Sir Alex Ferguson once claimed Gary Pallister was the quickest player over 100 metres in all his time at Manchester United. The giant centre back needed every bit of that speed at Stamford Bridge 36 years ago as he ran to the tunnel to escape the horde of Chelsea Headhunters who were charging towards him and hurling bottles.
The former Manchester United and England defender recalls the chaotic game that descended into violence and became known as the “Battle of the Bridge” after Pallister’s Middlesbrough held off Chelsea in the second leg of their promotion-relegation play-off in 1988, losing 1-0 in west London but winning 2-1 on aggregate. It earned its title, too, as 45 people — 25 of them police officers — were injured during a riot on the pitch.
The two teams meet again in the second leg of a competition, this time the Carabao Cup semi-final, with the Sky Bet Championship side bringing their 1-0 aggregate lead with them on Tuesday. For Pallister, though, the memories of that match 36 years ago are still vivid.
“I remember thinking, ‘This is going to be a long day,’ ” says Pallister, who won 22 England caps and made 317 appearances for United. “We defended for our lives. They had a couple of chances but we saw it out.
“The recollection is running over to the Middlesbrough fans behind the goal when the final whistle went and somebody grabbed me and went, ‘No Pally, run!’
“I turned around and they were flooding out of the Shed End. What are your thoughts? ‘This is not a good place to be!’ I turned tail and ran for the tunnel. Is it the fastest I’ve ever ran on a pitch? Quite possibly!
“The Chelsea Headhunters were notorious. I remember stuff being thrown down into the tunnel, bottles smashed next to us. It took a bit away from the moment. We were in the dressing room and Ken Bates [the Chelsea chairman] came in and apologised for the behaviour of the fans.”
The giddy heights of that famous day in Middlesbrough’s history when they secured their place in the First Division must have seemed a world away for a 21-year-old Pallister while on holiday in Tenerife with his girlfriend in the summer of 1986. Calling home was no simple task and, after stacking up on pesetas and finding a phone booth in a quiet enough area to hear his mum, he probably wished he had not gone to all the effort.
“Me mam said, ‘I’ve got some bad news,’ ” he says. “I thought, ‘Oh Jesus.’ I wasn’t sure what it was going to be and she said, ‘The club’s gone bust. They’ve closed the gates and it looks like they’re going to go under.’ I was like, ‘Wow, my career’s just started.’
“I only signed for Middlesbrough in late ’84 from Billingham Town in the Northern League. I knew the club was in financial difficulties but we had no inkling it was that bad. The repercussion was that the club was going to be shut down and we probably wouldn’t start the next season.”
The 58-year-old describes what followed at Middlesbrough as “a rollercoaster ride”.
“We eventually went back to pre-season and we were training at parks, putting down jumpers for goalposts and trying to train,” he says about a club who were preparing for a campaign in the Third Division. “It was a case of getting a feel for the ball and getting your fitness up in case we did survive.
“I think literally at quarter to midnight they agreed a deal with the FA to pay off the club’s creditors and the FA granted us permission to start the season. Eventually we did get paid and we had to go down to the council offices in Middlesbrough to pick up our wages.
“Bruce Rioch [the Middlesbrough manager] was a tough taskmaster. He knocked us into a bit of shape. I had my own issues with Bruce but as a coach I thought he was excellent. He got us to play attractive football. We had good players, even though we were untried, and we got thrown in at the deep end and it was case of sink or swim.”
They swam. A season that started with Middlesbrough locked out of their own ground and playing home games at Hartlepool ended in automatic promotion as they finished runners-up.
“We went through that season with a squad of 15 or 16 players,” Pallister says. “That’s all we had registered. A lot of lads were from the local area, Durham and Middlesbrough and Teesside, and going through what we did brought a unity within the team. We knew we were up against it and we knew we had to fight harder.”
The following season they were again expected to be relegated and those fears were reinforced when they won only one of their first five games. It was at this point, though, that their fighting spirit — led by their captain Tony Mowbray — kicked in.
They won 12 of their next 16 league games and despite blowing automatic promotion on the final day of the season, they finished third and entered the promotion-relegation play-offs, which featured the fourth-bottom team of Division One and the teams that finished third, fourth and fifth in Division Two.
After beating fourth-place Bradford over two legs, Middlesbrough set up the showdown with Chelsea, first at Ayresome Park, where they won 2-0, and then came the wild afternoon in west London. Gordon Durie scored for Chelsea, in front of a crowd of 40,550, after 18 minutes, but it was not enough to deny Middlesbrough.
Does Pallister think this Middlesbrough side can pull off a similar upset? “Yeah, yeah,” he says. “They’ll have the bit between their teeth.” It has, after all, worked for them in the past.
