“I was born under the Stretford End” – Duncan Fraser

For most United fans, the old song about being born under the Stretford End is just a daft old song you hear sung in pubs, but for Duncan Fraser, who grew up right in the shadow of Old Trafford, it’s very close to actually being true. We talk football, cricket, stolen flags and hating Leeds with one of United’s most loyal and local supporters.

I was born in 1988, my Mam was from Wythenshawe, and my Dad was from Collyhurst. When they were looking for a house, they decided to look in Stretford because it’s half way between Collyhurst and Wythenshawe. They ended up buying the house that I grew up in on Railway Road, the street that backs onto the South Stand of Old Trafford. It’s so close to the ground that on a matchday, the floodlights light up the living room. I felt lucky as a kid that I got to look out of our front window and see Old Trafford, and that we could leave the house at five to three and still make kick off.

My great grandad, on my Dad’s side, went to the match and collected programmes, which was where my Dad got his interest. He started taking my Dad to the reserve matches, in the mid-Fifties, so he saw the Busby Babes right at the beginning, when they were first coming through. He remembered being at one reserve game and his Grandad saying “Watch that number 6, he’s really something special”, and that turning out to be Duncan Edwards. He was only about four or five. My dad was obviously really small, so my Grandad got an old wooden box, painted it red, and carted it to the match so he could stand on it and see. He moved to Canada for a year, but it killed him because he missed the match. Then he came back and carried on, and met my Mam at the match. She had been going since a young age as well. He proposed to her on the way to an away game – Coventry or Ipswich, somewhere like that. On the coach! They had the wedding reception at Old Trafford, in what was The Grill Room, in 1978. My Mam went to the match for years before she met my Dad with a load of old lads from Wythenshawe. Her dad was Irish and came over to Manchester for a job, and moved to Wythenshawe. He liked it and stayed, and had always supported United anyway. She started going with him, in the late 50s, early 60s, with her brother and sister too. My Grandad took her out for a walk round Wythenshawe Park one Saturday, and then somehow they ended up at Old Trafford at the match. God knows how, it’s a long walk! 

I came along in 1988. I don’t remember my first game at all – I was 3 months old. It was New Year’s Day ’89, my Gran, who also had a season ticket, had been at a New Year’s party and gave my Mum her season ticket. We beat Liverpool 3-1. My Mum didn’t miss a home game for almost 20 years from ’67 until she got pregnant with my older sister. Going on a massive terrace in the late 80s while pregnant wouldn’t have been a great idea, so she sat in the back garden during matches so she could still hear the roar of the crowd, and cried because she wanted to be in there.

The first season I remember properly would have been ’93, when I was about four, five. I think I did most home games that season, and two away games. For the first five or six years when I started going regularly, we used to jib in, because my dad knew a steward from living nearby. So he’d throw me over the turnstile, and me Mam would throw our kid over the turnstile. The first away game I remember was Sheffield Wednesday in ’92, I was four. We were 3-0 down, and we came back to 3-3 in the last minute. We were sat in the Leppings Lane, and obviously being so small I was on my Dad’s knee. I remember the stand had wooden seats, and everyone was jumping on the seats, banging them and going mad, and it was that loud I burst into tears!

I went to St Anne’s School in Stretford, on Davyhulme Road. It was an almost totally Red school. There were only two City fans in the whole school – one in my class who was actually my best mate, and another one who came along later who moved to Firswood from Moss Side, but everyone else supported United. Although there was one lad who in the Treble season decided to start supporting Chelsea – god knows why – and another who started supporting Arsenal when they won the league in ’98. The head teacher was a United fan and so was the parish priest who worked at the school. He knew Fergie pretty well, so when the nursery was opened, Lee Sharpe, Keano, and Fergie came down to open it, and a few years later, Fergie and Eric came down to meet the football team. You had to be in Year 5 to be in the football team, and I was in Year 4 at the time, I was fucking gutted. They came down, had chat and a picture with the older kids and all us young ones were all sat in class devastated. But Eric had made sure that he brought a load of signed pictures, and made sure that there were enough so that every kid in the school got one.

