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The marrow that flew

11/3/2018

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An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United matchday programme for the home game against Grimsby Town on 3 November 2018.

Volume three of Celery & Coconuts – Andrew Bennett’s masterly history of Cambridge United, dropping through your letterbox soon – had several working titles before Coconuts plumped for Champagne & Corona.

If certain people had had their way, it would have been entitled Big Ron, The Doc and the Vegetable Marrow. Another possibility was When I See a Marrow Fly. It was almost called Vegetables Incoming.

Those of you who were around in the 1970s – the decade with which this brilliant book concerns itself – might have an inkling of the reason for this apparent obsession with a member of the squash family.
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Champagne & Corona: substantial vegetable content. Design: Jon Appleton
The rest of you will have to buy a copy, turn to page 280 and read referee Jeff Sewell’s account of goings-on at the Abbey on 29 September 1979.

As Champagne & Corona illustrates in Andrew’s usual entertaining style, the 1979-80 season was one in which our club established itself as a Division Two fixture – an achievement that had not even been contemplated just 32 years before, when United were still competing in the Cambridgeshire League.

There was an echo of one of that season’s fixtures recently when the U’s were drawn to play Guiseley AFC away in the first round proper of the FA Cup.

In 1979-80, United were still getting their heads round the idea that they wouldn’t compete in the Cup until the third round, because of their elevated status in Division Two. It had come as something of a shock the previous season, when they exited the competition at the first opportunity by going down to a 3-1 loss at Shrewsbury.
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Cambridge United's Roger Gibbins takes on Chesham United goalkeeper Billy Barber in an FA Cup third round tie on 5 January 1980
Now they were faced with the prospect of a trip to a club of a similar standing to our friends in Guiseley: the Isthmian League’s Chesham United. The U’s were cast in the unfamiliar role of giants.

At a ground the Cambridge Evening News described as a ‘rustic cockpit’, the players trotted out on to the kind of surface that was all too familiar in those far-off days: a sea of mud. You could have counted the blades of grass on the fingers of one hand.

Those of the all-ticket crowd of 5,000 who were standing at the appropriately named Cow Meadow end greeted home goalkeeper Billy Barber with a grateful round of applause – two days before he had still been in Australia, where he had been visiting his fiancée.

As expected, the mud pit proved tricky. Pacy U’s striker Alan Biley found himself bogged down and goalkeeper Malcolm Webster struggled with his goal kicks. United fans, dreading a humiliating giant-killing, puffed with relief when home captain John Watt slammed an early 30-yard shot against the bar, leaving a muddy brown stain to remind us of a narrow squeak.

Roger Gibbins to the rescue: he blasted United into the lead after half an hour. Then, after brilliantly saving a Chris Turner header, the jet-lagged Barber was beaten by a George Reilly nod ten minutes from the end.

United had battled through the mire to a glamorous fourth round tie at home to Aston Villa. But that’s another story.

​Order your copy of Champagne & Corona by visiting 
CFU’s online store or dropping in at the caravan on a match day.

​Cheerio
Harry
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And I would rather be anywhere else

7/26/2018

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​In 1979, the political and cultural magazine the New Statesman published an article by journalist and broadcaster Russell Davies, a 1967 graduate of Cambridge, in which he exposed the U’s to the searching glare of the media spotlight. The article gives those who were never lucky enough to visit the Abbey Stadium in the late 1970s an accurate impression of the experience to be expected on a wet and windy March Saturday.
​

Davies was reporting on the match that took place at the Abbey on Saturday, 10 March 1979. United lost the Second Division fixture 0-1 to Notts County in front of 5,157 spectators. The game’s lure had been irresistible, said the writer.
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Mick Leach: joined Tom Finney and Derrick Christie in attack for a time
‘What! The oldest League club in the world against a home side boasting hot-shot £300,000 property Alan Biley, in whom Spurs are trying vainly to suppress an interest?’ It was a spectatorial must, said Davies.

‘Cambridge United is still a small club in resources and outlook, and on a day like Saturday it seems to get smaller. A Fenland wind, rotten with damped-off celery stalks, came bowling straight down the ground from the Allotments End, where there is no stand – just a shallow open terrace, caged off for visiting supporters (on this occasion no more than a couple of hundred or so).

