For United fans, travelling away in Europe is just one of the many exciting benefits of being a part of this glorious club. Euro aways have a unique status and appeal for Reds; a chance to step out of the drudgery of everyday life and live a different reality for a few, usually very alcohol soaked, days, in exciting European destinations in questionable locales with even more questionable company. You might even get to see some football. Though the 1970s and ’80s brought intrepid Reds some now legendary Euro aways such as St Etienne 1977 and the 1986 Ajax friendly that resulted in the infamous “ferry incident”, it was the ’90s and our Ferguson era success that made madcap European away trips a regular fixture for United fans. Jason Fellowes, known to most as “Kersal Jay”, was one of those Reds who revelled in the opportunity to travel to ties in glamorous European destinations like Milan, Barcelona and Monaco, and slightly less glamorous but definitely no less intoxicating places such as Honved, Lodz and Kosice. Crack open a warm stubby bottle of cheap continental lager as we take a dive into some of the ’90s most ridiculous Euro away moments. Interview by Carly Vandella.
As the name suggests, I grew up in Kersal. So did my Dad before me; he was from Lower Kersal and came from a family of United fans. He was 15 at the end of the war and played for Salford Schools football team, a decent player by all accounts. He played in the in MUJAC – Manchester United Junior Athletic Club, which was set up in the ’30s as the original youth academy. Their scouts used to go round all the Salford and Manchester football teams and invite all the best players to play for them. There were 22 teams, you started at the 22nd team and moved up depending on how good you were – you’d get moved to the to the top ten teams quickly if you were good. My Dad made it to about the 17th team. He knew Geoff Bent through playing for them. I was born in ’67, and when I was 3-4 he bought me all the mini United kit, scarves and all that. There was not way of supporting any other team, especially being from Salford.
The first game I went to I was 9 years old, Dad got us tickets for Norwich at home, in 1976. I started going regularly when I was about 10 or 11. My mum was happy to see me going to United at that age to get a bit of peace and quiet! We lived near the Cliff so we used to go down there on Saturdays and during the school holidays. You could walk right in back then and get your autographs, you’d always see Sir Matt turning up and that. Back then you’d see the players out and about a lot. Martin Buchan lived in Prestwich at the time, you’d see Mark Hughes in the pubs around Prestwich, and you’d bump into Whiteside around the pubs in Salford a lot.
Salford has always been pretty much 100% Red. I remember listening to the ‘79 FA Cup semi final at Goodison Park on the radio, and when Jimmy Greenhoff scored you could hear everyone on the street screaming and shouting. All these neighbours that you thought were a bit dowdy, you didn’t realise were Reds, but they all were. We literally had two City fans at our school, out of hundreds of kids. I know a couple of City fans from Lower Broughton. You’d hear stories about them, “Did you know there are two City fans living in Lower Broughton?!” They went to Wembley about ten years ago and took this “Salford Blues” flag and put it up outside this pub down there, and got a load of abuse off the South Manchester City fans, “Piss off you Munichs” and all that. “What are you on about, we’ve been City fans all our lives?!” “Fuck off, you’re from Salford, we don’t believe you.” I was quite proud of that actually. I’m proud to come from a place that’s seen as so Red that you can’t even possibly support another team.
I started going regularly when I was 13/14, and that’s when you had the famous National Rail Persil vouchers, the two for one tickets you hear people go on about. Me Ma must have had about 3 years worth of soap powder under the sink. I miss the days when there was no internet, no messages, people would just come up to you, “Are you United? We’re getting this train at this time” and there’d end up being hundreds of you. My first away game, we played Blackpool in a pre season friendly, in August 1981, and it was absolute bedlam. Someone nicked a fireman’s ladder, that’s how we got into the ground. There were about 300 of us playing football on the beach. Incredible. After that I was like, “I’m not too bothered about home games now, I just want to go to aways.” So then I had to start working to pay for it – I had paper rounds, I went caddying at Prestwich golf club, had a milk round – that was fun in winter – car washing, all that sort of thing. There were a few older lads that were going at the time who let me and my mates latch on, and they kept us in line and taught us how to behave. They’d get us into pubs and nightclubs but it was very much “You’re younger than us so behave, do this, don’t do that”, and so we learnt our pub etiquette and nightclub etiquette that way. When we were 16/17/18, some of the lads learnt how to drive and got company cars we could do aways in, or sometimes we’d do Salford Van Hire, 12 of us in a windowless van with two bottles of Thunderbird each.
