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SOURCE: Fans paid price for Eric Cantona's actions | Football - Times Online
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.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.
load of bollox woz outside pub in wallsall & muggy palace ***** singing munich