MelbourneBlue

They had it all mate, just about packed too. As for fans of other teams being there, I noticed one WHam bloke I know in the pitch invasion, and I wouldn't be surprised if fans from all the other London clubs were there as it was the only game on that day and a major tear up was inevitable.

On the other side of the coin I went to Stockholm to see England grind out a 0-0 draw in a crucial WC qualifier (I think it was the game Butcher had blood all down his shirt). Anyway Shilton's being interviewed after the match and most of the England fans were chanting "Tina, Tina" who i think is the name of the brass he was caugh with a few years earlier. Poor form I reckon, I was never big on booing England players unless they were Spurs!

No, went up on service train. My memory is shocking but I'm sure someone from a north west London suburb who used to run coaches was in there too.

And Gillespie Road instead of Arsenal.....and how the fk do you get to WHL? And on a north London theme I wonder why they got rid of York Road given how far Cally Road station is from Kings Cross?

Great read Carshalton. Was at some of those including in Walsall's end and one of the 100 to get into Sunderland's ground.

The two games at Anfield 84-86 blur into one for me unfortunately. I remember lots, but not sure which of these things happened at which game. We drew one of them 1-1 (late goal to them and later equaliser from wee Pat) and lost 4-3 (Grobelaar rugby tackled Dixon and we didn't get the penner). Both games I went in the Anniae Road seats. One of those games Rangers came down en masse. One of those times someone (Hickey?) bought 600 seats in advance and was selling them on the service train up there. After one of the matches Chelsea came out the Annie Road seats and a large mob of scallies was assembled on the other side of the road. One charge was all it took to have them on their toes. They fired a distress flare, and as I type this bit I am sure I've told this story before on here so sorry for that.

This is the thing me and my mates laugh about - they know we're at Mile End and heading for Upton Park, but they head to Victoria to look for Chelsea's firm????? Never understood that, or just poor editing. I was on that train, and many have said we went down to Upton Park and took over some of their pubs, but in reality I remember being ushered straight to the ground

And this is the key point about them. Whenever there were 10 of us, 20 of them would come round the corner. If there were 20 of us, 50 of them would come up the stairs onto the platform. If there were 50 of us, 100 of them would appear in the distance. The myth was 150 WHU against thousands of Forest (newspaper article by a journalist embedded with the ICF), but in truth they loved it when the numbers were in their favour - probably went into many situations when a spotter had scoped it out. I am a reasonably peaceful bloke in my 40s but I had a chance of a square up the other day when one of them mouthed off at a few younger CFC. He was half my age and I walked up to the cnt as he was still yapping, at 2 feet I saw the fear in his eyes and discovered he had more reverse gears than one of Mussolini's tanks. Don't get me wrong, I rate them as just about the best, but a lot of them were cowardly bullies who were only any good with a big mob around them.

The very same thing happened to me after that match. I had my Chelsea badges on and one of them grabbed but did not take them off me. Was happy to get off at Earls Court tbh. I was only 16 and not really up to taking on the entire carrige.

Completely true. I have posted this before, but the flyers went out the week before to meet at the Kings Head. I got on at Embankment when the first train came through packed. When it got to UP station I was one of the the earlier ones out the station and barely got in the ground. So most of that trainload did not get in our corner of the South Bank. My WHU mates who I left behind at Embankment said another tube half full of Chelsea followed a couple of minutes later. So definitly at least a thousand on those two trains alone did not get in.

I reckon the most we ever took to West Ham was 5-6000, the 5-3 game being one of those. While WHU slag us off for never bringing a lot there, they have to realise that the geography completely favoured them. It was far easier to turn up at Highbury and SB in big numbers than Upton Park and even Tottenham. Arsenal and Chelsea were close to central London, had big grounds, a big away end to fill, but importantly several ways of getting there.......and gettting out! WHU always had the advantage that in reality there was one way in and one way out. Same with Spurs really, you could only have the Park Lane (7,000 max), and you either walked up the SSR or got a train to Seven Sisters. It was also relatively far to go from West London.

