A Tale of Two Cities

Paris 1975 - 50th Anniversary

Thanks to Derek Dye for Leeds Town Hall Phot0 and Svetlana Gumerova for  Eiffel Tower.

The build up to the final was electric and it was with a high sense of excitement that I began making travel plans. I wasn’t well off as I was in the second year of an apprenticeship. I had never had a passport in my life so found myself in need of one!! Things were different in those days and besides the full normal passport you are all familiar with now, you also had what was known as the British Visitors Passport (BVP). 

This was only valid for a year, it was obtained from the Post Office and only required production of a photo and birth certificate, was handwritten and made of cardboard and issued straight away. It was the most misused document of all time and was the most forged!! 

I was travelling with a friend who lived in the Portsmouth area and hailed from Wakefield. He had only just become a Leeds fan and in fact his first match was the Charity Shield at Wembley v Liverpool (the Keegan/Bremner one) at the beginning of the season. There were 2 others but sadly I don't remember names. As I've mentioned money was tight so there were no plans to book accommodation. I judicially borrowed a knee length sheepskin coat from a friend to keep me warm at night sleeping rough. Which it did but by heck I sweated in the daytime as the weather was glorious. 

We took a train from Portsmouth to London where we the connected to Dover. There were so many Leeds fans in London, the atmosphere was magnificent. The crossing to Calais was without incident, but noisy! 

We took the train to Gare du Nord Paris. On leaving the station we witnessed our first spot of bother; a few Leeds fans were approached by a French ticket tout who seemed to have a wallet full of tickets for the match. He was asked to show them which he did and immediately wished he hadn't, he was struck a hefty blow by one of the lads and fell to the ground, the group grabbed the tickets and ran off. For context the tickets were priced at 30 F (Francs not Euros as the world hadn’t yet gone mad!). It was also an offence in France to sell tickets on the black market. (remember this point). 

Anyway, onwards to Gay Paris itself. We experienced the sights during the day, as you can imagine there were Leeds fans everywhere, it was incredible, no sign of the trouble to come. We set about finding somewhere to sleep for the night (we had no money), having wandered the streets for what seemed an eternity we came across a pair of those huge oak doors the French are keen on. Must have been built prior to 1805 as we sunk most their Oak off the coast of Trafalgar by then. The door was unlocked so we crept in to find it was the entrance to a large apartment block. It was all in darkness and quiet, so we settled down for some sleep on the ornately tiled floor of the magnificent hallway. After only 2 or 3 hours we were woken by a mad French woman brandishing a broom (the kind most mother in laws used for transport). She was aghast at discovering 4 English lads bedecked in yellow, white and blue. I didn’t speak much French but enough to know she was very angry! She then chased us for our blood as we scarpered down the street. 

It was still dark, so we wandered back to the Eiffel Tower and got us heads down under it to continue our slumbers. 

We had travelled on the Monday overnight, so it was now the morning of match day, Wednesday. In those days European Finals were played midweek (the world hadn’t yet gone mad). 

 I should have mentioned back home we couldn’t get tickets for the match, so had travelled without. We travelled to the area of the venue on the Metro. The venue was the Parc des Princes it was the third incarnation of the stadium and was just about brand new. It was and still is the home of PSG. This was the first major event to be staged there. Until the Stade de France was built this was also the home of the French national teams for Rugby and Football. Capacity about 49 thousand still the same now, I think? 

We arrived in the general area of the stadium during the morning, Leeds fans were everywhere, it was obvious that a great many had slept there, several were in tents on grassed roundabouts. Now what we didn’t know was that the French Police in all its guises, that is, Gendarmerie, Police Nationale and the Paris Police Prefecture, had a cunning plan. Obviously one Force is nowhere near enough for Leeds fans. 

So, their plan on match day was to enforce an exclusion zone around the stadium this was quite deep and spread many streets away from the stadium. This was completed with roadblocks manned by police. Supporters were to show their tickets before passing. 

The problem for the Police was that the area was already saturated with Leeds fans. However, they had another cunning plan! For that they deployed their riot teams and what followed was a disgrace. They physically forced fans out of the area with no airs and graces and weren't wearing kid gloves! I personally witnessed a couple of lads that had camped on a roundabout being dragged from their tent and given a hell of a beating by the Police with their riot sticks, it was a grim watch. The tone was set here I believe for violence instigated by the Police. 