In the late ’70s and early ’80s when we were teenagers, there were a few video arcades near Victoria Station where we used to hang about. We used to see the Scousers on their way back from European games with all this fancy gear they’d robbed on the way. We’d stop them and ask them what they had, and we’d be like “Robe di Kappa, who the fuck’s he?” There were United fans doing it at the same time obviously, they just weren’t doing it on football trips. Between ’79, when I started hanging about there, and ’83/84, when we had a decent run in the Cup Winners Cup, United didn’t really travel in Europe, we only had one or two games abroad. There was a place in the underground market in town that was run by a lad from Southampton who was a City fan who lived up here. They had all the mad hard to come by trainers and all that. People are still arguing now, “We had those trainers before you in the early 80s” and all that. But this shop did, it had Adidas Milanos, Berlins, Berns and all that, whereas a lot of the country couldn’t get them. They had all sorts of stuff in there, but one week you’d go in and they had loads of stuff, the next week you’d go in and they didn’t. You took a chance, but they had stuff nowhere else had at that time.
In ’83, that’s when the Cockneys started turning up with perms, sovereign rings, gold chains, Armani jumpers and all that. It felt like this new thing was happening. The first time I saw it was the 1983 Cup quarter final against Everton. A mate of mine from Whitefield had a pair of cords, a pair of Adidas Dublin, and had cut his hair dead short like a half skinhead, and had this button down shirt. Then everyone started doing it. The Happy Mondays first manager Phil Sachs had a jeans shops where you could get flares. We played QPR away in the ’84 season and we all went down to London and we had these semi flares on, not massive flares, not full ones, and everyone – the ticket inspectors, people on the tube, women in the street, they were all laughing at us. Then we got to QPR’s ground and all their lot were there with all this big poncey hair, looking like fucking Pat Sharp, wanting to fight us. It was a real different look. The Scousers, they were coming across wearing Clarks, cord jackets. I think that early to mid 80’s period, 83/84, was the best time, clothes wise.
I remember when we played St Etienne in ‘77 and it all kicked off, I was about 10 and it was all over the news. My Mam and Dad were watching it going “This is terrible this, this is disgraceful” and I remember thinking, “I fancy a bit of that”. From then on I couldn’t wait to go abroad and watch United. When I was 22, in 1990, I got a job with British Rail and got free train travel anywhere in Europe, and the ferry over for 8 quid. That’s when United started playing in Europe more regularly and so that was the start of me going to all the Euros. My first European away was Montpellier in the quarter final of the Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991. I didn’t do Warsaw in the semi final but went to Rotterdam for the final, and from then on it was just trying to get to every Euro away I could, always on the train.
The Barcelona game in ’94, when we got beat 4-0, there were a few of us on train on the way back, Eamon, Woody, JP, all proper gutted at the result, and Pete Boyle was on the same train. He said “Oasis are playing in Paris, do you fancy it?” They were playing in some venue in Pigalle, at a festival, The Colourfield were playing as well. We all got into the Oasis gig and to be fair they were decent – before all the coke ruined them. At that point, it had been 17 years that City had gone without winning a trophy, so a few of us started shouting “17 years!” between songs. Some French kids who’d spotted us and clocked we were from Manchester came over to talk to us. They were all in Lacoste tops, trying to do the Britpop look, but looked more like they were trying to be in Blur. “What’s all this, 17 years?” they were asking. I said, “It’s the name of their new single. They haven’t played it live yet, but we’re hoping that if enough of us all shout for it loud enough they’ll play it as an encore, so you need to get everyone shouting it.” So all these French kids started shouting “17 YEARS! 17 YEARS!” with us in between songs, without a clue what it actually meant. Liam was getting annoyed shouting “Fuck off Doyle”, which is what he called Pete Boyle. Someone threw a United scarf at his head while he was singing. They weren’t happy. About six months later, my brother said “You were at that Oasis gig in Paris weren’t you? It’s been released as a bootleg, but they’ve edited all the bits between the songs out of it.” I was gutted!
