30th April 1994 - The Kippax's Last Stand

[pride in battle]

Whether it was Maine Road, the Etihad or any other all-seat ground... They sucked the life out of the game for the traditional supporter.

I've never felt any personal attachment to the Etihad in 20 years. It's a superficial concrete block.

Fucking hell...embarrassing!!!!

 

[Newman Noggs]

I suspect my affection for the place is more about nostalgia for a childhood and youth long gone.

 

[The Colonel]

I felt that I grew up there. A real emotional attachment to the place. always the same spot near the away fans one bar down. My time was 84 to 1990; not great years on the pitch but we sang, celebrated every goal and roared us on every minute. The dark humour, goading away fans, the bedlam when packed and scored, the blind optimism I miss it all.
By 1988 me and 2 others were starting most chants and I would rather be nowhere else. Once gone the ground never felt the same, it doesn’t feel ours. City is still mine but the place lost my emotional attachment.
Others that age now may feel the same about the Etihad now as I did then. I like the way the current generation are moving things on and building an atmosphere. It’s your time now but I wish they could have experienced it.

 

[Mad Eyed Screamer]

I’d have loved to have stood on The Kippax but was yet to go to a match due to my age. What was it like?

It was a place where you felt you belonged......
It was the first place you and your mates could go to and act like a knob head and get away with it. Nowhere else could we go without adult supervision and have no one to tell us what to do or not to do. It was a free for all, for us teenagers.
Nowhere else could you shout dogs abuse at lads twice your age - or the police - and have no recriminations.
Being the length of the ground meant that as you grew older, you moved to different parts. So you found your part. If you acted like a dick in the middle or towards the North Stand end, you would be put in your place. But that area around the away fans was anything goes!
I started off aged 16+ and naturally gravitated to the corner by the away fans where it was edgy and the threat of violence was real (to a 16 year old) but you sang / shouted ''fuck off'' to cockneys, rags and Scousers every home game safe in the knowledge that it didn't matter how many times I offered them out and urged them ''to come and have a go'', they weren't going to scale two six foot fences with a line of dibble in between and actually have a go.
It was safety in numbers. It didn't matter what area you came from, as long as you were a Blue you were in.
And you began to get on nodding terms with fellow Blues you would be stood around and then you'd see them on the special or at an away ground and gradually get talking and your little group of three mates became 5 or 6....
I recall trying to get a song going a few times but timing was everything. You would be about to start one and then hear a chant was working its way from the middle of the Kippax towards where we were near to the away fans. You needed a few of you to start it off together, to catch everyone else's attention. If it didn't catch on, the three of you were stood there with everyone looking at you like the saloon bar in a cowboy film when a stranger walks in. I finally got my one and only song going - can't even recall what it was (maybe ''We are City, super City'') and the rush / pride I got when knowing it had taken off instantly and was spreading throughout the terrace with the three of us self congratulating each other was fantastic. I retired on the spot from attempting to get another chant going. I had done it. I had successfully started a Kippax chant.

Around the early 20's we moved away and into the area in front of the small away fan section. The police would wait until a few mins before kick off to make sure the away team wasnt going to fill that small area and therefore not be needing the larger area. It was supposed to be an adults only area. We would just say ''he's me dad'' and point to the bloke who they had let through in front of us. Here we had more room and also on a non wet day could stand on the open curve between the Kippax and Platt Lane.

By my mid 20's we had moved to the middle just behind the wall where the kids sat on, just to the right of the halfway line. I would say we stood on the same spot from 1987 until the end in 94. The same regular faces every home game. Hardly knew any of the names, but we all celebrated the 10-1 and the 5-1 here (as well as the debacle against Bournemouth 3-3).
I was on that spot to see the Youth team win the Youth Cup and stood there when seeing Bowie at Maine Road, kindly asking 3 or 4 Bowie fans to move over a little as ''this is my spot''.

I do feel for teenagers not being given the freedom we had, (not only parental freedom, but the financial freedom we had) but the other side is - the odd ground apart - younger fans today don't have that fear or the threat of going to games, the not knowing if you are going to get back without being chased / smacked or a coach window put through.....
I guess you can say that we did grow up on the Kippax, both physically and mentally. Once I hit 20 I just sensed my singing days and offering out away fans behind the safety of barriers were over and found the next area and new friends. It was time for the next generation of mid teens to grab that place I left behind and take over and when it was time to move on again, I found my next comfortable spot.
And I think that is one of the reasons why the atmosphere ''isn't as good in the Etihad as it was at Maine Road'', because the age of season ticket holders in the singing area goes up as they aren't moving on to elsewhere in the ground and then being replaced by eager 16 / 17 year olds willing to burst their lungs for 3 years before moving elsewhere and being replaced by a new load of 16 / 17 year olds.

I am a 3rd generation Blue, following in my mum and grandad's footsteps. My two daughters stood on it in the final year it was standing aged 2 and 11 weeks (OK, I was holding the baby up, but her feet touched the terrace). It was a rite of passage...... that sadly can no longer be passed down future generations.

 

[pendlebury blue]

Never been the same club since.

There’s still something missing at the club despite how good we are as a club these days, and it’s a proper vocal stand that we all want to be part of and proud of.

My Uncle stopped going to games after the Kippax was torn down. He went to a few in the years after but said it wasn’t the same and just stopped going.

I can understand that in a way Main Rd was never the same after the Kippax street was demolished. To me Main Rd was THE KIPPAX STREET

 

[Shirley]

You’ll never take the Kippax…..

