1989/05/27 - Scotland 0 England 2 - International


May 27th and I'm going back 32 years to 1989 for today's programme/match anniversary and another visit to Hampden Park to watch Scotland take on England.
This was my fourth and most recent trip to Hampden to watch England and was without doubt the most enjoyable. England won and my favourite England player, Chris Waddle, grabbed one of the goals in a 2-0 away win. It was the sole occasion (to date) on which I have seen England win at Hampden.
In the run up to the game and on the morning of the match there was a fair amount of trouble in Glasgow mainly caused, as far as I could tell, by English hooligans looking for trouble. There had been a noticeable increase in the amount of crowd trouble at these games during the 1970's and 80's with English fans becoming increasingly resentful of the Scottish takeover of Wembley every other year. This resulted in a small but significant number of English hooligans wanting to cause trouble in Glasgow. The annual problems being inflicted on the populations of London and Glasgow were becoming intolerable to the authorities and, as a result, this game was the last time that England visited Hampden other than when drawn against Scotland in World Cup (in 2017) or European Championship (in 1999) qualifiers. Such was the level of concern that the Football Association didn't even seek a ticket allocation for England supporters for this game and, with the prospect of no English supporters in the ground, there was no need for segregation. Unhappily this led to hundreds of England fans being scattered amongst the crowd of 63,282 and to no great surprise a number of minor skirmishes occurred until the police managed to herd the English infiltrators into one area on the terraces. Me? I kept my head down and watched the match with a Scottish pal.
We were greeted by the strange sight of Peter Shilton resplendent in a Scottish goalkeeping jersey. Apparently the only goalie shirt that the England kit man had packed was blue and would have clashed with Scotland's shirts. Piss ups and breweries spring to mind! Once again England fielded more Rangers players than did Scotland (Butcher and Gary Stevens this time). England played without any players from the top two sides in the country. Liverpool and Arsenal had played a title decider the previous night but the less said about that the better.
This game took place one year before the 1990 World Cup in Italy and England manager Bobby Robson was in the process of narrowing down his squad selection for that tournament. The game saw the final appearances in an England shirt for Wimbledon's John ("Gladiators ready!") Fashanu and Everton's Tony Cottee.
Twenty minutes in and Chris Waddle scored with a flying header right in front of me. I idolised Waddle at the time and my knuckles whitened a little as I held onto the crush barrier and the net bulged. Never have I wanted to celebrate more but I was unable (or unwilling) to do so! Waddle was a menace all afternoon in possibly his best game for England. One-Nil at halftime became Two-Nil to England with just ten minutes remaining and, in the manner of all good fairy tales, the goal was scored by the substitute making his international debut. Steve Bull of Wolverhampton Wanderers was technically a Third Division player because, although Wolves had just been promoted, he had yet to play in the Second Division. He remains one of only five players to be capped whilst playing below the top two tiers of English football and the last such player. It was certainly a Grimm tale for the Scots!

CRB Match No. 616


 

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