Other than the odd few cut price tickets for local schools, United didn’t really do much for people who lived around the ground or have much to do with us. My Dad tried to set a supporters club up, Stretford Supporters Club, in the ’80s, and the club told him it was too close to the ground to have a supporters club. I think the nearest one at that time was Wythenshawe, that’s 6-7 miles away. My Mam and Dad got to know a lot of the players though because they used to work for Paddy Crerand, in his pub in Altrincham in the 80s. Paul McGrath would go in there, Robson, Whiteside, all the pissheads basically. There was one game, not sure which it was, they got beat 3-0 and were in there after, and my Mum refused to serve any of them. “None of you deserve a drink, you were a disgrace today”. None of them dared argue with her.

I always tell people I’m from Stretford, which is in Manchester, not that I’m from Manchester, because I’m proud to be from Stretford. It winds me up when City fans say “Stretford’s not in Manchester”, just because of where the council lines are drawn now, but it fucking is. “Old Trafford’s not in Manchester”, it is. “United aren’t from Manchester” – where’s Bank Street you dickheads? Stretford has changed a lot since I was in school, and nowadays you do see a few more City shirts, but you never see flags hanging out of windows or celebrations when they win the League, whereas whenever United win anything everyone’s out and in the pubs celebrating, cars with flags hanging out beeping up and down the streets, the lot.

I’ve got a “Stretford – MUFC” flag that I take to Euro aways. The one I’ve got now is the the third one I’ve had with the same design. The first one got nicked by City. It was in the Moyes season, when they beat us 3-0 – it was up above the away section in East Tier 2 and they managed to get hold of one of the corners, and ended up dragging it down. It ended up being paraded on Twitter by some City fans all cut up,  the daft twats. So I got a new one, United actually paid for it as it was sort of their fault that City had managed to reach it. I couldn’t go to Stockholm for the Europa League final in 2017 , so I let one of the lads take it with them. The night before the game, I heard a load of flags had got nicked from outside a bar. Watching the game, I could see all these flags around the stadium, but not mine. So I messaged the lad, and said, “What’s going on, where’s my flag?” He admitted they were in a bar, it was hung up outside on a fence on the other side of the road, and some lads went past on a motorbike and swiped it. He offered to put the money in for a new one, so I said fair enough, ah whatever, and just got a new one ordered for the new season. Anyway, two weeks later, one of the lads sent me a picture off some Ultras forum: My flag, upside down, being held by a load of lads wearing Partizan Belgrade Ultras gear! After being nicked in Stockholm. Absolutely no idea how or why. When we drew Partizan Belgrade last year in the Europa League, I just knew it was going to show up and was constantly saying to everyone “My flag’s gonna be in their end”. Sure enough, I travelled over, and half way through the first half, in the section to our left where their Ultras were, up it pops, 2000 miles away from where it had been nicked. How and why it was nicked and carted all that way I still have no idea. 

Growing up in Stretford, obviously you have two major sports stadiums right on your doorstep. I grew up going to both Old Traffords, supporting United at one and Lancashire in the cricket at the other. One of the big differences between the football and the cricket is that I support my local team in both, but only support the England team in the cricket, definitely not in the football. My Dad never supported the England football team either, so part of it comes from that. We went to watch a few games when I was younger, England v Wales I remember because our kid’s favourite player was Mark Hughes. We spent the whole game next to some Brummie with a Birmingham hat and a Birmingham scarf shouting “Sheep shagging bastards!” And I thought, this lot are a bunch of idiots. Then we had all the issues with United players getting grief when they played for England, the whole Beckham thing, Phil Neville used to get a lot of grief I remember. I was obviously just getting into football then, I was 10 in ‘98 when the Beckham stuff was happening, the effigies at West Ham and all that, and that really stopped me having any more interest in the England team or their fans, when I saw how they were treating our players.

