On this day in 1985...

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Really violent thunderstorm over Goodison as the coach pulled away. Playing football with the local police. Group photographs being taken between groups of opposing fans. No trouble. A great night.
 

Can it really be 32 years ago today?,I was a youth in Rotterdam with all it's "attractions."
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Fantastic couple of days,just remember laughing with everything and everyone,the Police,The Rapid Vienna fans,the locals,playing footy with the local constabulary. How we celebrated as only Evertonians can,what a time to be alive,"Trio,Trio,Rotterdam,Wembley and the Championship too"
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Really violent thunderstorm over Goodison as the coach pulled away. Playing football with the local police. Group photographs being taken between groups of opposing fans. No trouble. A great night.
My dad said he'd take me. I said 'it's alright, wait till next year, when we lift the European Cup'. Boy did I regret it a week later...
 
Jumping on to a tram from the city centre to the ground, laden with that month's production of Oranjeboom, we found ourselves the only four Blues aboard. The sea of green and white scarves before us parted as an amiable, florid-faced bloke ambled over, singing incomprehensibly while pointing at our beer and proferring a bottle in return.

What exotic Austrian concoction was on offer, I wondered, taking hold of the proposed barter? An obscure Obstler? A connossieur's Obstwasser? A Zwetschgenwasser to die for?

Nope. From the ancient Viennese house of Whyte and Mackay, no less. "You might want a proper swally after the game, son. The bastards deserve a hiding."
 
By the way, did anyone else mistake a prostitute's roadside rest room - least, I assume that's what it was - for a Rotterdam public toilet?

Bladdered, taxiless, and lost, we meandered, post-pub, in what we (wrongly) believed was the general direction of the coach park. Desperate for a slash, and anxious not to offend locals who'd been wonderful hosts, we saw what we assumed was a municipal bog and one of our group led the way in. As the rest of us approached, screaming and shouting, much of it female, erupted from within. The rest of us ran in, assuming the trail-blazer had merely gone into the ladies, either by mistake or from sheer desperation. The sight that awaited stlll makes me smile even after all these years.

Our intrepid toilet-goer, one of his feet off the ground, the other wedged against a wall, was in a headlock, formed by a dusky and muscular gent, presumably of Moluccan origin, who, we later reasoned, rightly or wrongly, was a pimp. All was not lost, however, as our heroic Evertonian had managed, even in his appalling predicament, to secure a firm grasp on his opponent's knackers. It was the sort of last-ditch, underhand, and resourceful manoeuvre that makes a man proud to be a Blue.

Before a silent, riveted audience of hookers, other pimps and dishevelled, distinctly malodourous, Evertonians, a protracted, grunted negotiation followed, as the combatants progressively relaxed their respective grasps in sync. A scantily clad woman thereupon began screaming. I flung some guilders at her and we legged off - more accurately, wobbled - into the night. Further adventures awaited.
 

If the Celtic fans we encountered on the tram were a joy – being, by turns, passionate, knowledgeable and generous to a fault – not so much the second group of third-party interlopers.

We met them in the Everton end, about mid-way up the bank of terracing more or less directly behind the goal. We’d gone in early to ensure we claimed a barrier that would keep us vertical for the duration. I wish I could say we were savouring the realization of a collective dream born in the sixties – Everton in a European final – but it was, at best, by now only a distant consideration. The truth was altogether more sordid: We were legless, flatulent, and ravenous. For my own part, I’d have eaten roadkill raw in the hour before kick-off. I was also mysteriously thirsty again.

We stood catatonically staring into space as a cluster of twenty or so teenagers gathered in front of the same barrier supporting us. Even in that condition, we knew immediately they weren’t ours, as they didn’t smell, could stand unaided, and sounded, well, foreign. One member of our group confidently pronounced them Barcodes, presumably on the eminently reasonable bases that they were incomprehensible and dressed weird. So, not at our sharpest, even by our own increasingly dismal standards, we prepared for the worst, to practice the time-honoured way of the warrior, otherwise known as TDK: Terrace Drunken Kung-Fu. This ancient martial art involved running full-tilt in stacks and bell-bottomed trousers at a terrace opponent before leaping inches into the air and missing the intended target by a mile, thence, via stretcher, to the nearest A&E. We needn’t have bothered.

They were Feynoord, it turned out, there to worship at the altar of English football violence. Their incongruously polite questions ranged along the lines of “When did you last stab a Manc?” to the more general “Is your firm winning?” In the ordinary run of things, I think we’d have just told them to grow up and get lost, but the thing was this - they appeared to have booze and we no longer did, thanks to a fit of philanthropic zeal on the tram and in front of the ground. A trade-off seemed in order: bullsh*t for booze. And one of us had to make the sacrifice.

In the course of the next five minutes, and to my eternal shame, I claimed to have single-handedly taken the North Bank, the South Bank, the East Bank, and, last but not least, the West Bank, this latter one directly from the Israeli Army. I had also cleared the Stretford End in 1964, bashed Eccles on the Shed in 1968, flung Hoy and the Herd from the North Bank in 1969, and put the End back in West Ham’s Mile mob in 1970. None of them knew my name, unlike Everton's, but I was their nemesis. I was a one-man wave of destruction, cunningly disguised as an inebriated middle-aged fart. I went in for the kill: “Now, lads, how about passing that flask around…”

It was our turn to be confronted by blank stares. None of them had the foggiest recollection of any of the names I’d reeled off. For them, it was all Headhunters, Bushwackers, and ICF. Worse was to follow. The flask contained some sort of sugary health drink laced with a splash of what seemed like vodka. It was an abomination. Fair dos to them, though, they joined in all our chants, celebrated like maniacs when we scored, and raced off into the night at final whistle, seemingly delighted after a night in close proximity to England’s greatest mob – all four of us.
 


It was an OK evening. Not happy with the kit, and woeful defending for the goal.

LOL. Jokes aside, its scary how good we were. And have you noticed. From the time a goal is scored to the other team kicking off again is about 20 seconds. No of this dancing, self adulation, diving, shirt removing kissing & praying nonsense we have now. A simple handshake and a pat on the back, and on with the game. And there weren't many stoppages or free kicks were there. No rolling around playing hurt/dead when you were either fairly tackled, or even untouched.

Sigh. Much better days.
 
Recently watched the game again for probably the first time in nearly thirty years. Me and my mates were there but like many were just a little worse for wear having refueled up from the night before in the 'Dam.
Probably didn't appreciate the game at the time but on re-watching it l cannot believe how dominant we were. RV hardly ventured across the half way line in the first half and how we weren't home and showered by half time utterly amazes me.
Thankfully, we just carried that performance over into the second half and once we went in front and despite Krankel pulling one back we simply went down the other end and Sheeds finished the game off.
That team never knew the meaning of defeat. How many times that season when we went behind did we just shrug our shoulders and say to each other 'never mind, it will make a game of it' because our belief, the team's belief was that we would simply go up a gear and win.
Thank you Everton, thank you HK and the boys for giving us happy memories. But we now need to make new ones for the current and future generations.
 

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