Middlesbrough mob-handed '88
Words: Tom Reed in conversation with Karl Hanssens
Images: Karl Hanssens
In rainy streets, we’d kiss away the shivers.
Steel River. Chris Rea.
England is the world centre of nothing to do.
We while away our best years sat on our arses, talking bollocks.
Rumour has it, that the main job of 80’s football firms’ was as SAS snatch squads to rescue men from Saturday shopping trips with the mrs’.
“We gotta get down quick and pull John out of Rumbelows. Ian’s stuck in Dorothy Perkins, there’s no helping him”.
Middlesbrough went mob-handed to Manchester United on the tenth of September 1988 and why not, with football a major pull for anyone with an eye for subculture and something more, plus a fear of browsing cabin beds in Texas Homecare.
©Kark Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Hover Speed hovercraft. September 1988.
At the match, was Karl Hanssens, the Belgian teenager with a penchant for English sport, who had the foresight to travel with his camera, so the image of Brian McClair’s disallowed chip at the Stretford End was captured for posterity.
In Belgium, they received BBC TV and Ceefax, meaning that any inquisitive teen, bored of watching Poirot or chefs cooking frites à la mayonnaise could flick over into a new world of Grandstand and Match of the Day and games being played in war-zones.
Hanssen’s Anglophile family set out that September Saturday in 1988 to England via Hovercraft from Calais to Dover, as any self-respecting family would.
There was no sat-nav of course, in those days, so the Hanssens clan drove forth in their Peugeot 504-Break with little more than a road map and somewhere to go.
They stopped at Villa Park and Maine Road, using the soaring floodlights as place markers, before arriving at Old Trafford for Karl’s second pilgrimage to United, after an earlier visit in 1985.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Stretford Groundside. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough.
His United routine has stayed the same since, but back then meant visiting the rudimentary club shop, walking laps around the ground and the wastelands and the folk in double denim, taking it all in, like a palace among the bins.
There were no real need for touts in ’88, you could pick up an adult ticket on the seats on match-day for the princely sum of £6.60.
That equates to £18.61 in today’s money, which tells you some of where football has gone and shifted away from the people in double denim and home-made bobble hats and Belgians on a jolly.
Being brought up on English TV and with an inquisitive eye, Karl has the same meerkat neck and eye for crowd movement and surges, which caught the attention as much as balls being slipped between lines.
The Boro away support was impressive and plenty giddy, with their team fresh in Division 1 after promotion via the playoffs in ’87-’88, where they saw off Chelsea in the final, going en masse to the ever-so-welcoming Stamford Bridge.
Middlesbrough’s turnout in Autumn ’88 was a compliment to United, even though Alex Ferguson’s side wasn’t pulling up any trees, following a mediocre start to the season with a home draw against QPR and an away loss at Liverpool.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Brian McClair’s disallowed chip.. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
After picking up a programme for 60p, Karl took his place in the seats, trying to avert his eyes from the creepy United mascot that Tim Burton might tone down for fear of scaring the kids.
To his left was the Stretford End, straight ahead the United Road with its standing at the front.
The advertising boards round the pitch showed little of the modern-day big business buy-in to football: “Salford Van Hire, “Peter Hunt’s Pies”, more modest operations that put a few quid into the sport in its leaner days.
To the right, the Middlesbrough support in the Scoreboard End, tight but sprawled out like a Pieter Bruegel the Elder painting from Karl’s neck of the woods.
The Old Trafford attendance on the day was a slim (by today’s standards) 40,422.
This was the scene as it was, no airs and graces, and a rough around the edges sport, that favoured, the hardy, the game.
The Boro boys were “up for it’, swarming in their enclosure like a wasp’s nest that been sprayed with Lynx Africa. Craven for Bernie Slaven.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Middlesbrough away support. Man Utd vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
United keeper Jim Leighton dived to his right early on, preventing a premature Boro goal and a high tide from the Steel River massive.
The match was close and the grass was short and Karl was in love with everything. The noise from the Boro boys and the United lads with their arms stretched out on the Stretty, that the Wonderfuel Gassed roof didn’t quite cover.
Slaven, the mud-splattered rockabilly striker who knew where the goal was. Jesper Olsen for United who dribbled like that kid who was much better than you at football at school.
United’s goal brought Karl, a Red of the Manchester ilk to his feet, but an anti-climax for the Boro support who would have done anything to notch even a single.
Instead his hero, Bryan Robson, slotted home in the 70th minute right in front of the Middlesbrough red wedge, who dwelled on those fine margins before some climbed in to the upper tier at full-time to have a pop.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Manchester Utd vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
At the end, Karl went to bade farewell to the Middlesbrough escort, who although losing on the match, had probably won the day in the stands and streets due to sheer gumption.
He noted that the Boro supporters were “all lads, with few women and children”. The photos look like strikers manning a picket, which indeed, many had, with the steelmaking city walking out in 1980 during a fabled piece of industrial action.
On Sunday, with Rumbelows and Dorothy Perkins and Texas Homecare closed, there was nothing to do but think back.
Karl was on the hovercraft on Monday, his finger poised for Ceefax page 302.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Middlesbrough escort. Man Utd vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Karl with the (kept behind) Middlesbrough travelling support.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Old Trafford exterior. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Old Trafford exterior. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Utd mascot. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. In the seats. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Boro support. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Stretford End. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Boro support. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
©Karl Hanssens/ Terrace Edition. Stretford End. Manchester United vs Middlesbrough. September 1988.
Tom Reed is Terrace Edition Editor and can be found on X and Instagram: @tomreedwriting.
Tom is also on Bluesky @tomreedwriting.bluesky.social
A United Home is an ongoing collaboration between Karl Hanssens and Terrace Edition.
Share you memories on thoughts on the matches involved via our website: www.TerraceEdition.com, our profiles on X and Instagram: @TerraceEdition or by emailing terraceedition@gmail.com
