Old Maine Road photos thread

[BlueRockape]

It's funny looking at those turnstiles now and remembering being lifted over em or squeezing through em

Or under them

 

[The Norfolk Blue]

Slightly off topic, I’ve just watched Blackburn 0 City 1 from 1985 on ITV4 Big Match Revisited.

Steve Kinsey netting the winner which took us top of Division 2. A great turnout of Blues, with pockets all over Ewood Park a bit like 15 years later.

Well worth a watch on ITVX if you missed it.

 

[eric pode of croydon]

Swales ambition was to make sure Maine Road was full every game. He achieved it by knocking 20k off the capacity.

I remember many a game when the whole Kippax would laugh out loud when the attendance was announced!

 

[blue b4 the moon]

Slightly off topic, I’ve just watched Blackburn 0 City 1 from 1985 on ITV4 Big Match Revisited.

Steve Kinsey netting the winner which took us top of Division 2. A great turnout of Blues, with pockets all over Ewood Park a bit like 15 years later.

Well worth a watch on ITVX if you missed it.

Brilliant day out, as a really random memory from that game I remember a photographer sat behind the goal line as they used to do being hit on the bonce with a 45 rpm vinal.

It wasn't funny and probably hurt like fuck but even typing about it is giving me a smile.

 

[Mancity1980]

Yeah, but you’d struggle to find a new stand that had a more fun opening day.

I was there that day in that stand (I didn’t run on pitch), I saw fans gathering pitch side waiting for their moment and other than the fact they were idiots I have no idea what it was all about.

 

[eastmanc]

Slightly off topic, I’ve just watched Blackburn 0 City 1 from 1985 on ITV4 Big Match Revisited.

Steve Kinsey netting the winner which took us top of Division 2. A great turnout of Blues, with pockets all over Ewood Park a bit like 15 years later.

Well worth a watch on ITVX if you missed it.

I was in the home end that day.

 

[eastmanc]

I’ll always remember the disappointment when I saw the plans for the new Platt Lane stand. I’m pretty sure it was in a match-day programme.

Peter Swales was a disaster for our club.

Swales out. Forward with Franny.

 

[eastmanc]

It's funny looking at those turnstiles now and remembering being lifted over em or squeezing through em

I'd fucking struggle to get through that now.

 

[spinney]

Slightly off topic, I’ve just watched Blackburn 0 City 1 from 1985 on ITV4 Big Match Revisited.

Steve Kinsey netting the winner which took us top of Division 2. A great turnout of Blues, with pockets all over Ewood Park a bit like 15 years later.

Well worth a watch on ITVX if you missed it.

We were in a group of blues who couldn't get in the City end so ended up in the paddock just over the fence from the Blackburn end

We were so tightly packed in that when City scored everyone jumping up forced the bog wall to collapse

 

[HighburyBlue]

Great thread. I was 12 during the 1976/77 season, when me and my dad had season tickets - Platt Lane, few rows up to the left of the goal. Came so close to winning the league that year. And we beat Juventus at Maine Road - what a night that was. Had been going on and off since I was a small kid - think my first City game was 1969.
Then in the summer of ‘77, my dad got a job down south and we moved away from Manchester for good, so many of these photos have an extra nostalgia for me. Forty eight years later, I am living close to the Arsenal stadium, but still a confirmed City fan.

 

[bladdered]

Great thread. I was 12 during the 1976/77 season, when me and my dad had season tickets - Platt Lane, few rows up to the left of the goal. Came so close to winning the league that year. And we beat Juventus at Maine Road - what a night that was. Had been going on and off since I was a small kid - think my first City game was 1969.
Then in the summer of ‘77, my dad got a job down south and we moved away from Manchester for good, so many of these photos have an extra nostalgia for me. Forty eight years later, I am living close to the Arsenal stadium, but still a confirmed City fan.

It's our history and needs to be kept alive.

 

[TheGhost]

Yeah, but you’d struggle to find a new stand that had a more fun opening day.

