Them Were The Days ... And I Thought It Were Parr Connor Low

[Wanderingred]

Edit: just saw that it was mentioned in the original post! Doh!!!

[ten minutes of rough]

That MOTD clip brings back so many memories of my early City supporting days, (surprisingly it appears we didn't win 'em all after all then! ...throws away the old rose tinted )... Loved everything about Saturday afternoons at the Gate then, the REAL City/Rovers divide at school, work & throughout Bristol & the suburbs in those days. The shitty facilities we all endured with affection, the pocket money prices, the 'just like us' players (driving ordinary family cars or even bussing it!)... The wooden rattles, programme sellers outside the ground alongside the rosette boards on posts with cloth capped sellers, the lines of queues waiting to clickety clack through the turnstiles, the smelly bogs with perma-piss flooring , scarves, hats, the older pipe, Embassy, Woodbine or Old Holburn smoking fellas in cloth caps, the smells..yep its the smells that I can still imagine now, that lingers in the mind, the smell of guys straight from the factories still smelling of their workplaces, the heady mixture of various tobacco smoke clouds, the waft of liniments on the players and from the dressing rooms as the teams emerged from the tunnel, and even the unmistakeable stink from the bogs.. Saturdays at the Gate I miss them old days, the masses travelling on overcrowded green Bristol buses, the crowds marching up North St and across the park or up Winterstoke road... The togetherness you can't get nowadays with all the car travellers, it was the rubbing of shoulders, the tripping over of other peoples feet, the smells, yep the sights, sounds, togetherness on mass of fellow supporter, the moans the groans, the cheers chanting and laughter and it was the smells, the smells that reminds me of teenage Bristol City supporting match day experiences...

The COYR's chants are timeless though - Come On You Reds!

Thanks for posting that 44 year old MOTD clip - so much has changed yet so much remains the same (in hearts & minds -blimey we're all bloody mad!)

Sums all that up for me too, the smells so evocative, especially from the dressing room at the old tunnel that wafted around the ground,, and the tobacco cloud of 10,000 fags that lingered with you all the way home, and being able to change ends at half time to see City attack and Big John score again.

The half time scores that were in code, the bus drivers that lined the pitch that drifted out 10 minutes before the end, and the bus ride home to Clutton time spent memorising the team from the programme ...Gibson Briggs Thresher Parr Connor Low Derrick Clarke Ateyo  Williams Hooper .

 

Oh!  and the Green 'Un,  

 

Just as daft all these years later.   

[fanjita]

A lot of those players played in this match against Blackpool in 1967, Fred Ford was sacked afterwards. It was City's second appearance on MOTD:

 

After watching this I have be reminded how good Tony Green was.

[pongo88]

Sums all that up for me too, the smells so evocative, especially from the dressing room at the old tunnel that wafted around the ground,, and the tobacco cloud of 10,000 fags that lingered with you all the way home, and being able to change ends at half time to see City attack and Big John score again.

The half time scores that were in code, the bus drivers that lined the pitch that drifted out 10 minutes before the end, and the bus ride home to Clutton time spent memorising the team from the programme ...Gibson Briggs Thresher Parr Connor Low Derrick Clarke Ateyo  Williams Hooper .

 

Oh!  and the Green 'Un,  

 

Just as daft all these years later.   

If you were in the enclosure, near the tunnel, the smell of horse liniment as the players ran out was overpowering.