The battle of the Kippax vs the rags in the 60’s so many split heads with the amount of coins and other missiles chucked at each other. A rope and a thin line of police dividing the fans.

Crazy days.

 

[Nellies left peg]

That last game v saints. I mourned as much as anyone, but as i walked away i never looked back. Maine road was a part of my life from 79 onwards, but i knew, as i walked away that last game, that it was time to move on

So did I mourn , losing 1-0 and the after match celebrations were piss poor

 

[eastmanc]

I suspect my affection for the place is more about nostalgia for a childhood and youth long gone.

It's exactly that, same with me but we as city fans have far better memories at the Etihad. You would be silly not to realise that. My memories of Maine Road are more to do with going to the match with my Dad. He died In 1998 and never got to go to the new stadium, he would have loved it.

 

[MCFC Wirral]

Some brilliant stories. Thanks!

 

[Betterdeedthan red]

Fucking hell...embarrassing!!!!

What's embarrassing.
All grounds there days are nothing more than a concrete bowl

 

[Lavinda Past]

Fucking hell...embarrassing!!!!

All about opinions mate. The game has changed dramatically since 1992 imo. It started to leave traditional fans behind a long time ago.

 

[Mancity1980]

I’d have loved to have stood on The Kippax but was yet to go to a match due to my age. What was it like?

Unless you were 6 foot 4 you couldn’t see the near side of the pitch, when the masses left you had to careful you didn’t get winded by the stair rails you couldn’t see, when Niall Quinn scored a brace against the rags you lost your mate in the mayhem - I loved it!

 

[theres only one carlito]

When God asks me what I did with my life?

“I stood on the kippax!”

 

[Lovebitesandeveryfing]

Interesting that players remember the Kippax and talk about it almost as much as we fans. I heard an interview in French with Ali Benarbia in which he basically said that when it was rocking there was nothing else like it that he experienced in his career.
This whole discussion leads me directly to think how important it is to get the North Stand development right. Nothing will ever replace the Kippax, of course. But if handled correctly it could go some way to reconstituting that atmosphere we generated on good days (and I can remember plenty of flat ones when the Kippax, up to then as quiet a mouse, would start chanting “Celtic, Rangers, Celtic, Rangers, Celtic, Rangers” and on and on out of sheer boredom. I remember going to an end of season game against, I think, Sunderland. Utterly meaningless. We got beat, I think. And I got drenched, because I was nearer the front than I usually was and the prevailing wind was pushing the squalls of rain onto all of the front rows. I invaded the pitch at the end, though, so at least that was good (the one time I did).
It's taken me a long time to feel that the Etihad is some kind of home. But when it was really rocking the other night, against Arsenal, I looked round and felt it. I definitely did.

 

[Corky]

Ali Benarbia

The North Stand was the noise maker when he was here.

 

[Corky]

So did I mourn , losing 1-0 and the after match celebrations were piss poor

Having a mediocre pub tribute band first up was ridiculous, just because of Blue in their name and no other reason.

 

[blue b4 the moon]

Commit No Nuisance

 

[J.G.Blue.]

Great photos mate,lots of memories,it was my second home for about twenty five years.

I was just going to post the same, it was a dark, sometimes miserable & sometimes very cold place but at times it could be the best place in the world to watch football & it felt like my second home, I really miss the place.

 

[cyan]

I’d have loved to have stood on The Kippax but was yet to go to a match due to my age. What was it like?

It was the experience of being in a crowd as it moved and responded. When it was busy and the game was thrilling it was finding the best way to see what was happening - peering around or over and learning to use the movement to work you way into a better spot. I think on games like the 5-1 where there was just this enormous surge and the goal went in and you had to move with it. So there is a physicality about it all - and the close proximity of many people - it won't suit everyone - but if it does, then I guess the nearest equivalent now is being in the mosh pit of a concert and being part of a living moving crowd.

It also allowed you to find your own space - as others have said, do you want to be near the away fans or up high or down close. It doesn't matter whether a seat is available or what view you can afford - your find your own place. That also meant it was easier to bring a mate along, introduce people to watching City. Some of the group I still go with were introduced by my brother when he went to Manchester Poly - they were football fans who just wanted to see a game - 30 years on they are City fans.

I cant actually remember my first game in the Kippax. We had grown up in the Platt Lane, but I stopped having a season ticket in 79 as I was going to University - so would then head into the Kippax whenever I was home. At first I would stand right up at the back somewhere on the half way line - I was their to see Trevor Francis score a wonder goal v Wolves to put us top of the league, I spent some time over at the corner near the North Stand - I was there for the Charlton promotion match - but eventually found a spot on the halfway line about half way back and that became our meet up point.

On a quiet game you could move with the game - or head towards the exits and then wait ready for a quick getaway. So as David White raced away to score the 10th I was walking down the Kippax alongside him for a perfect view of the moment.

When we had to buy tickets for the new Kippax we picked as close to equivalent as we could to our normal spot - half-way line front of 3rd-tier, As did a number of the regulars in that spot - many are still there and I still don't know their real names!

 

[Sir peace frog]

I've dug out this picture from the day.
Me with my eldest, aged 2 years and 3 months, and in a sling on my chest is my youngest aged 11 weeks.
I took her out of the sling and placed her tiny legs on the terrace floor - both my girls being 4th generation Blues to stand on The Kippax
View attachment 77221

they must of been so proud of their dad on that day,standing them on the kippax with you looking like a fullkit wanker :)