Two weeks after the Barcelona game we went to Gothenburg. That was an eventful trip. It was 7 quid a beer, and after having been to Barcelona a couple of weeks before, I had about a hundred quid on me. So we got a bottle of spirits each. I did in a full bottle of Smirnoff, the blue one. After the match, there was a 2am train back to Hamburg. We were in this McDonalds next to the train station, steaming, and this pissed up Swedish lad came up to me and went “English, chicken shit”, slapped me across the face, slapped this kid from Stockport across the face, and tried to nick my programme, which had cost me seven bloody quid. So I gave him a dig, this other lad gave him a dig, and he was on the floor. To be fair, I kicked him while he was on the deck, which was pretty out of order really. The coppers in the square spotted it and nicked me. It later it turned out that bloke got taken to hospital, but he was was that pissed that when the police came to interview him, he threw a bottle of piss all over them. So they nicked him, and dropped the assault charge against me! But, when they nicked me, they found weed in my top pocket. There were three United fans arrested – Me, this lad from Stockport, who got released because in the wagon I said “Look, I’ll take the rap for this, there’s no point both of us getting done for it”, and another lad who had been nicked for having bent twenty pound notes. I was thinking “Oh shit, we’re gonna be on the news at ten here. Page Six of The Sun tomorrow. They’re gonna line us up and parade us at a press conference and make an example of us or something”. We’d been on the train for three days besides being a bottle of vodka in so I wasn’t exactly looking like an international male model. Earlier in the day, I’d bought a sleeve of cigs, so I’d taken a a few packets out, put them in my pocket, and left the rest in my bag which I’d left in the left luggage bit at the train station. Half way through the day I’d run out, so I bought a packet of Swedish cigs and put my weed in the top of it, about 15 quids worth of solid, so when they’ve searched us they’ve found this weed in the cig packet. They started going on, “Importation of narcotics” and all that lot. Weirdly, in my bladdered state, the one thing that went through my mind was “Well at least we’re in Sweden where they treat you alright in prison and you can get conjugal visits”. Fuck knows where that came from. I suddenly sobered up when it hit me, “Fuck, I could be looking at some time in prison here, I need to find a way out of this.” So they interviewed me, and they said “Why did you bring this cannabis into the country?” I said “I didn’t, when United scored, this Swedish guy jumped up in front of me and dropped his cigs and I thought I’d have them, so the weed must have been his. Check me, I don’t have any papers, or drug paraphernalia” – took me about three attempts to say that word the state I was in. He said “So you’re telling me you stole these cigarettes?” And I thought, well that sounds bad, but not as bad as internationally smuggling narcotics. So I said “Yeah. I’ve got 100 odd Marlborough lights in my locker, why would I buy a packet of £10 Swedish cigarettes?” So they drove me to the lockers at the station and made me open the locker, and after that they let me go. They took me and put me on the ferry to Helsingor in Denmark. There were some Swedish drunks on the ferry and they saw me handcuffed to this copper, and all these Swedes started giving him abuse, telling him to let me go. I was like, “No, I just want to get out of the country, don’t back me up here” and they’re going, “Fuck the police! ACAB!” And all this. Not what I needed. I gave a false address, and never got any letters or anything off them. I bumped into the lad from Stockport at an away a while later and he said he’d had a letter saying he’d been banned from Sweden for ten years.
A place I always loved was Milan. We went to the Paul Ince friendlies, there was one in ‘96 and one in ‘97. One was Fat Ronaldo’s debut for Inter. We went to both games, and at both they hadn’t expected any United to turn up, so they panicked at the turnstile. For the quarter final, the Mail on Sunday did a piece with the headline “MILAN MAYHEM! Police find 5000 forged tickets, 25,000 expected to travel” and all this. We managed to get in because we were stuck outside and there were a few women United fans there, and we said “Start screaming and kicking up a fuss”, so they did and the police panicked and let a load of us in just before half time. I love going to the San Siro. Apparently they’re knocking it down. I used to buy World Football magazine in the 80s, there’d be pictures of the Milano team, and Inter when they had Klinsmann, and I always thought, I’ve got to go there. Then you go there and they’re throwing bottles and lighters at your head. At the Paul Ince friendlies, we all went for a drink, and we had this bar, the Red Indian bar, near the North train station. We got the tram up to Lotto and we were met by a load of police cadets from the training college in dungarees – they’d been assigned to the game as part of their training. They had to escort us to the United turnstile. A load of them turned up with these old rifles and marched us down. So there were this little group of us in this massive escort surrounded by what looked like dungaree wearing paramilitaries with guns. I’ve been looking for a photo of that for ages. It was mint. We went to Lake Como the day after and had all these Milan fans hugging us because we’d knocked Inter out. I miss Milan, it’s a cracking place.
