail, despite the immediate injection of drive and energy. The Everton goal came when the self-styled Guv’nor , Paul Ince failed to perform his defensive duties as instructed by Fergie and Everton broke away and scored.

Meanwhile a brooding Eric Cantona was to be seen seated high up in the stands, no doubt contemplating his future.

Thus ended the 1994/95 season, not with a Double Double but with Double Disappointment.It was a strange kind of petering out, almost as though United had somehow come to doubt their right to win anything after everything that had gone before. Everywhere in 1995 there was tremendous pleasure at United getting their come-uppance after the two previous years of complete domestic dominance. Then Cantona had been central to the the team’s success but now, as thoughts were immediately turning to the next season, would Eric still be at Old Trafford ? What was he thinking and how did the other players feel about him? Did they hold him responsible for the failure to win a single trophy when things had never looked rosier?

One small clue to how the players felt is contained in Brian McClair’s Choccy’s Diary column in the Official United magazine for July 2009. In a few revealing words which have not attracted much notice there are hints at what may have been wider discontents towards Eric among the players at Old Trafford:

‘After we lost the Cup Final in 1995, we had a do in a London hotel. Eric Cantona and his brother were sitting at my table. Eric was banned and I felt that losing was his fault. I let myself down in the next few hours, and in my frustration I was very rude to Eric’s guests, for which I am now ashamed’.

Choccy may have been ashamed, but perhaps it was precisely what Eric needed to hear from one of his most-respected team-mates. It’s well known that Fergie travelled to Paris in the Summer to persuade Eric to stay on at Old Trafford , but I wonder if those harsh words from Choccy, one of the most intelligent and articulate players in the team didn’t also play a part? When Eric confirmed that he would be returning to Old Trafford I celebrated with whoops of delight, but I also felt he owed a debt of gratitude, not just to supporters who’d crusaded on his behalf, but also his friends in the dressing room who’d never broken ranks in public to criticise him for letting the side down at Crystal Park.

Next time I want to tell the story of Eric Cantona’s Redemption. I was there for his come-back at Old Trafford in October 1995 and witnessed his famous pole-dance of delight after he’d scored his penalty against Liverpool. And I was there again at Wembley against Liverpool the following May with a perfect view of the volley that finally delivered that Double Double. Forget Selhurst Park, these were the kicks that counted.

It’s time to show exactly why Eric truly was The King, the King.

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