Season 84/85

Celtic Glasgow – Rapid Wien - Played in Manchester - 12/12/84

Source: Youtube
A massive Celtic support turned out to support the their team on the night. Unfortunately feelings were running high and the atmosphere was absolutely poisonous.

Celtic attacked from the off and Roy Aitken blasted a great chance over the bar in 8 minutes. In 17 minutes Aitken cracked a shot off a post after a Provan corner. From that attack Rapid broke up the field and Pacult outpaced McGrain to score. Despite tremendous effort the Celts could not peg it back.

In the second half Celtic were refused a penalty and a Celtic fan ran on the pitch and kicked keeper Feurer in his goal. It took 6 policemen to lead him away. At the end another Celtic fan ran on the field and assaulted Rapid's Pacult.

This game was a horrendous experience for Celtic's management, players and fans. Rapid with their Machiavellian practices behind the scenes had prospered and UEFA had allowed them to do so.

The cheats had won.



Source : The Times

The Times (1984)

A night which began with crowd fervour ended with crowd violence, to provide a depressing finale to Celtic’s ill-starred European Cup Winners’ Cup second round tie with Rapid Vienna. At Old Trafford last night, Celtic swept forward on an emotional charge, fell to the classic counter-attack, a single goal giving the Austrians victory on the night, and a 4-1 win on aggregate.

That was distressing enough for Celtic, whose sense of grievance was understandable at UEFA’s order to replay their second leg, which they won, 3-0. But whatever the rights and wrongs of UEFA’s original decision, made because an Austrian player reportedly hit by a bottle, the behaviour of Celtic’s fans last night left them sadly exposed, the Rapid goalkeeper Feurer being attacked by one fan during the second half and Pacult, the goals corer, by another as he left the field.

When the venue was named, a Scottish colleague asserted that the prospect of Celtic in full cry was a sight rarely matched in football. If the team was slow to live up to the boast, the fans were another matter.

The suspicion that their passion might prove their team’s undoing, however, was quickly fostered as a series of headlong assaults left them looking exposed should Rapid mount a quick counter-attack.

For 15 minutes, all the Celtic pressure produced nothing more threatening than an Aitken drive, which flashed over the bar, and an attempt by Burns which brought Feurer rather unnecessarily to full stretch: but that was enough to keep the crowd in full voice.

The 16th and 17th minutes saw expectation suddenly displaced by despair. Provan’s third corner of the night was only half cleared, McGarvey drove the ball across goal. Burns missed as he ran in and Aitken, coming in behind him, poked the ball against the post.

As it rebounded into the penalty area, Celtic were still caught up in the excitement of the moment, three players attempting unsuccessfully to recover and turn the ball back in.

They failed: and they were left exposed as a quick break by the Austrians transferred the ball to Pacult just inside his own half. The slow McGrain, the covering defender, failed in his attempt to trip the Austrian forward, who ran wide of the advancing Bonner and clipped it into the net.

That effectively was the end for Celtic. They continued to surge forward, but their individual runs betrayed a tactical naivety.

Before the game, the Celtic manager, David Hay, had said that even more important than winning was retaining the club’s name. The tackles of McGrain and Aitken were already putting it at risk when a fan, if he can be so called, did the club irreparable damage. He came out of the crowd to launch himself at Feurer, punching the goalkeeper into the back of the net.

It took five policemen to pull him off, and although Feurer recovered to make two splendid saves as football briefly reasserted itself, the end was again violent. Pacult being kicked in the groin as he left the field, by another Celtic supporter.

Liverpool FC - Panathinaikos – 25/04/1985

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Panathinaikos

Iraklis - PAOK Saloniki – 21/04/1985

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PAOK

Nottingham Forest - FC Bruges - 19/09/1984

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FC Bruges East-Side

Cliftonville FC - Celtic Glasgow - Friendly game – 14/08/1984

Source: mail

(...)
A strong Celtic side recorded a straight-forward 4-0 victory over Cliftonville’s part-timers with goals from Colquhoun, McGarvey and two from defender Graeme Sinclair. The game should be a largely-forgotten footnote in Celtic’s history but it was a game that was never finished – the referee blew the final whistle early, many believe at the request of the Celtic players. The friendly atmosphere had changed as early as the 20th minute to one of fear and loathing. The Scottish media reported that the game had been abandoned due to “crowd trouble.” This was a convenient mistruth. The supporters were not in conflict with each other, a regular feature of games at the time. The trouble at Solitude arose when members of the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC), the province’s quasi-paramilitary police force made up almost exclusively from the then-majority Protestant community, decided to make their presence felt.

