photograph copyright © of George Herringshaw & sporting-heroes.net

Vince Hilaire, who was a member of the Crystal Palace ‘Team of the Eighties’ – so called because Terry Venables took them to the semi-finals of the FA Cup and from the Third Division to the First Division in three seasons.

About the man…

Vince was one of the first established black players in English football, but at the time racism was rife. It was in 1976 when a teenage Hillaire was warming up on the sidelines in an away game at Port Vale. He remembers:

“…I came out of the dug-out, and I started jogging around the touchline. I couldn’t believe the abuse that was coming at me… animal noises and all the names you think of calling a black person. Any name under the sun. And it frightened me a bit, so I couldn’t wait to get back in the dug-out. And I thought, ‘Well, if this is the sort of reception I’m going to get, then I don’t really want to know’ “

But he rose above all that and became an essential part of Palace’s success with his wing play. In his seven years at the club he made over 255 appearances and scored 29 goals. He was in the team that was promoted to the First Division and was voted the supporters ‘Player of The Year’ for two successive seasons in 1979 & 1980. Plus he was called up for the England Under 21′s.

After leaving Crystal Palace he joined Luton Town but made only six appearance before being transferred to Portsmouth a few months later. There he made 146 appearances, scoring 25 goals and was once again part of the team that gained promotion to Division One.

- Kick Racism Out Of Football

About that song…

Ah remember that second summer of love… after everybody was coming down from all that rave and ACIIIEEEEED ! stuff this band emerged and moved us into the chilout room where we all blissed out…

(Well you did. I didn’t.)

The acid house duo of Jon Marsh and Steve Waddington, known as The Beloved embraced the dance music and in 1989 they saw The Sun Rising. Then a year later they were saying Hello to various people, some famous, some fictional.

The list of names checked (in alphabetical order): Jeffrey Archer, Fred Astaire, Bobby Bal, Charlie Brown, Tommy Cannon, Billy Corkhill, Leslie Crowther, “Freddie” Flintstone, Paris Grey, Brian Hayes, Vince Hilaire, Barry Humphries, The LSO, Kym Mazelle, Mork and Mindy, Little Nell, Charlie Parker, (Peter and Paul) Andre Previn, Little Richard, Salman Rushdie, Jean Paul Sartre, The Supremes (“Mary Wilson, Di and Flo”), William Tell, Sir Bufton Tufton, Desmond Tutu, Willy Wonka, Zippy and Bungle.
As to why Vince Hillaire was included ? Probably it rhymed.

And finally… The video:

It was where their chase for the title took a kick to the head when they drew at Crystal Palace.

With this result and the loss of their talismanic (or just manic as it was) captain for the rest of the season, their grip of the trophy slipped and the Championship went to Blackburn Rovers that year.

Remember that so-called fan (who will not be named, it’s better if he lives in ignominy), remember what he claimed, after he got out of his seat and ran down to the hoardings, to have shouted ?

He claimed that he said:

“Off, off, off, it’s an early bath for you, Cantona…”

Which has got to be the most polite berating ever heard. At a rugger game maybe, but never at a football match. What he actually said was: “‘You dirty French bastard. Fcuk off back to France.”

That moment of madness for Eric the red was captured not only by camera, but audibly too. It’s memory lives on because of the commentator Jonathan Pearce, who I think was still on Capital Gold Sport at that time, in his description of the event that unfolded in front of him.

PhilB, who has been featured on F&M previously with his England (& KLF) Mini Mix, took this Jono Pearce moment and added some music:

[See post to listen to audio] » PhilB – Cantona Oh My Goodness Me

As mentioned above PhilB did a KLF Mini-Mix and there’s a link here with Cantona and another track which was originally thought to be something from the KLF but in the end wasn’t. Or was it ?
Via Wikipedia:

” KLF were themselves apparently the victims of a “hoax” when an outfit called “1300 Drums featuring the Unjustified Ancients of M.U.” released a novelty single to cash-in on the popularity of Manchester United footballer Eric Cantona. 1300 Drums even made a KLF-style Top of the Pops appearance, with the “band” wearing Cantona masks. The authorship of “Ooh Aah” remains unresolved: at least one source maintains that Drummond and Cauty were 1300 Drums.”