Half the fun of Euro aways is going to places you know you’ll never go as a tourist. I was always hoping for somewhere in Latvia, Lithunia, places like that, or Slovenia, Ljubljana or somewhere. Košice was mint, I’d like to go back there, I love Slovakia. But where Košice is, I don’t think they have a very good railway system, or they didn’t then, so we had to go to a place called Žilina and then back to Vienna. We went there via Budapest, and then after the match on a train to Žilina, through the Tatra mountains, it was absolutely stunning. I’d love to go there again. Lodz, I got there on the train on my own. I met up with Adie from Bournemouth. The beer was like 7% over there. We got to the ground and all these Legia Warsaw ultras had turned up to kick off with the Lodz fans. They had all this Nazi gear on, it was mad. The game was just dire, it felt like the team weren’t arsed. We were gutted because obviously you come all that way, you want to see a decent performance. Everyone was a bit bored, but all really pissed, and someone started singing something daft about “If you’re United, show your arse”. One of those daft things you think is hilarious when you’re pissed. So a load of us started mooning at the pitch. Then after a minute or so someone went “Er, Jay, Adie, you’d best pack it in now”, and we turned around, and all these riot police in full Robocop gear had come over and were pointing their guns at our bare arses. Lodz was a bit of a weird place, obviously given the history, but there were all these little gangs of skinheads trying to kick off with you. There’s a big Nazi and far right presence there. I’ve never seen that many swastikas anywhere, not in East Germany or anywhere, they were all over the place. After the match, a few of us were getting the tram back into the town, and we got ambushed by this gang of what looked like hundreds of 12-13 year old little skinheads while the tram was at a stop. It was bizarre, they were really smashing up the windows and trying to push onto the tram. We were like “Ah leave ’em, the police will turn up in a minute and scare them off”, but after about a minute of the glass smashing and that we were like, “Fucking hell, we’re going to actually have to chase them off here.” So we went out after them and it literally was like the scene on Phoenix Nights where they fight off the dwarves. It was ridiculous, they were coming right at us and obviously, we didn’t want to hurt them, so we were booting them up the arse shouting “Get to fuck”. They were a right little bunch of vagabonds, proper street kids. It was actually bloody hard work. And all I could think was “For fuck sake, please don’t let there be a Guardian photographer or some journo from The Sun on the way back from the match on this tram”, I was visualising the headlines, “Drunken 6 foot 3 United fan kicks child up the arse”. Not a good look.
Poland was a bit of a weird place, but Marseille, that was genuinely scary. They had us in a corner, and we kept seeing these flashes of things overhead under the floodlights. Turned out they were bottle tops – they had them filled with lead and filed them so they were like these death star things. One lad lost his eye. I got two empty wine bottles thrown at my head – thankfully because the French take their wine seriously the bottles are really strong so they didn’t smash. Everyone was getting hit. I looked round and heard this Cockney guy going “Its disgraceful, bloody disgraceful”, and it was Michael Crick. He got hit with a massive Duracell battery right in his bollocks. He was fuming, “I’m going to write to UEFA about this, why aren’t the stewards doing anything?” Tony O’Neill went over to the stewards shouting, “What are you playing at, there’s people getting hurt here, fucking sort it out”, and one of the stewards hit him across the head with a chair. He was covered in blood, and so that make what everyone was fighting with the stewards, meanwhile this lad had been hit in the eye, wine bottles were coming down everywhere. They won the game, and funnily enough after the game they didn’t want to have a pop at all., it was just in the ground, and the police and the stewards were not arsed about it at all. We were the first English team that had played in Marseille since the World Cup, when all them Union Jack dickheads had been there. You got off the train at the station and there was this massive walkway down some steps to get out of the station, and as I was walking through, some woman spat at me! Once you were in the centre though everyone was really nice, all the Arabic people especially. We were trying to explain to them, “Look, we’re from England but we’re not England fans, that’s West Ham and Chelsea and all them lot.” I don’t think they really understood.
In 2002 I had my skull fractured in a hammer attack in a pub in Prestwich. It was a City fan but nothing to do with football, I knew him, he had pretty bad mental health issues. He hit me in the face with a hammer, then pulled out a breadknife and chased two other lads out the pub. I saved him from jail, I said I knew he had mental health issues and they wouldn’t be solved by him sitting in Strangeways, he needed proper help. I had to have metal plates put in my head, I still have a dent in my head from it. I gave up the Euro aways after that because I just couldn’t risk it – if anything went off and I got a crack to the head my skull wouldn’t be able to take it. I’m hoping to go to some of the more chilled out aways in future, and maybe take the Mrs – Bayern Munich, somewhere like that. I sell the fanzine 1878 on Matt Busby Way on matchdays now – well, I usually do, when all this shit isn’t going on. I can’t wait to get back to it now. I miss it so much. I even miss the Scandis and Irish asking “Is that the programme?”. I really hope it’s soon. After 40 years of travelling here there and everywhere, it just isn’t the same getting up early on a Saturday morning and putting your best gear on to go to Morrisons away.
Please like us on Facebook to keep up to date with the latest posts: https://m.facebook.com/deepestred.org/