Football and Music

Vote of confidence/mutual consent watch: Stan Staunton - FAI holding emergency meeting today.   Martin Jol: Another loss and handbags with Berbatov.

Still the funniest and best chant ever.

It started out as a chant by Man City fans, but then Sunderland got a hold and ran with it…

You know of how this came about don’t you ?

Purely Man City has the story behind the song and it’s not a pretty one :

…In 1992 the City squad were on a pre-season tour in Penola, Italy. Michael Carruth, who went to the same primary school as Quinn, had just won a boxing gold medal for Ireland at the Barcelona Olympics and Quinn is celebrating.

A boxing ring had, for some reason, been set up in the town square and coach Sam Ellis and some of the players decide to organise their own Olympic boxing tournament. As other players drunkenly slap each other in the sun, Quinn gets into an argument with a drunk Steve McMahon in the toilets in the corner of the square. Ellis encourages the two to settle the argument with a fight. After a flurry of punches from McMahon the fight ends with Quinn splitting McMahon’s nose with his first punch.

Quinn then goes off with new signing Ricky Holden in search of entertainment. Finding a dance bar Quinn takes off his ripped and blood-splattered shirt to get past the bouncers. Wearing only a pair of cut-off jeans he begins dancing frenetically, unaware there is a group of City fans watching. He is soon treated to the first performance of the famous chant.
The story then turns more violent…

» Read about the whole incident here.

Then after transferring from City to Sunderland the fans adopted the chant and then a few years later some blokes from their fanzine recorded and released it as a single. It got to number 59 in 1999.

But it doesn’t end there !

There’s another story involving the Disco Pants, which also led to a bit of a disagreement, but this time the mighty Quinn came out a winner. Well… apart from the £8,000 he had to shell out for taxis… Read this article about an away match in Cardiff, the cancelled easyJet flight and currently the best Chairman in the Premier League.

After the incident the songs lyrics were changed slightly:

» A Love Supreme - Niall Quinn’s Disco Pants

Extra link:

- You can also hear a Hot Pants remix of the song on the A Love Supreme /MySpace page.

...continuing the theme from last week, about footie teams and their reputations.

Unlike the previously mentioned Millwall this team got their reputation not because of their fans in the stands, but because of the players on the pitch. It was because of Leeds in the 1970’s and because of the way they played at the time.

It wasn’t just Leeds. The style of play back then was tougher. Back then tackling from behind was allowed. Back then going in on the keeper was allowed. When you saw a player going down it wasn’t like it is today, no tripping over a blade of grass and hitting the deck like you were shot. If you went down it was because of players like Ron “Chopper” Harris or Norman “Bite Yer Legs” Hunter, who lived up to these nicknames.

Back to the early 70’s Leeds…
Don Revie was made the player-manager in 1961 and at first they struggled, but again unlike these days he was given time and eventually under his stewardship Leeds United had the most successful period winning League and Cup Finals and his team were never out of the top 4.

During this time and because of the way the game was played the team got their reputation of being stronger than others and because of some questionable tactics and aforementioned tackles.

It was 1972 and Leeds got to the FA Cup Final again (the beat a very decent Arsenal side 1-0) and just because they were big hard blokes doesn’t mean that they don’t like to have a good sing song whilst taking that post-match plunge bath together.

The trend of football teams gathering to record and release records has started in 1970 with the England team and continued with Chelsea for the ‘72 League Cup. Seeing this Leeds had a go themselves and in time for the final put out the single with a very imaginative title: “Leeds United”.

The entry from the Wikipedia page about the release »

The Leeds squad released a single, “Leeds United” with the b-side being “Leeds! Leeds! Leeds!” (commonly known as “Marching On Together”). It was issued to coincide with the team reaching the 1972 FA Cup Final; the vocals on the original recording were by the Leeds team. The record reached number 10 in the UK singles chart.[37] Whilst it is not officially the club anthem, “Marching On Together” is played before every home game. Unlike many football songs that are just new words set to existing music, “Leeds Leeds Leeds” is an original composition by Les Reed and Barry Mason, purposely written for Leeds United.

But this isn’t the expected posting of the A-side. The “Leeds United” song is alright but nothing really to write home about.
If you really want to hear it - right click/save target as... here. [Low quality short sample]
Today were are featuring the B side…

» Leeds United 1972 FA Cup Squad - Leeds Leeds Leeds

Today's history lesson is about to begin. Please make yourself comfortable.

The dark days of England.

Known as the dark ages because nothing was recorded.

Why wasn’t anything written down ?

Because the England team failed to qualify for the World Cup Finals in the 70’s. Twice. That’s why.

The group table England were in for the qualifiers only had 3 teams, England, Wales and Poland (who went through to the finals). England won 1 match [v Wales in Cardiff] and then drew the other two. Snippet via Wikipedia:

England had also been spectacularly denied a win over Poland that would have secured qualification, by outstanding play from the Polish goalkeeper Jan Tomaszewski.

The 1974 World Cup Finals were held in West Germany and the hosts found themselves in the same group as East Germany. Their game, which I’m sure attracted massive interest, was won by East Germany and they topped the group. West Germany with Beckenbauer went on to win in the final against a Holland team which included Johan Cruyff.

Of the other British Isles teams Scotland were in the Finals and were placed in a group with Brazil, with who they drew 0-0. They eventually finished 3rd behind Brazil team. Yugoslavia won their group.

Qualifying for the next tournament England’s group included Italy and despite winning 5 matches and losing only 1 (against Italy 2-0 away), only the top team went to the Finals. England finished on the same points as Italy (who they beat on the home return match, again 2-0) but the Italian’s goal difference was better.