[See post to listen to audio] » 1300 Drums & Unjustified Ancients of M.U – Ooh Aah Cantona

More Cantona:
- Oh This Is Bad: Part 2

Extra Reading:
- The Guardian > Cantona’s kung fu kick
- Sporting Deviance > Eric Cantona versus Crystal Palace

This is the other post looking at two teams with two common denominators:
1) They are in a financial crisis and 2) but they are still in the FA Cup.

The club featured yesterday are close to being wound up in court. Late Update: Notts County have a new owner. Yet another false dawn ? We’ll see.

Sadly for this next lot though things are far worse because they went into administration a few weeks back and (at the time or writing) there’s nothing on the horizon in regards to a rescue.

The club administrators went as far as banging an advert in the FT, but still didn’t get a sniff.
I think they went with the wrong publication – this would have worked better.

This isn’t the first time Crystal Palace have been in admin. It happened previously in the year 2000 and the Singapore financier Jerry Lim bought the club when it was only hours from extinction. He then immediately sold it to the frustrated football-turned-millionaire businessman Simon Jordan, who is another one of those outspoken/colourful chairmen.

- For a full blow by blow history of Jordan’s time at the club start reading from here.

Like the other day I’m concentrating on their better times when Palace were in the (old) First Division and through to an FA Cup Final.

The year was 1990 and… “Nineteen Ninety…time for the Guru…”   (stop that)… and Crystal Palace in order to appear in that years final had to get past Liverpool in the Semis first. The same Liverpool team who had put 9 past them only seven months earlier. The match was an epic encounter which went to extra time and eventually it was Alan Pardew who put them into the final.

Their eventual cup final opponents also had a high scoring end-to-end encounter in their Semi against Joe Royle’s Division Two side Oldham Athletic. Like the Palace/Liverpool encounter it was three-all going into extra time. But nobody could find a winner and it went to a replay and again another half an hour was needed after the 90 until Mark Robins in the 114th minute finally settled it.

On to the 12th May 1990 and once again it was the number 3 involved, as well as yes… extra time.
Repetition was the key for this year because it wasn’t decided that day and unlike now back then it wasn’t decided on pens, but another replay five days later still at Wembley.

Unlike the previous matches this replay was a tight low scoring one and in the 59th minute it was Lee Martin who scored the only goal to give Alex Ferguson his first major trophy.

As we now know 1990 was a football and musical year, with New Order recruiting John Barnes for the England/World Cup song and for the FA Cup Final both teams released a single. Man Utd went with err… a Scotsman and some bagpipes… but (thankfully for us) Crystal Palace decided to do it themselves:

» Crystal Palace 1990 FA Cup Squad – Glad All Over - plus the (scratchy) B Side - » Crystal Palace 1990 FA Cup Squad – Where Eagles Fly

EXTRA TIME: Ah that YouTube… what a treasure it is… I found some solid gold in the form of the Palace 1990 team appearing on the Derek Jameson show “singing” their cup final song:

Oh I haven’t mentioned who was on that team and singing above; In there you will find Nigel Martyn, Geoff Thomas and one ohmygodIcantstoptalkinglistentothesoundofmyvoice Mark “Brighty” Bright.
Now you’ll go and watch.

Extra Extra Time:
I also found this excellent and very funny video of a Top Of The Pops/Crystal Palace countdown:

And Finally… Ah I know you are going to ask, so here’s the original:

“Eagles !”

Another run out for Dagenham Dave and his penchant for belting out the occasional tune.

