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Kung Fu Cantona - 15 years on



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ManxSeagull

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Jul 5, 2003
1,637
Isle of Man
SOURCE: Fans paid price for Eric Cantona's actions | Football - Times Online

ericcantonakungfukickca.jpg


A kick up the Nineties: Cantona launches himself at Simmons after being sent off at Selhurst Park 15 years ago today


Never mind the fuss about Elvis’s 75th birthday this month, today marks a momentous anniversary for another unique performer known as “The King”. It was 15 years ago that Eric Cantona jumped the advertising hoardings at Selhust Park and karate-kicked an abusive Crystal Palace fan.

Already shown the red card, Cantona was walking off to jeers when Matthew Simmons ran to the front of the stand and screamed either “F*** off, you French c***” or “It’s an early shower for you”, depending on who you believe. So far, so par for the course. Then Cantona tore up the script and replied with a flying kick and punches.

Television news reported “the horror of all who witnessed it”. Not quite all. I was there, supporting Manchester United, and some of us defended Cantona from the start. Not because we thought that violence was somehow cool, even if the assailant had his collar turned up like Elvis, but because if Cantona was, as one paper put it, “Le Nutter”, he was notre nutter. Having stood in the same stand in 1993 when, thanks to King Eric, United beat Palace and sealed their first league title for 26 years, I was not going to let a little kung-fu kick come between us.

That is football, whether some new followers of “the beautiful game” understand it or not. Football is the home ground of Freud’s id, the irrational and emotional side of the brain, one area where we do not have to be sensible or justify ourselves as we do in real life. Even some United-haters saw the funny side, such as the Chelsea fans seen on Victoria station that night singing: “Ooh-ahh, Cantona.”

Others saw it very differently. Much of the coverage of le coup de Cantona made a five-second fight in which nobody was injured sound like a massacre. He was banned from football for nine months and sentenced to jail, changed to community service on appeal. After the court hearing, Cantona made his “cryptic” remarks about seagulls, trawlers and sardines, the meaning of which for the media pack should have been clear enough.

One paper declared it “The end for the madman”. Yet Cantona came back to lead United to the Double the next season, before retiring in 1997 to mess about with beach football and French movies. He remains unrepentant; asked in 2008 what he was thinking at the time, he replied: “I should have punched him harder.” :clap2:

Last year he starred in Looking for Eric, Ken Loach’s film about a depressed Manchester postman whose life is turned around by visions of Cantona. The film captured the reverence in which he is still held by supporters.

Simmons, who was 20 when he clashed with Cantona, was sentenced to a week in jail and served one day. He was first cast as victim and then as racist provocateur, after somebody unearthed his links with the far right and record for robbery with violence.

Now an unemployed building worker, Simmons told his local Croydon paper last year that he still gets hate calls, although he claims not to hold a grudge. In a 2004 interview he was more bitter about his treatment, claiming with some justification that shouting at a footballer “is not a criminal offence and certainly does not mean I should be hung, drawn and quartered”. He said that he still went to Palace occasionally, but more often watched Fulham. :laugh:

The reaction to the coup de Cantona established themes for the policing of players’ thoughts and deeds, including the notion that they must act as “role models” for life rather than sporting heroes for 90 minutes. Cantona’s admirable insistence that “I’m not a role model, I’m not some superior teacher, telling you how to behave” now seems as out of fashion as those shirt collars.

Fans, too, felt the impact. It is an irony that those who defended Cantona by blaming Simmons helped to legitimise stricter controls on what we can do, sing or say in our sanitised and often atmosphere-free stadiums.

Fifteen years on, despite the fruitless search for “the new Cantona”, the way the game has changed makes it seem certain that we will not see his like again, and are unlikely ever to witness another such unforgettable night. Like that other King before him, Eric has left the building.
 

edna krabappel

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Jul 7, 2003
47,215
Funny, I was only wondering a few days ago when the anniversary of the Palace incident was.

Surely we should have some sort of commemorative event at an upcoming game?
 

edna krabappel

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Jul 7, 2003
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I can still picture the Gulls Eye front cover a few days after it all happened. If memory serves correctly it read

Cantona Attacks Palace Fan
Vive La France!

:clap2: :clap2: :clap2:
 


edna krabappel

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Jul 7, 2003
47,215
The subsequent trial was one of the best bits, when that lying Palace weasel attempted to convince the court what a decent, upstanding, poor victim he was.

"And what did you say to the defendant, Mr Simmons?"

"Well, your honour, I said 'Off! Off! Off! It's an early bath for you, Mr Cantona!"


Show me a Palace fan who speaks in that sort of language and I will show you a live Mauritian dodo.
:lolol:
 

edna krabappel

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Jul 7, 2003
47,215
A scummy French **** of the highest order!
I hope he dies a slow,painful death.

