For March 4th I'm going back 36 years to 1985 and Chelsea's League Cup Semi-Final 2nd Leg clash with Sunderland at Stamford Bridge.
The 1st leg at Sunderland's Roker Park had apparently been a feisty affair off the pitch with crowd trouble for which Chelsea had form and Sunderland were no innocents either. Sunderland had won the 1st Leg 2-0 but Chelsea seemed confident and their fans expected them to reach their first Cup Final since 1972. Their confidence seemed well placed when they took an early lead through David Speedie but were brought crashing back down to earth when old boy Clive Walker scored an equaliser after 37 minutes.
The second half was chaotic. At the time I felt that Chelsea fans were trying to get the game abandoned. Strong tackles flew in on the pitch and missiles were flying off of it. On 71 minutes Clive Walker pounced on a mistake to put Sunderland 4-1 up on aggregate and the tie was effectively over. 6 minutes later and Walker crossed for Colin West to fire home Sunderland's third of the night even though fans were invading the pitch at the time. David Speedie was then sent off and few people remember Pat Nevin's late consolation goal for Chelsea.
20 fans and 20 police were injured and 104 arrests were made that night. This was a truly dark day for English football and, though we didn't know it at the time, we were coming towards the nadir of English football hooliganism with the Heysel Stadium disaster at the European Cup Final less than 3 months away. Ironically most of the trouble had come from the seated areas of the stadium rather than the terraces but incidents such as this one convinced the authorities that all seater stadia was the answer. In my view, the use of CCTV to gather evidence was probably the bigger factor in cutting trouble inside football grounds.
CRB Match No. 357
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