Celtic fans


No-one knows for certain what the spark was. Some rumours claimed that Loyalists from the nearby Westland Estate were throwing stones at fans on the roof of The Cage. The atmosphere in the city had been volatile since the previous weekend when Sean Downes, who was attending an anti-internment rally, was shot dead at close range by an RUC officer firing a plastic bullet. Cliftonville FC understood that an agreement was in place with the RUC that their officers would remain outside of Solitude in order to avoid confrontation with the mostly nationalist crowd gathered inside. The RUC reneged on the agreement.


Armed officers appeared at the terracing opposite the Main Stand midway through the first half. Their presence was neither called for nor in any sense necessary in the absence of any disturbances. Supporters of both clubs who were mixed on the terracing confronted the interlopers. The RUC achieved their aim: hand-to-hand fighting broke out and the small number of police officers in the ground were quickly over-ran, with one becoming isolated and losing his hand-gun. (One story goes that the gun fell into the hands of the IRA who offered to return it to the RUC – bullets first). All too predictably, more armed reinforcements arrived from vehicles located in the streets behind The Cage. And then the plastic bullets made their appearance. Their target was the fans in The Cage and on its roof – the fans responded with bricks and stones. A full-blown riot was soon underway – although most of the rioters in this instance happened to be in uniform.

There were moments of bleak humour during what turned into a dark day. Years later, Frank McGarvey recalled that “To cap it all, someone threw a transistor radio onto the park and Mark Reid thought it was a bomb. I had never seen him run so fast as he bolted out of its way!” The game certainly left its mark on McGarvey: ‘That was the most frightened I’ve been in my life. It was a full-scale riot. I just remember standing on the park and the police charging fans everywhere. I couldn’t tell you anything about the actual game itself and whether I played well. I just wanted off the park.”

There was a cessation in the violence at half-time. Some fans had already retreated from The Cage to other parts of the ground. Some had chosen to leave the ground entirely. When the second-half got underway however the RUC decided they wanted to clear out The Cage. With plastic bullets being fired indiscriminately and fans battoned and hauled along the terracing either by their hair or their hands, the Royal Constabulary got their way. There were pockets of resistance. Dated and largely unfocused photos taken by a Cliftonville fan captured the full horror of what occurred, as did footage shown on the ITN News that night: fans on the terracing cowering in terror from plastic bullets fired over their heads and individual supporters being dragged along the ground by packs of RUC men liberally administering beatings along the way. One fan in a Celtic scarf was clearly unconscious while being man-handled. By the end of the game the chant of “SS-RUC” went up – it would become a staple chant of The Jungle for years afterwards.

RUC officers


RUC officers using tear gas in the stand and "attacking" celtic fans

Eintracht Braunschweig - Bayer Leverkusen- 13/04/1985

Source: press

A number of Eintracht Braunschweig fans found Saturday night's 0-2 defeat by Leverkusen hard to swallow.
There had already been disturbances before the start of the match and then disturbances in the city centre, during which several arrests were made.

Two young supporters have even been charged with assault and battery.
According to the police, they are accused of throwing bottles and fireworks.

An Eintracht fan was arrested for vandalising a tram and throwing eggs.

Go Ahead Eagles Deventer - Ajax Amsterdam - 14/04/1985

Source: Dutch press

A 21-year-old Ajax fan was stabbed in the buttock with a knife before the start of the Go Ahead Eagles-Ajax football match in Deventer yesterday.
The Amstelladam man's injuries had to be treated at a hospital outpatient clinic.

The Deventer police on foot with a group of Ajax supporters.
He was irritated by the behaviour of the Go Ahead supporters, who challenged the Amstellodammers.
The man broke away from the group and confronted the Deventer supporters.
A scuffle ensued.

He later saw his trousers covered in blood and realised that he had been stabbed during the fight.

No other incidents were reported before, during or after the match, which required the presence of 146 members of the police force.

West Ham United - Tottenham Hotspur - 06/04/1985

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West Ham United - Newcastle United - 02/02/1985

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