With the cricket though, it’s different. My Dad used to play cricket, and had a membership at Lancashire, and got me one when I was about ten. It was only a tenner then, to watch every Lancashire game for the season. I loved it, you’d be there all day, you could take your mates. I still go now, not as much as I used to. Obviously, the best atmosphere is when we play Yorkshire. The hatred there is not just Lancashire v Yorkshire, it’s United v Leeds, it spills over massively from the football, for both sides. All the songs are “You Leeds bastards”, even though there’s people from the whole of Yorkshire, they’re all Leeds bastards. That’s a football thing. They’ve even sang about Munich before. My Dad went to a game at Headingly once and he took this United pint pot, it was the free thing United gave away with their memberships that season, like a hard plastic cup with a lid and bendy straw thing with a United badge, so he took it with him in his pocket so he didn’t have to use the shit flimsy plastic cups you get a pint in. Some Leeds bastard came over and threw it out of his hand, and it all kicked off. At a cricket match. So you definitely get the football thing there. You don’t get much football aggro between the Lancashire fans though, even though you get fans from clubs like Blackburn and Burnley there. I went to a cup final once at Lords. United were at Watford, and we didn’t get a ticket, so we went to Lords instead. It was in the pre-internet days and there was a City fan behind us with a radio, and said “Oh, United have gone 1-0 up”, then announced dead excitedly when Watford equalised, and then sounded gutted announcing that Giggs had scored the winner. Then from two blocks along, you suddenly heard “Ryan Giggs, Ryan Giggs, running down the wing”. So it seemed a few other reds had had the same idea. When I’ve watched England cricket at Old Trafford, you’ll have big groups of reds singing Cantona songs to wind the Leeds fans in the crowd up, big groups of pissed up lads singing “Weeeeee’ll drink a drink a drink, to Eric the King…”. It’s not even a Manchester thing, because you don’t hear many City fans joining in with that, obviously, it’s just pure United v Leeds. It was handy because we haven’t regularly played the bastards in the football for a long while so at least we’ve been able to wind them up somewhere!

You meet all sorts of people, through United, and particularly through being so close to the ground. We had some Czech lads stay with us during Euro ‘96. My Dad found them sleeping in a tent in Lostock Park, so he brought them to stay at the house. They played Germany at Old Trafford  on the Sunday, and this was the Monday. They were due to go to the game against Italy at Anfield on the Friday, and then they were going home. But they ended up staying for three weeks. Me and our kid got kicked out of our fucking bedroom and had to kip downstairs. But it was worth it, because we know we gave them an unforgettable trip and we started a really great friendship. When we played in Prague in 2004, me and my Dad went, stayed in Prague for two nights, then they picked us up and we went and stayed with them for two nights in Karlovy Vary and had an amazing time. So when you get to do things like that, you feel dead proud that you’re in a position to help people out and show them what United is all about.

You get to go all sorts of places when you support United that you may not get the chance to go to otherwise. The best trip I’ve ever done supporting United was going to watch us in Rio, in 2000, when I was 12. I managed to blag the two weeks off school on top of the two weeks we’d just had for Christmas. We flew from Heathrow, and stayed in a hotel right on the beach. The whole atmosphere of that trip, it was different to anything you’d get in Europe. The tickets were £3 per game, the final was £4. We had to pick our tickets up from the Sheraton Hotel, so, we got there, and Paddy Harverson, the old commercial officer, said “It’s at another hotel, but we’ll take you there”. So we went across, and we were in the lobby getting these tickets, and Roy Keane turns up. Got a picture. Yorke and Cole were there, got a picture with them. Then we went to the Copacabana and played football on the beach. What a day. I was 11 years old, it was like a dream. The Maracana was a bit shit though – portaloos, nowhere to get a drink, even a drink for the kids, and it was boiling. Probably the worst ground I’ve been to facilities wise, but one of the best for atmosphere and the experience. We met the players a few times on that trip, in hotels and restaurants. And the Real Madrid team too, so we have a picture with Roberto Carlos, best left back in the world at the time, and even better, got to shout abuse at Steve McMananman. Looking back, I wish I’d been a bit older, so I could have appreciated it a bit more. But it will always be one of my favourite memories. 

There are still a few places I’d love to go to with United, that I’ve always wanted to see us play in. I’d love to see us play in Australia. It’s the only continent I’ve not seen us play on. I’ve seen us play in North and South America; Seattle, Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia in 2003; Chicago, Washington, and Ann Arbour in 2004, and in Rio. In Asia, I’ve seen us in Beijing and Hong Kong, obviously all over Europe, and in Africa when we toured South Africa I went there. In Europe, Belgrade was one of the main places I wanted to see us play, Partizan’s ground in particular, obviously because of it being the last ground the Busby Babes ever played in. That ground hasn’t changed much since 1958, by the look of it… I’d love to go back and see us play at Red Star’s ground too. I went to visit it when we played Partisan but I’d love to see a game there, the atmosphere looks mint. And who knows, maybe if we go to Belgrade again I’ll get to steal that fucking flag back.

In loving memory of Alec and Eileen Fraser.