Cyril Knowles and the Second Summer of Love

I believe that there was a massive link between the dance music culture and football - and much of this is blended by the summer of '89 and lasted for a decade until like anything else the next generation found something new. Nothing lasts forever and most of the clubs and venues that I went to from 16 to into my mid twenties (although less frequently come the end) are flats / housing or completely derelict.

I was certainly too young to have been in the clubs at the birth in '89 (as I was twelve!) but I certainly was able to enjoy the the tail-end of it from '94 onwards before it all started to die-out around '99.
I was certainly a fantastic decade for me - some people had teddy boys, some had mods, there was disco, punk and new romance (certainly felt sorry for those poor sods!) - this was just the next stage of the cultural evolution.

I went to some of the fantastic nighclubs around the country - and was lucky to experience the cream of the South West nighclubs in Plymouth (Wasp Factory at Dance Academy and Plymouth Warehouse / Club Oz), Torquay (Face2Face or the Monastry as it became), Barnstaple (Kaos), St Ives (The Shirehorse) Exeter (Positivity at the Warehouse), Cardiff (The Hippo Club) Bristol (Lakota and the Depot) right up into Leeds (Town and County club), and out to London (Raindance, Strawberry Sundae, Bagley's, The End). There were the giant Obsession and Fantazia parties at Exeter's new County Showground, and the Cornwall Colusseum in St Austell.
There was also a big outdoor party (or "raves" as the police and media called them!) scene in the South West.

I would say from experience (as a clubber rather than a hooligan) that a lot of the old "hooligan mobs" just progressed to going to nighclubs and raves. Certainly in Plymouth, Cardiff, Leeds and London there would be groups of blokes that would perhaps look menacing if you chanced upon them on a matchday - but in the atmosphere and ambiance they were perfectly fine and I never experienced any violence at these sort of places from these sort of people - I certainly have seen far too much in the usual meatmarket / boozer nighclubs and outside.
Plymouth Warehouse / Oz in particular had a bar known as the "TCE Bar" (after the cretinous football hooligans of the day at Plymouth) where they used to hang-out at a weekend. I believe it would be fair to say that there was a link between the control of drugs in that place and the football hooligans - and countless times the police raided places and searched the punters and carted-off the dealers.
There were players that used to hang-out there as well - I certainly used to see Alan Nichols there until he left and then subsequently died shortly afterwards. A real example of a casualty of the time - I can only assume that there were not regular urine samples taken from footballers back then...............
Most of them were pretty "blissed-out" and talked about football - I never had any problems when I said who my team was. The same could be said in Cardiff.
I belive that London and Manchester were the places to see the most interesting mixes of football culture mixing in the evenings. Bagley's, which was just north of King's Cross station had loads of the old football lads that used to go there.

I think that the police and Tory government of the day thought that things like "Operation Own Goal"took-down the hooligans that made watching football a violent experienced in the 80's, I believe that it was just an evolution that was naturally made.
The culture sort of died-out over time - as these things do. I think it was in many ways a victim of the property boom and licensing - although it used cost up to £20 to go into these clubs they could have sold very little booze, which I guess is where the money is. I recently was in Plymouth and got went on a trip down memory lane (or Union Street to be precise!) The two megalith clubs that I used to go to are both boarded-up and I'm sure that they'll never be open to the same sort of punters that used to go there 10 years ago.

People talk about the "casual culture" in football today - I don't believe it exists, just young scrotes in overpriced but cheap looking jumpers. Look at the pitch invasions at Hillsborough and Luton and from the Grimsby fans over the last few weeks, sadly chavs who have been influenced by crappy Danny Dyer films and the 10-a-penny "I wuz a proper naughty 'ooligan in the ICF" books that pollute bookshelves today.
I think that some of the young today are easily influenced by some of the dregs of the 80's that have never moved-on.

How that fitted-in with Cyril, well who knows - I can't imagine that it would have been his cup of tea and I would expect him to have disapproved of it all.
I still think about Cyril and the great times he game us after some barren years - it's a shame it all finished so quickly, but that isn't as tragic as his passing at such a young age.

Just the 4 years of tax dodging for me Merse - still paying my bloody student loans back now!! There weren't that many students who were into it then though - not until it became a bit more mainstream.

Newton Abbot is certainly a different town now to the one I grew up in ~ witness the falling over of themselves to elect a Tory as their first ever MP in this election when the town I grew up in was a bang to rights Labour Urban District Council surrounded by Tories in the Totnes Constituency. However, that's not what we're discussing................

"Summers of Love"? I've had to think long and hard about this one as the first one in the late sixties really passed me by as I wasn't really into "girls" or anything else other than football for that matter when FO'F ruled the roost and The Gulls were at the height of their ascendancy. I think the nearest I came to any Summer of Love was wearing flared loons of various colours, a bright yellow Grandad shirt and an Afghan coat as my hair grew progressively downwards towards my shoulders.

When I left the area and then returned in 1973 the dress code was still like that in NA and I certainly WAS into female company and I dread to think how much of my seed got spread around the country and Scandinavia for that matter thanks to the buzzing Torquay nightlife, fortnightly changing punters, seasonal staying hotel and catering workers and gorgeous English Language students from Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark

I don't think I allowed any of this to infringe upon my football watching or playing habits save the occasional trip up North not ending until a Monday due to stop offs on the way back to sample the Northern Soul scene in such towns as Wigan and Stoke On Trent any time I "got lucky" on the dance floor....................one could certainly "blow out" a day's work on the buses at that time without getting the sack as they were so chronically short staffed in those days and there was always the means of making up time and wages through overtime during the week!

Even when I met and began a life with my first wife and child, it never really affected the manner in which I watched my football because at the end of the day I watched football because I loved football and wouldn't let a particular phase in popular culture effect that one iota.

To me, the idiots who took their Crombie wearing, Doc Martens culture onto the terraces and behaved violently were indeed that......................idiots. Those who took the "Clockwork Orange" culture, total morons and if any Hippy happened to be a football fan it was more because he just happened to come from Totnes rather than anything more complicated than that. ;D

Indeed, the Smart Casual look of the terrace hooligan of the "Second Summer" might have had a little more brain power but certainly less idea of how to put it to good use until they "grew up" and certainly some of them are now in particularly comfortable lifestyles thanks to the present day idiots who patronise them and their ability to wax lyrical in that pathetic manner of the terrace hoolie made good.