Geograph - photograph every grid square

During the years following the 1985 Heysel Stadium disaster, when English football clubs were banned from European competition, the Football Association instituted the Full Members' Cup for First and Second Division sides in an attempt to fill the gap in the timetable. Top-flight clubs failed to take it very seriously (and it did not set fans alight with excitement, either), with the result that the second final, in 1987, was contested between Charlton Athletic (perennial First Division escapologists at that time) and Blackburn Rovers (Second Division and, before Jack Walker's cash injection, showing no signs of going further). Blackburn Rovers won a poor game 1-0 and for quite some time I regarded that as the highlight of my many years as a Rovers fan. Years later I worked with a Charlton fan who had been in the other end on that day and remembered it as one of the worst of his football-supporting career.
Notable in the foreground, the steel cage and spikes to keep supporters in their seats and off the pitch: not long after this the Hillsborough disaster was to illustrate quite how dangerous this was, after which the fences came down immediately. (For the modern barriers, see TQ1985 : Horizontal fencing). Notice also the way that stewarding in those days was carried out by uniformed police rather than stewards in high-visibility jackets: a more confrontational attitude ruled football in those days.