Jibbing is a term deeply woven into the fabric of the Manchester football
match going culture. It essentially means gaining entry to a football ground by
any means necessary and an infamous mantra of ‘to pay is to fail’ is seen as a
code to live by for thousands.
As a mainly straight-going football fan
I’ve tended to do things quite boringly by the book. I might have got away with
paying £7.50 a match at Old Trafford up until the age of 19 but this was mainly
down to my youthful looks than any turnstile trickery.
My one magnificent exception to this
orthodox approach though occurred ten years ago at Goodison Park, Liverpool,
some 20 minutes further down the East Lancs from the home of today’s visitors.
It was May 2003 and Manchester United had
just secured their 15th top flight league title. I was a penniless
third year student living in Liverpool City Centre, a university destination I
had chosen three years earlier for it’s proximity to Manchester – in three
years of living there I missed one home game.
My financial situation dictated that, save
for special circumstances, away games were going to be beyond my means for the
duration of my time there. So when it was announced that United would be
presented with their trophy at Everton away, some two miles from my front door,
I knew I had to be in that ground.
Spare tickets were thin on the ground. I’d
been out of the loop and quite rightly there were scores of Reds ahead of me
who were more deserving. Touts were quoting prices of £70 for a £25 face value
ticket. To us that figure may has well have been £1,000.
I wracked my brains and then it came to me.
Marcus. My Prestwich flatmate had been supplementing his student loan by
working on a pie stand at Goodison and had been boasting about landing the
United job. I asked him to put a word in for me but it proved fruitless. The
company Workbank weren’t taking any more staff on. Time to formulate an
alternative plan.
This came in the form of the photocopied
pricelist and a map of Goodison Park that Marcus had been sent to memorise. I
took the documents to our local shop, photocopied and stapled them and replaced
them without him or the Asian elder behind the desk suspecting a thing.
Come the big day I caught a midday bus up
to Goodison with Marcus with my makeshift passport safely tucked away in my
jacket. As I let him go ahead of me in the queue at the staff entrance he told
me I had no chance of getting in. He was about to be proved most wrong.
A quick flash of my papers was enough to
get past the old boy in the blue baseball cap on the gate. Now for the hard
part. I joined another queue of Workbank employees deep within the bowels of
the stand and when my turn came approached the admin desk and gave the girl my
papers.
“You’re not on the list, Rob. But seen as a
few haven’t turned up we’ve got a slot for you. Ever done bar work?”
Result! A staff wrist band and a blue
jumper were exchanged for my jacket and I was off to the Park End having never
pulled a pint in my life.
My workmates for the day were six orange
faced old girls from Bootle. They had etched on frowns and spent the first hour
of the shift complaining about their rotten husbands.
At half one fans started to filter in. I
served a few but was useless with the mental arithmetic side of things. Some
lad from north Wales actually came back and said: “You’ve given me too much
change mate.”
At 3.10pm I headed up a stairwell and
watched most of the first half from the Park End with a wily old steward.
“Imagine if I told all these yer a Manc, lad,” he said smiling. My stomach churned.
To our right, a jubilant United end was in full voice. Lucky gets.
An oversized scowling Ooompa Loompa poked
me ten minutes later and made it clear that I was needed for the half time
rush. I duly returned to my post where chaos then ensued. I was taken off
serving duty and put on pint pouring. I was equally crap at that too. Pints
went out with a head on them so big that a floating Flake bar wouldn’t have looked
out of place.
By 4.15pm they’d had enough. “Oh, go watch
the match,” ordered the boss. Right you are, I thought and headed back to the
main stand to retrieve my jacket.
I watched the remainder of the second half
with Marcus from the hardcore Glawdys Street End and, for my own safety, had to
feign outrage at a Ruud Van Nistelrooy goal. Come the final whistle we
climbed over the fence in the Bullens Road Stand that separates the home and
away fans and joined the elated 0161 delegation as Roy Keane lifted a
glistening silver trophy skywards.
Ten years on there is a well earned £20
that is rightfully mine still floating away in the system but as you can
imagine it’s not something that keeps me awake at night. My pint pulling skills,
or lack of them, however, are another story entirely.
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