I was there and it was bedlam. I reckon we had far more than 7,000. My memory isn't perfect, but the crowd was almost 21,000 and we must have had more than a third of it.

Lot of cult games round about then.....3-3 at Cardiff......2-0 at Man City.....4-4 at Wednesday......Pompey away in the promotion year.....several others in the promotion year and our first couple of seasons back up. But yes Arsenal away is in my Top 3, followed by Cardiff and City for me. City, Cardiff and Pompey all mention us in their books, and a book has actually been written about the Arsenal 84 game I believe.

Looking splendid in my new Benneton polo I travelled via Reading and there were so many Chelsea in the station forecourt at about 8am it warranted a couple of OB vans thinking it was Burnley (?) come down early for their game at Elm Park. Yes nobody had any colours on. Went up with two brothers one CFC one Gooner, and got on the Piccadilly line at Kings X. The undeground that came through was packed with an enormous Chelsea firm who all got off at Holloway Road, Christ knows what they got up to before the game. We settled into our seats in their East Stand and yes there were a lot of Chelsea in there which you can see in the video after Kerry scores. Also, Arsenal always say that was the most packed they've ever seen their Clock End. There didn't seem to be too many in the North Bank and about 100 (from my dodgy memory) were escorted out. Afterwards we went to the pub and came out hours later - there were a lot of Gooners still at Finsbury Park and they were talking like they'd had a bit of a result afterwards......but I don't know for sure. All in all a great day.

That is a really good point, and I read on the past players thread about the game at Wokingham in the early 90s, which I also attended. I even walked on the pitch before the game it was so laid back in those types of games. Great days those were. Surely we have so many players that some could stay behind and play friendlies in England, or even Wales or Scotland. I mean these games in Asia most players will get just one and a half games out of the three. I reckon we have about 30+ players on the books that haven't yet gone out on loan so they would all get more game time this way anyway. I have to say those Indonesian CFC fans were sensational the other day, at least they knew the words to our songs which is unlike the Liverpool 'fans' at the MCG the other night. They had to put the words to YNWA on the screens!!!!! Hopefully its Chelsea here next year.

Sorry, I thought the word 'unopposed' would explain it. They were allowed to walk up the stairs, into the West Stand seats and watch the game untouched. A complete embarassment for us.

My West Ham mate definitely did that in about 1980 or 1981

I reckon us lot waiting for the Herd at the top of the steps at the back of the West Stand (late 80s?) was worse Carshalton. They came up the steps and onto the concourse unopposed. And we knew they were going to do it.

Cathy is currently putting up loads of sensational photos on FB. Old pre-season overseas friendlies in places like Sweden mainly.

I've heard 20,000 out of the 45,000 crowd, Having been there I thought that was generous to us, but look at the photo and it shows that we had a lot in their seats. I was in their West Stand and didn't realise how many we had in all parts of the ground.

I disagree with the point about our managers not picking them - if they were top notch they would have got into the team. Fact is that we still had Kalou in our CL winning side, and none of the youth had gone past him. And as for Arnesen's pathetic mathematics in defining his success in the financial aspects of the acadamy.....

Early 80s SH and a few others left the Chelsea End and walked into Boro's end. A copper on horseback said "You can't go in there, that's Boro's End", they ran at the first few who turned and fled, the rest must have thought it was a bigger Chelsea mob becasue the whole lot fled. I wasn't there, but one of my mates was one of the very few who went in. They did have a big mob in 88, and also it went off in a big way at Wembley under the stand at the ZDS Final. There is also a TV news clip somewhere of them cowardly attacking a York Chelsea bloke on a local train out of Boro.

When I was first allowed to go on my own, I used to have lunch in the Wimpy. That was fine dining for me at the time.

Was her. I've seen those photos before.

Me and a few mates were in the seats to your right too. Got tickets (6 from memory) in advance off a Sunderland fan and just took the service train. OB did not stop us.