We were eventually all moved out of the sterile area and started giving some thought to purchasing tickets, we met up with another group so now numbered about 30. It wasn’t long before we were approached by a French tout, I don’t remember how much he was asking for the tickets but obviously they were more than face value. Some backwards and forwards went on which became a bit heated, I do remember he was shoved a couple of times and then he ran off. Now we were conscious that tickets could be hard to come by the closer we got to Kick Off, so we chased him, he went round a corner where he ran into the arms of 2 French Old Bill. He was talking to them clearly explaining what had just happened, they presumably recognised him as a tout and cleared him off. 

We followed him and round the next corner was an army of Police. They were more sympathetic to him as he was talking and gesticulating, arms and hands all over the place, as is the want of a Frenchie in conversation. We were quickly surrounded by the Police. I was one of six that were identified as having pushed the tout (I hadn’t). We were all arrested and placed in a mobile cell unit. 

My thoughts were twofold, in that I imagined spending the next 25 years in the Bastille probably wearing an Iron mask and making friends with rats! More importantly was the inevitability of missing the match and our crowning glory (for at this point of course the world still hadn’t gone mad). As all the conversation around us was in French we had no idea what was happening. 

The time must have been late afternoon and having been locked up in the mobile cell block for somewhile a senior officer arrived who spoke English. He explained what the tout alleged which we all denied, he was keen I think to get rid of us and lined us all up. You will remember I told you it was illegal to sell tickets overpriced, so the tout was in a difficult position, he handed over on instruction 6 tickets to the officer who took 30F form each in turn and gave each a ticket. I was last in the line. 

The master stroke!!!!  While the officer was handing out tickets I came up with my own cunning plan, so when he asked me for 30F, I replied that before the tout ran away from us, I'd already paid him, but he hadn’t given me a ticket. To my surprise the officer didn’t question it and gave me my ticket for free!!!  The Tout looked on incredulously, he wasn’t in a position to challenge bearing in mind what his profession was. I was absolutely made up that I had conned the French, as we were released and walked away the others couldn’t believe it. 

I was then feeling quite smug as I presented my bargain ticket at the checkpoint. I had been separated from Wakey Steve because of my unjust incarceration but later found out he had got a ticket himself. 

So, finally I was in the stadium and what a sight, the huge bank of Leeds fans behind the goal was incredible to see. I’m not going to go into match details as you all know what happened. I don’t remember when the violence started to be honest, but it was brutal to witness. You may have noticed from film footage the fully grown ball boys around the pitch who apparently were specially trained Police Officers (this has been refuted in recent years) they repelled any attempts at pitch invasion with extreme force. To be fair to them they had suffered missiles mostly seats being ripped out and rained down on them. Somewhere in a central position of our stand behind the goal there was a camera man, who I witnessed being violently assaulted and his camera was wrecked. He suffered a broken arm and lost an eye. The violence was widespread. I had also witnessed a German flag and scarf seller who had positioned his stall on a roadway bridge leading to the ground, being surrounded by Leeds fans who set fire to the stall and then pushed it off the bridge. 

After the match I thought it prudent to escape the carnage and made my way back to Gare du Nord. On arrival there we found that due to French seamen striking there were no Ferries running from France to England!!! This must have been a real headache for the French authorities, who I'm sure would have wanted to say a swift 'Au revoir' to the thousands of Leeds fans 'toute suite'!! 

The station was full of Leeds, I studied the destination and time boards and noticed an imminent train departure to Ostend in Belgium whose seamen weren’t on strike. So legged it to the platform caught the train and then Ferry home. 

I hadn't seen Wakey Steve since my arrest, so it was a surprise a few days after getting home, to receive a phone call from his mother worried sick and demanding to know what I’d done with her son!!  He’d got stuck in France because of the strikes. Now Steve had some difficulty communicating in English never mind French, so I think he did bloody well to get home within a week!! 

So, there you have it my first trip abroad as an adult and first to see Leeds in Europe. I've kept it as brief as I could and hope you've enjoyed the read. 

Footnote 

A documentary of the event has just been made which is released now and will be showing in private cinemas around the country but mostly Yorkshire. The match is of huge significance to our club and is part of our Lore and DNA. This is why the WACCOE chant is still sung by our fans, and I hope always will be. I am currently in negotiation with the film maker and hopefully we can get it screened in Hampshire. If you would like to see it please get in touch with me or another committee member to express an interest.  It is likely to be late November early December.