It’s a daunting task but a hugely rewarding one: since Andrew Bennett died last February, Coconutters have been wading through the vast amount of stuff he left us. Words are not adequate to convey the size of our beloved club historian’s archive of writings, stats, reports, photographs … you name it, Andrew saved it. It will take many a year to explore, sort, catalogue and communicate the contents of the entire hoard of treasure. The best we can do at the moment is to nibble away at the edges of the digital pile. As we do so, we regularly unearth priceless examples of Bennettiana, and we’re happy to bring one to your attention today. Around 2010, Andrew described his favourite U’s players from the 40-odd years that he’d been making his regular pilgrimages to the Abbey. He wrote: My name is Andrew Bennett, I am 51 years of age and for the last 35 of those years I have been a resident of the village of Histon. I first nagged my Dad into taking me to the Abbey Stadium on 13 April 1970, for a 3-0 win over Gloucester City. It is well-nigh impossible to pick out just five players who have sported the black and amber over the last 40-plus years, but here goes …
winner at Aldershot, and to discover that he was a humble, well-spoken, thoroughly nice guy as well made it all the more bittersweet that he had to leave us so soon. But then, don’t they all …
Honourable mentions: Dion Dublin, David Crown, Ian Measham, Wayne Hatswell, Martin Butler, Lionel Perez, Tom Finney, Alan Biley, Willie Watson. Cheerio Harry An edited version of this article appeared in the Cambridge United match day programme for the game against Forest Green Rovers on 2 October 2018. When you glug a Corona nowadays, you’re drinking a disappointingly thin lager brewed in Mexico. There may be a chunk of lemon or lime wedged in the neck of the bottle, presumably to make it taste of something. But to those of us who grew up before the drinks industry went daft, Corona means something very different. Corona was the pop that came in bottles delivered by the Corona man in his big yellow lorry: lemonade, limeade, cherryade and loads of other flavours including my favourite, dandelion and burdock. There were Corona depots all over the country and one of them was in front of the Abbey, on the site now occupied by the car hire people. That’s why all right-thinking people call that end of the ground the Corona End. And that’s also why the next volume of the late, great Andrew Bennett’s history of our club, Celery & Coconuts, is called Champagne & Corona. If you want to know where the ‘Champagne’ bit comes from, you’ll just have to buy a copy of the book, and I can help you out with that. The Coconuts mob are taking pre-orders for the book, which will be out in plenty of time for Christmas. To reserve your copy, head, with credit card handy, to the CFU online store at cambridgefansunited.org/store, or to CFU's Caravan of Love in the front car park on a match day . I’ve been allowed a glimpse and, I tell you what, Champagne & Corona is up to Andrew’s usual brilliant standard. It tells the story of the 1970s: an amazing decade that saw the U’s embark on their Football League adventure and climb all the way up to what is today called the Championship – the old Second Division. They were (mostly) fantastic days, when we could feast on the skills of blokes like Brendon Batson, Steve Spriggs, Tom Finney, Dave Stringer, Willy Watson, Steve Fallon, Alan Biley and Brian Greenhalgh. Brian and his striking pal Dave Lill feature on the front cover of Champagne & Corona. Dave is watching Brian tussle with the Rochdale defence at Spotland, during a 2-0 win for the U’s. You can understand and forgive the Dale player's pained expression, although not his hairstyle.
As you can tell from the sparsely populated terrace visible in the background, Dave was one of very few people who witnessed that event. The Third Division fixture, on 5 February 1974, attracted the grand total of 588 spectators – a record low League attendance for both clubs. Champagne & Corona reveals the main reason for the tiny crowd: the Three-Day Week. History lesson for those who weren’t around: in early 1974, beset by industrial action, a global oil crisis, cripplingly high inflation and general discontent, the Tory government introduced measures to conserve electricity consumption. One of these was the Three-Day Week, which limited businesses’ use of electricity to three consecutive days in every seven. Rochdale weren’t allowed to use their floodlights, and United travelled to Lancashire on a Tuesday morning in order to play in the afternoon. So it was that fewer than 600 people were able to turn up and watch. ‘The atmosphere was absolutely shocking,’ observed United manager Bill Leivers. Andrew’s typically entertaining account of United’s place in the history of industrial relations is just one of many delights to be found within the covers of Champagne & Corona. Please order your copy now so that Coconuts can afford to pay the printer's bill. Cheerio Harry
![]() While the United players were toiling in the Cypriot sun in 1973, the supporters back home were celebrating promotion to Division Three and paying tribute to their player of the year: Brian Greenhalgh. The 26-year-old striker had finished top of United’s 1972/73 goalscoring charts, notching 18 times in 47 games, but his tally of 19 the previous season had already established him as an Abbey favourite. The fans were certainly glad he had overcome his initial misgivings about dropping from the First Division to the Fourth when Bill Leivers came calling in August 1971. Greenhalgh made his reputation with Preston North End and Aston Villa, but the goals dried up when he moved to Leicester and then, in 1969, to Huddersfield. Leivers was certain of his potential, but there were some grumbles on the terraces when he failed to score in his first six U’s games. The moaners were silenced when his first goal came at Bury in September. Greenhalgh then married Annette the following Monday and, five days later, netted four times in a 6-0 drubbing of Darlington. He drew a blank in his first eight games in 1972/73, but his class was plain to see and the goals soon began to flow again. The winner in a 1-0 win at Workington was a Greenhalgh classic: he allowed a Vic Akers cross to run through his legs at the near post, then flicked it in off a dumbfounded defender. Eleven more goals followed in 1973/74, but his happy relationship with United fans came to an end in February when Leivers, declaring ‘every player has his price’, sold him to Bournemouth for £40,000. |
Happy Harry's blogI'm the living embodiment of the spirit of the U's, and I'll be blogging whenever I've got news for you, as long as I don't miss my tea. Archives
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