For the benefit of the court, I believe what SW really just said was

"I say, that scheming French chap is a veritable rogue and no mistake. I cannot but hope his inevitable end is anguish-filled and jolly well drawn-out. Your honour"
 


For the benefit of the court, I believe what SW really just said was

"I say, that scheming French chap is a veritable rogue and no mistake. I cannot but hope his inevitable end is anguish-filled and jolly well drawn-out. Your honour"

I know what i said, Edna.
That cowardly surrender monkey indirectly caused the death of one of our own,Paul Nixon due to his cowardly actions of jumping into the (then) family enclosure.
The French piece of filth should rot in hell.
And all his f***ing family.
 

edna krabappel

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NSC Licker Extraordinaire
Jul 7, 2003
47,215
I know what i said, Edna.
That cowardly surrender monkey indirectly caused the death of one of our own,Paul Nixon due to his cowardly actions of jumping into the (then) family enclosure.
The French piece of filth should rot in hell.
And all his f***ing family.

I know nothing of this. You say indirectly...so what happened?
 

Barrel of Fun

Abort, retry, fail
There was a feature (Did I say that?) in the Observer a while ago...



On scoring

There is nothing more paradoxical, nor more breathtaking, than a goal in front of a crowd which is waiting for it (1993)

On the football season

Peaks of happiness and depths of pain - just like the chain of mountains in the Alps where I am going to rest and paint (1993)

On actress Rachida Brakni, his second wife

I look at her in the eyes and I find the only mirror in which I want to look at me (2009)

On poetry

I will never find any difference between Pele's pass to Carlos Alberto in the final of the 1970 World Cup and the poetry of the young Rimbaud (1993)

On the time to get in line to walk out on to the pitch

Before time is not the time; nor is it time after the time (1993)

On Nicolas Sarkozy

Le Pen with a mask (2005)

At the press conference after he'd kung-fu kicked a Crysial Palace spectator

When the seagulls follow a trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. Thank you very much (1995)

On his early days at Montpellier FC

Our mission was to interpret The Magic Flute, every Saturday (1993)

On music

Wolfgang has been a great friend for many years (2008)

On philosophy

I've read a lot of philosophy on Page Three of The Sun (1995)

On the after-life

After his first training session in Heaven, George Best turned the head of God, who was filling in at left-back. I would love him to save me a place in his team. George Best, that is, not God (2005)

On his film career

In football you have an adversary; in cinema that adversary is yourself (2006)

On the French national coach, Henri Michel

I am not far from thinking that he is a bag of shit (1998)

On his psychoanalyst

He advised me not to sign for Marseilles and recommended that I should go to England (1993)

On his first game for an English team [Leeds]

I stuck a fine banderille in the neck of Luton (1993)

On his favourite memory

I have a lot of good moments, but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan (2007)
 


I know nothing of this. You say indirectly...so what happened?

Because of Cantona's far too lenient punishment,we next met Scum utd in a cup game.
The glory hunters happened upon him and his children at a motorway service station.
He was killed.
Those scum glory hunters made Cuntona a martyr.There was much bad blood at Selhurst after that game and it's gone on ever since.
Quite frankly,if I knew I was a cert to get away with it,I'd shoot the French prick in the head repeatedly...whilst smiling.
 

8340

New member
Jan 18, 2010
41
I know what i said, Edna.
That cowardly surrender monkey indirectly caused the death of one of our own,Paul Nixon due to his cowardly actions of jumping into the (then) family enclosure.
The French piece of filth should rot in hell.
And all his f***ing family.

good:clap2::clap: load of bollox woz outside pub in wallsall & muggy palace ***** singing munich
 
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edna krabappel

Well-known member
NSC Licker Extraordinaire
Jul 7, 2003
47,215
Incidentally, whilst not wishing to describe the death of Paul Nixon as anything but tragic, how can blame be apportioned towards Cantona?

I was thinking that. Tragic, without a doubt, but to blame Cantona for that is stretching the argument a LOT.
 

TWOCHOICEStom

Well-known member
Sep 22, 2007
10,537
Brighton
Because of Cantona's far too lenient punishment,we next met Scum utd in a cup game.
The glory hunters happened upon him and his children at a motorway service station.
He was killed.
Those scum glory hunters made Cuntona a martyr.There was much bad blood at Selhurst after that game and it's gone on ever since.
Quite frankly,if I knew I was a cert to get away with it,I'd shoot the French prick in the head repeatedly...whilst smiling.

Sorry I don't quite follow? Some Man U fans killed an innocent man just because Cantona kicked a fan?

Surely that's nothing to do with Cantona and everything to do with the mindless scum that attacked the poor guy?
 
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