I don’t have anything to add what I previously wrote so I’ll repost the quote from an article about him:

“… He’s [Venables] not new to crooning. As a nightclub owner he used to treat the punters to a regular SingalongaTel, and as a teenager he sang with band leader Joe Loss. At 17 he had to choose between football and singing. “I won the week’s talent contest at Butlins, and was invited back for September. I said to [the manager] Tommy Docherty, ‘Look, I’ve won this competition, I need to go back in September, if that’s all right with you’, and he said, ‘No you can’t do that ’cause you might be in the team’. It was a good way of finding out if I was in the team, really. Hahahaha! If he’d said, ‘Go and sing the song’, you knew you was in trouble.”

It mentioned about him recording tracks for an album but I’ve not found any further evidence.

One thing that is evident from his musical ventures that El Tel likes big band and swing. Defiantly sees himself as a Frank Sinatra type.   Update: Just remembered that he appeared as Antony Newley on Celebrity Stars In Their Eyes in 2000.

[See post to listen to audio] » Terry Venables – I’ve Got You Under My Skin

- Next we have a short video: Venables and Robbie Williams who are guests with Jonathon Ross.
At the time Williams was plugging the swing album he had out. Ross shows everybody an appearance by Terry and the QPR team on the Russell Harty show in 1974. In the clip we can see Venables serenading his teammates and we can see some very embarrassed and bored looking face in there:

Sadly that is only a glimpse of the song. I don’t have the full version by him, so here are some others:

» Betty Hutton – What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For (1945)

» Emile Ford and the Checkmates -What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For (1959)

» Ray Peterson – What Do You Want To Make Those Eyes At Me For

» Johnny Earle – What Do You Wanna Make Those Eyes At Me For

“He’s fat, he’s round, he’s taking Crystal Palace down…”

The Swede with a turning circle of the Titanic came to our attention when he scored the winning goal in their match against England which knocked us out of Euro ’92.

Well come on. It was the Graham Turnip era and have a look at who was on the field for us that night:

England: Woods, Batty, Pearce, Keown, Walker, Palmer, Platt, Webb, Sinton (Merson, 79), Lineker (Smith, 64), Daley

Andy Sinton ? Andy Sinton !

(Another shameful note from that night was with it being the last match Lineker played for England. He was subbed for Alan Smith in the 64th minute thus robbing us of a chance to equalize and him of equalling Bobby Charlton’s record.)

Two years later Tomas Brolin broke his ankle and was never the same after that. He recovered from his injury but in that time he was laid up Brolin put on some weight and never got rid of it. This didn’t stop Leeds United paying £4.5m for him in what turned out to be a disastrous move. In the 18 months he was there he played 25 times and scored only 4 goals in 2 seasons. After this he was loaned out a few times before Leeds eventually put him out of his misery (they cancelled his contract).

As we’ve seen with the choices by some clubs with their managers, nobody seemed to notice or learned anything from this and 1998 he became the assistant player-manager alongside Palace’s best ever player – Attilio Lombardo.
But the bald Eagle and the rotund one couldn’t keep them in the Prem and after relegation at the end of the season, Brolin finally took the hint and retired from football.

Nowadays he is a successful businessman and owns a Swedish-Italian restaurant (no surprise there then) back in Sweden. More amusingly he became the mouthpiece for selling vacuum cleaners online.

Now comes the strange part.

In relation to football and music and Tomas Brolin I found this Swedish language song which is sung to the tune of Dolly Parton’s “Joline.”   I’ve done a search but obviously since I don’t speak the lingo I can’t find any additional info. If you do know more then drop me a line.

In the meantime have a listen to: “Brolin, Brolin, Brolin, Broliiiiinnnn….”

» Unknown Artist – Brolin

It's not over yet. Time for the weird part.

Another bit of lyrics for you: “It’s my life….It’s my life….” [repeat ad nauseum]

Yeah you remember Dr Alban and that fecking annoying song which got even more distasteful when they used it on a Tampax advert.

Dr Alban is from Sweden and in 1998 he got some famous friends of his to appear in a video for his single, called Alla Vi (Friends in Need). These friends included Bjorn Borg…yes THE Bjorn Borg, and the Leeds United & Crystal Palace legend pie eater Brolin.