‘Every so often, an insulting spit of rain put a fine wet edge on one’s discomfort. “The club shop is open,” barked the tannoy, “for the sale of mugs, rattles, scarves, badges … “ “… And players,” remarked a police sergeant authoritatively.’

Biley had failed a fitness test behind the main stand, Davies learned, and Tom Finney and Derrick Christie were going to play up front. As it turned out, they were joined for a time in attack by Mick Leach.

He continued: ‘It proved, actually, to be a game rich in dwindling veterans. Cambridge had the ex-Norwich defender Dave Stringer, who looks less mothballed than most, and the far from wieldy Bill Garner as substitute, while Notts County trotted out the most aptly named of all centre backs, Jeff Blockley, and relied heavily in midfield on Arthur Mann, ex-Manchester City, and on one of the most widely deplored of the World Cup Scots, Don Masson.’

Davies remembered being astonished by Masson’s distribution when he was at QPR, ‘when for a brief time that unfulfilled team seemed almost potty with talent. Here he was player-coach, and possibly too much the latter; but on such a kick-and-rush day, anyone hitting the ball with less than full power tended to look fussy.

'It was plain almost at once that Cambridge was a side used to getting good results from traditional crosses curled away from the keeper but that nobody this time was going to get much joy from these.

‘Someone in midfield was heartless enough to knock the stuffing out of Cambridge’s tiny Steve Spriggs, the only player in any Division, I believe, over whom Brian Flynn of Leeds towers majestically. It had been a hasty, raw, red-eared half, not much appreciated by 5,157 shivering souls.

“‘Tell you wot,’ volunteered one bloodshot observer of the play, ‘I wish I had some o’ this to put on moi garden.’” But even though the pop-song chosen to enliven half-time was Elvis Costello’s Oliver’s Army (refrain:  “And I would rather be anywhere else but here too-day …”), there was as yet no real sign that this was going to be a really classic misery day for home supporters.

‘It all started about five minutes after the interval, when a header by Finney beat the keeper and was handled by a back on its way, so it seemed, over the line. The referee first signalled a goal, then consulted a linesman, then commuted the sentence to a penalty; and we all watched, not very thunderstruck as Finney muffed, scuffed, bumbled and trundled the kick vaguely towards the left-hand post.

‘Goalkeeper McManus could not have flopped on it more gratefully if he’d been his namesake Mick, applying the deciding shoulder-press to the Wild Man of Borneo.’

The misery continued, wrote Davies, with Christie being stretchered off and Stringer being booked ‘for the most innocuous trip since the Owl and the Pussycat went to sea.'

Ninety minutes passed without a goal. But in injury time, a wind-assisted clearance from McManus put Mann through and he ‘torpedoed’ Malcolm Webster with ease.

United had been unlucky on the day, Davies reported, and had had ill fortune all season, injury to newly signed striker Gordon Sweetzer being a typical misfortune.
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Russell Davies. Photo: BBC
‘But then I wonder, thinking of this small, abashed crowd in its rudimentary ground (only one half-pitch-length grandstand and precious little covered terracing) whether Cambridge are not simply embarrassed by the possibility of good fortune.

‘A run of results such as they have sometimes had this season – away wins, for goodness sake, by 2-0 at Brighton, 3-1 at Stoke and 2-0 at Sunderland – would have put them up where those clubs are. But I don’t believe that the Abbey Stadium (more abbey than stadium) can handle the idea of success.


‘What would they do with it, in a town where it is notoriously difficult to drag the public out of range of their five-bar Belling Glowmaster simulated hearths?

‘Perhaps the lesson of the medieval cathedral is appropriate here; the people need to be shown success – buildings, acreage, splendour – before they can be relied upon to come and worship.