I know a Spurs fan who was in the away end that day. He said after the match he felt he was lucky to get home alive. He said that it was like a scene from Zulu, with wave after wave of City fans attacking the Spurs coaches behind the Kippax. He said the police had lost control of the situation and it was the worst trouble he’d seen at a match and he followed Spurs everywhere in the 70s, 80s and 90s. A shit day and performance, especially with the promise of the early Sheron goal, but a proper big game as fuck turn out from City that day.

I should probably add I’m a lover not a fighter and wasn’t involved in any of the trouble but was stood on the Kippax above the Piccadilly tunnel.

 

[JGL07]

Swales ambition was to make sure Maine Road was full every game. He achieved it by knocking 20k off the capacity.

I thought that he just knocked 20,000 off the reported figures?

 

[Axel Freed]

Slightly off topic, I’ve just watched Blackburn 0 City 1 from 1985 on ITV4 Big Match Revisited.

Steve Kinsey netting the winner which took us top of Division 2. A great turnout of Blues, with pockets all over Ewood Park a bit like 15 years later.

Well worth a watch on ITVX if you missed it.

I was sat in the main stand with my old man and had a great view of as you say the thousands and thousands of blues were here there and every fucking where.

Christ we had some big away followings that season. Blackburn, Barnsley and even at Portsmouth near the end of the season we had legions there. Best of all maybe, the infamous invasion of Nottingham on a glorious Bank Holiday Monday in May

 

[Axel Freed]

Yeah, but you’d struggle to find a new stand that had a more fun opening day.

Christ yeah what an afternoon that was. Such pageantry to begin with, a marching brass band, various dignitaries there, the official unveiling etc. And then the descent into mayhem, rioting fans, pitch invasion, mounted police !!

Brilliant stuff. So far removed from the sterile generic match days we experience nowadays.

 

[blue b4 the moon]

Christ yeah what an afternoon that was. Such pageantry to begin with, a marching brass band, various dignitaries there, the official unveiling etc. And then the descent into mayhem, rioting fans, pitch invasion, mounted police !!

Brilliant stuff. So far removed from the sterile generic match days we experience nowadays.

Did all the aways you mention in the previous post above, in fact there was only a handful of games that I missed all season.

I've no idea why but that cup game when the mini umbro opened I was in our main stand rather than the Kippax in block A so could see City building up in the stand.

 

[eastmanc]

Great thread. I was 12 during the 1976/77 season, when me and my dad had season tickets - Platt Lane, few rows up to the left of the goal. Came so close to winning the league that year. And we beat Juventus at Maine Road - what a night that was. Had been going on and off since I was a small kid - think my first City game was 1969.
Then in the summer of ‘77, my dad got a job down south and we moved away from Manchester for good, so many of these photos have an extra nostalgia for me. Forty eight years later, I am living close to the Arsenal stadium, but still a confirmed City fan.

Me too, I was also twelve and sat in the top corner of the North stand with my Dad. I was convinced we would win the title that season.

 

[the-ecstacy-of-eight]

Walked past Central Library yesterday.
They've got a big banner hanging outside advertising a new catalogue of old unseen archived photos of Manchester (or something like that). Maybe worth a look at if you're after some old Maine Road pics.

Just a thought.

I might go and have a look later today, but it's equally likely that I might not either.

 

[the-ecstacy-of-eight]

just came across these by accident.

HA-HA! Brings back memories.....

"Yeah I know this is the kids entrance, I'm 15", says the bloke in front of you who's got a fully grown tache and looks about 35.

 

[plattlanebenches]

Slightly off topic, I’ve just watched Blackburn 0 City 1 from 1985 on ITV4 Big Match Revisited.

Steve Kinsey netting the winner which took us top of Division 2. A great turnout of Blues, with pockets all over Ewood Park a bit like 15 years later.

Well worth a watch on ITVX if you missed it.

There were more than pockets of blues there. A load got chucked out of their home end and walked round the pitch. I was corporate that day, loads of blues in the main stand.