12/11/1975

Horrific challenge. Buchan didn't visit Colin in hospital and never apologised. Doesn't that tell you all you need to know about him as a man and them as a club?
 
my first game was a 4-3 win over Derby at home, possibly April 1976....pretty sure that Bell played in that match but was clearly only half fit. My hero Dennis the menace ran half the length of the pitch, rounded their keeper and squeezed it home from a tight angle to make it 4-2. Great first game to go for a 14 year old from Aberdeen. Oddly, about 20 years later I was working with this guy in Edinburgh who was the same age as me and he was telling me that he'd only ever been to one English match when he'd been in the Scottish Schoolboys under 16's squad and they'd played in Manchester and then gone to the same game in the afternoon....
 
Remember the game. My first Derby match.
Early goal by Tueart I think ? and then another good Tueart goal later (mind you v Paddy Roche).

The 4-0 hammering we gave Trafford only dulled by the injury to Colin.

Colin will always be the King of Man City.
 
This was the season I had my first season ticket.....and went to all the home cup games as well. Over 50K attendance for that one. It seemed like more. My 14th birthday too....great prezzie!

The King of all geordies was was my boyhood hero and started the rout with a goal in the first minute. Asa ran the show though that night. Have the program on the shelf still. Cost 15p lol.

[video]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGNgS-DPJcY[/video]

(That boxing day comeback game was just an unbelievable atmosphere in the Kippax............we'll drink a drink a drink to Colin the King the King......how long did that song go on and on and on......)
 
I went to my first game at Maine Road on the Boxing Day, six weeks after the League Cup derby, so I too was robbed of the chance to watch Colin in his prime. He had 48 caps by the age of 29 so I'm not quite sure that he'd have more than doubled his tally if he'd never been injured. I think he'd have managed 75 or 80, maybe. However, I think the effect on City was huge. IMO, we'd probably have claimed the league title in 1977 with a fit Colin Bell. Tony Book's City team of the mid and late seventies, which I grew up watching, was a 'nearly' team in many ways, winning just one League Cup and being runners up in the league by a point. I believe that Colin would have made the difference that would have turned what was a very, very good team into a great one.

The tackle itself is clearly a really poor one. Buchan comes flying in with studs raised, and is completely reckless. However, I don't think he deliberately sets out to 'do' Bell, as some Blues claim. I see it as a spur-of-the-moment foul, desperately launching himself to try and stop Bell before he gets into the penalty area - City have men up in support, and if Bell goes on he'll probably fashion a good scoring opportunity. That said, if one of our players had caused an injury like that to a United great in a derby, we'd never hear the end of it, even nearly four decades later.

While Blues focus on Buchan's role in this sorry story, though, to me the real tragedy lies in the idea that City may have mishandled the injury. It was a clearly a serious one, but would it have been career-ending if it had been treated differently? As is mentioned in this thread, Colin returned to action five months later, in April the same season, breaking down at Arsenal in the fourth game of his comeback. Bell is on record as saying that City were pushing him to play again at the earliest possible date, and he knew he wasn't ready. It breaks my heart to think of this, as it does to read of the way the club handled Paul Lake's injury later.

I also remember the comeback game against Newcastle on Boxing Day 1977, which one or two mention on this thread. I doubt anyone who was there will ever forget it. Must surely have been one of the most memorable and emotional games that ever took place in City's eight decades at Maine Road. But that deserves its own thread, really (and there have been one or two threads about it in the past, in fact).

IcriedwhenTueartleft said:
my first game was a 4-3 win over Derby at home, possibly April 1976....pretty sure that Bell played in that match but was clearly only half fit. My hero Dennis the menace ran half the length of the pitch, rounded their keeper and squeezed it home from a tight angle to make it 4-2. Great first game to go for a 14 year old from Aberdeen. Oddly, about 20 years later I was working with this guy in Edinburgh who was the same age as me and he was telling me that he'd only ever been to one English match when he'd been in the Scottish Schoolboys under 16's squad and they'd played in Manchester and then gone to the same game in the afternoon....

This was the first game of Bell's abortive comeback towards the end of the 1975/6 season. There's footage online courtesy of the excellent mcfcvideos youtube channel. You can see Bell congratulating the City scorers, putting in a long diagonal ball from which City eventually score their second, and he's also there back in defence when Derby score their second and third goals.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uqfHEzDPKE[/video]
 
I was in the North Stand that night and you could see straight away that it was a reckless tackle by Buchan on Colin, eventually Maine Road went very quit when the seriousness of the injury started to sink in on everyone, I have been very fortunate to see Colin Bell play for City from 1968 onwards with the rest of that great team of that time, but Colin was something else he seemed to be the complete midfielder[ only my thoughts here ], and I had watched others in said position i.e. Bremner, Souness, ect but Colin had everything in my estimation, stamina in such abundance there was no finer sight than Bell just rampaging forward towards the opponents end, was a good reader of the game and knew when to be in the right spot for the goals. I was also there that day against Newcastle and yes what everyone has already said is quite true there wasn't a dry eye around the ground, and also such a roar went up when he appeared on the sideline, but sadly you knew straight away that his right leg was not ok, in fact he ran with a limp in his stride, he just couldn't stretch out his leg properly anymore it was so tragic the way his career ended, but I still managed to get to see a man play, who I consider at that time one of the best midfielder's ever and that was King Colin..............
 

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