'So Cambridge must soon take the risk, and build. Alan Biley may find, next time he emerges from behind the grandstands, that he’s been cashed in to buy another vale of tiers.'
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A legend hangs up his gloves

5/13/2018

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​Coconuts and Cambridge United Former Players’ Association send their best wishes for a long and enjoyable retirement to Malcolm Webster, who ruled supreme between the Abbey goalposts for eight years between 1976 and 1984 and then served as manager Chris Turner’s assistant.

Malcolm, a highly respected goalkeeping coach who worked at Ipswich in two spells, retired from the game after a 2-2 draw with Middlesbrough last week. He told the Tractor Boys’ website: ‘I have had a great time over the 50 years and I’m happy with what I have achieved.’

The latter part of his career may have been spent teaching keepers the tricks of the trade – at Norwich, Colchester, Hearts, Southampton and Crystal Palace among other clubs – but it’s as a player that Malcolm is remembered at the Abbey. Dependable, brave, athletic, efficient and occasionally awe-inspiring, he played in 286 games for the U’s as they rose from the Fourth Division to the Second and stayed there for six seasons.

He kept 90 clean sheets during that time, 22 of them coming in his debut season of 1976/77, when he was ever present as United won the Fourth Division title.

Malcolm is a native of Doncaster, where he was born on 12 November 1950, but it was in north London that he made his first impression on football. He was 18 when he made his League debut for Arsenal, being thrown in at the deep end against Tottenham at Highbury when Bob Wilson broke an arm. The Gunners lost 4-3 but Malcolm kept his place until he was floored for 12 weeks by glandular fever and the club signed a replacement in Geoff Barnett.

He played around 100 times for both Fulham and Southend but fell out of favour at Roots Hall and was released in 1976. Disillusioned with football, he was working in a friend’s furniture store when he was given a month’s trial by U’s boss Ron Atkinson. His first appearance came in a behind-closed-doors pre-season friendly against Mansfield at the Abbey, won 3-1 by the visitors.

Malcolm’s United career really kicked off in the first leg of the League Cup at Oxford on 14 August 1976, when he was outstanding in a 1-0 defeat. A string of impressive performances and a couple of penalty saves earned him a permanent contract, which he signed following a 4-0 September win over promotion favourites Watford.

Quickly establishing himself as a lively presence in the dressing room, a reliable shot-stopper and – despite a previous reputation as vulnerable to crosses – commanding in the air, Malcolm made the number one spot his own and was voted player of the year by Supporters’ Club members.

That season was the start of a happy and fruitful stay at Newmarket Road that saw the club establish itself in Division Two under John Docherty. Malcolm’s last game as a U came in a 0-0 draw at Oldham on 4 February 1984, but he was back in 1986 as Chris Turner began the process of turning United’s fortunes around.

After a break from football starting in 1988, he began a coaching career that was remarkable for its longevity and successes. Malcolm was in great demand as a coach, both at club and at the goalkeeping school he ran with Fred Barber.
​

Malcolm Webster, we salute you. Keep ’em out, Webby!
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Clockwise, from top: Malcolm Webster in action for Cambridge United in a 2-1 Division Two defeat at Crystal Palace on 29 August 1981 (photograph: Cambridge Evening News); Webster in the late 1970s; saving the day in a 2-0 Division Four win at Scunthorpe on 26 March 1977; comparing hands with a youthful Keith Branagan (photo: Cambridge Evening News); with manager Chris Turner on 9 May 1986; as goalkeeping coach at Ipswich Town, 2017.
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Poster boys

9/11/2016

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Signed squad photo, 1980/81 season.
Just for you, autograph fans … the latest additions to the 100 Years of Coconuts collection, kindly donated by Tim and Will Cutter. They were among the memorabilia collected by their dad Stan, who was a director of Cambridge United between 1980 and 1983 and a fondly remembered member of the Vice-Presidents' Club.

Click on the images to enlarge them and give yourself a chance of identifying the autograph artists. Then why not have a browse of the Coconuts collection here?

Anyone know what Mitchell Springett is up to these days? If so, please drop us a line at 100yearsofcoconuts@gmail.com
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Signed squad photo, 1983/84 season, kindly demonstrated by Messrs (from left) Malcolm Webster, Robbie Cooke, Jamie Murray, Tom Finney and Steve Fallon.
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