The 1978 World Cup Finals were held in Argentina and like the ‘74 World Cup the hosts won the tournament. The Argentinian team included Ricardo Villa and one Osvaldo Ardiles, who we all know what happened to them. (Yes they were imprisoned three years later during the Falklands War) And again like 4 years previously their Cup Final opponents - Holland, were beaten again.

Also returning again for the finals were Scotland, with Archie Gemmill scoring that goal which got featured in that scene in Trainspotting.

So after these 8 years in the wilderness. After watching the matches for the previous tournaments in the pub, getting a ribbing from their Scotia mates and with another 4 years passing this time… we thought. This time we’ll…

» The England 1982 World Cup Squad - This Time (We’ll Get It Right)

Ahh do I detect a hint of kazoo’s in there…

Something of interest if you like collecting that sort of thing » eil.com have a 7″ limited edition picture disc.

England won their group in fine style (P3 W3) but then went out in the second round after playing and drawing their 2 matches. Scotland yet again, just to rub it in I think, were there too. But this time… they were home before the postcards.

» If you were expected a commentary about the England Squad and musical output for the ‘82 World Cup sorry to disappoint. Not today. But I haven’t finished with this particular year and team. I will return to the subject in time for the next Euro qualifiers.

The suits at the Beeb are all idiots.
Idiots for cancelling Top Of The Pops, but even bigger idiots for also taking ToTP2 off the air and thus robbing us of our musical televisual memories.

Of course we have YouTube now and some fine users who endeavour by going through all their old videotapes to find those classic appearance then post them online only for some Beeb lawyer to come along and get it pulled once again. But I say to those out there. Don’t give up. Keep on uploading. Don’t let the bastards get you down. They can’t suppress our will to reminder ourselves of some crappier moments or some finer ones.

This is an appeal to all users - please continue to add these 3 minute gems, but this is especially an appeal to the Beeb: You are sitting on over 40 years of TV Gold here. Because you are a public funded institution and not a commercial one I doubt it would happen, but if all of these performances we put on a website or even released on DVD… we need to see them all again. Have access to all again. Don’t hide this archive away.

As I said it will probably never happen, because of all the rights, copyrights, record companies and all that we will never see most of it ever again and that’s why YouTube has become what it is.

But this post isn’t originally intended to be about YT & TOTP. It is for a public wish for somebody…anybody out there who has on tape an appearance by a squad of players heading off to…

More about that in a second, but first this:

After their 3-1 gubbing of the Ukraine the Scotia boys are top of their Euro 2008 qualifying group.They don’t have any really well known or world renowned players but they are doing what Wales and the Irelands are not doing - winning. In fact thanks to their performances there is a good chance that one of the two big names also in their group might not even get to the finals.

Before the match began last Saturday they blasted out of the speakers a memory… a bit of footie and musical gold…

When they qualified for a previous World Cup Final tournament, as the tradition seemed to go, you didn’t head for the training field to get some practice in - you head immediately into the recording studio and get the squad singing.   As we’ve seen in recent years though the record heads have realised that footballers singing on records is a bad idea, let’s just get in some band and have a couple of players appear in the video. But this post is to celebrate a time before that happened…

It was the 1982 World Cup and Scotland had qualified for the finals.
I don’t know what happened but they had difficulty finding somebody at the time to compose and record a single to accompany them over to Spain. Unlike in the previous mention, there were a good number of Scottish acts in the charts, but it seemed that the only person the Scotia FA could convince back then was the Scottish Bruce Springsteen - B.A. Robertson.

Also at that time there was another Scotsman who was at the height of his fame thanks to a little film about football. Or was it more about romance…? Either way Nick Hornby must have been influenced by it musn’t he ? I don’t know how it happened. Maybe one day we’ll find out how John Gordon Sinclair came to appear on the record. I would like to hear the whole story of how this all came together.

» Scotland 1982 World Cup Squad - We Have A Dream.

[The lyrics are here and a visual slideshow via YouTube here.]

oniongravy comments about the song on Rate Your Music:

“Look. I’m not being objective. You want objective, go elsewhere.

This is the ONLY brilliant football song. FACT. It was penned by the fantastically naff BA Robertson and is a minor triumph - it’s a JOKE football song, nudging to the audience that Scotland are crap and that the dream of winning the world cup is a laughable fantasy, whilst at the same time managing to rouse such spirits in your hearts that you felt Scotland did in fact have a chance.

It’s got a reference to ELO’s Mr Blue Sky in it, a conversation with God (a Scot, obviously), a singalong chorus to die for and it ends with massive bagpipes for God’s sake. If you can find a finer example of the genre, I’ll eat several metres of my family tartan.

(FYI, this was the World Cup where Scotland were briefly 1-0 up against Brazil. My Dad actually ran out of our house and ran down the street screaming with joy. We were living in England by this time and he was greeted with some bemusement. Of course, Scotland went on to lose the game 4-1 and went out in the first round on goal difference)“

» And this is where I return to the appeal: Please somebody. If you can find their Top Of The Pops appearance and post it on YouTube. Or if anybody spots any video clips anyway… Thank you.

» This is nearly the perfect storm. It has some of the elements, just missing the commentary in the background. Somebody remind me in case I forget - this time next year I will post my footie & music top 10 because this one for me is up there in my top 5.

» Another one from World Cup ‘82 tomorrow. Which you footie/musical aficionado’s will have probably already guessed what.