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Posted on by Welloffside

Words and Photos by Mark Leech.

My first visit to watch England was at Wembley in 1970 and was also my last as a paying spectator. Not that it was a bad experience, far from it. England beat Northern Ireland 3-1 with six of the World Cup winners playing in front of a 100,000 crowd with three of the ’66 heroes scoring that night. One of them, Bobby Charlton, was making his 100th appearance for England, while George Best was scoring for the Irish.

That night we went on a coach with my junior Sunday morning football team as a treat for winning the League and one of those lads, Glenn Hoddle, would go on to make his full England debut there nine years later.

My own ‘debut’ would come just three years later in slightly less exotic circumstances. I was there as a film runner for the sport photo agency that I’d joined a month earlier. It lashed down with rain as England lost 1-0 to Italy in November 1973 and though I had no waterproof clothing and sat behind the line of photographers on a damp Evening News, I thought I’d died and gone to heaven as I threw the ball back to Mike Channon. That match would be the final match for Bobby Moore and Sir Alf Ramsey only last one more. The end of an era and also my childhood in a way.

During the next few months I decided that I needed to get amongst that line of photographers and I gratefully received a cheap Russian Zenit camera that Christmas. The next May, my boss couldn’t believe that I chose to spend a very rare Saturday off by driving down to Cardiff with him in his Mini van, for the Wales v England match. It was fair to say my diary wasn’t full at the time. England won 2-0 and the new boys, Keegan and Bowles got the goals. I managed to get a nearly sharp photo of the two of them celebrating a goal which got used in a few newspapers on the Monday morning. Very pleasing but not enough to get me away from my darkroom duties of mixing chemicals and running prints around Fleet Street.

Better get a move on with this article, or we’ll never get through to 2019 at this rate. You’ve got better things to do and I’ve got to get to Wembley tonight, so I’ll be brief. Friendlies were never ‘just friendlies’ back then and the 2-2 draw with Argentina in 1974 was ferocious, beating West Germany in 1975 was joyous and the defeat to Cruyff’s Dutch team of 1977 was humbling.

Shortly after that match I went out working on my own and due to my brother’s first wedding in 1980, arrived in Turin only hours before the vital Italy-England Euro Championship match and we were eliminated later that evening. This would set a tone for many more overall disappointing tournaments, accompanied by a few moments of the dreaded hope.

Before the next tournament, there was the now infamous trip to Oslo in 1981, where we lost 2-1 to Norway and the Norwegian commentator really enjoyed himself.

A great win in Bilbao against France at World Cup ’82 ending in elimination without losing a match. At this point in my life I’d never even had a holiday abroad so five weeks around Spain in an old VW camper van was an education.

A combination of events meant that I didn’t get to Mexico in 1986, still at least nothing important happened during that tournament.

Moving on to Euro ’88 and England played three and lost three and out wonderful newspapers all went for Bobby Robson.

Expectations were low for Italia ’90. My favourite moment was capturing Gascoigne celebrating after his free kick was volleyed home by Platt in the 119th minute in Bologna. No television camera picked that up or, as far as I know, did any other photographer.

We went through the Graham Taylor years to the El Tel Euro ’96 when we all did get carried away. Most of my favourite England moments have been miles away from Wembley but beating Netherlands 4-1 in that tournament was one of the best performances I’ve seen.

Shortly after elimination by Germany via penalty shootout in the semi-final,ex Spinney Dynamos midfielder Glenn Hoddle was appointed as the England manager. Two very bizarre away trips to Moldova and Georgia set up a qualifying match in Rome, which somehow ended up 0-0 despite chances either end in the final minutes, and England though to France ’98.

This was probably my most memorable tournament photographically and with the emergence of Michael Owen, we really thought we had a chance. The match against Argentina in Saint-Etienne was the most intense I’ve ever witnessed. I was working overhead from a similar position to the television cameras, close to halfway, which meant I was following the whole 120 minutes and inevitable penalty shootout.

After the excitement of a 2-0 win at Hampden in the first leg of the play-off against Scotland, came a 1-0 home defeat at Wembley in the second leg, then the Euro 2000 tournament itself which followed a familiar pattern of early elimination, despite beating Germany 1-0.

Not being deemed worthy by the FA for a photo pass for the famous 5-1 win in Munich, meaning another annoying gap in my England archive.

Some average matches in Japan 2002 ended up with some fairly average pictures until Ronaldinho caught David Seaman unaware with a long range free kick and once again I’d taken a photo capturing an England failure, that I really didn’t want to take.

Our name was on the trophy after Rooney had set Euro 2004 alight but his injury in a superb 4-2 win against Croatia left us coming up short once again, as Greece would take a title that England have never won.

The next three tournaments followed similar patterns and apart from the Lampard goal that never was against Germany in Bloemfontein, I don’t get many memorable photos. Perhaps that was partly down to going over to digital photography after Euro 2004 and looking for a newsworthy shot rather than something timeless from these events.

Anyway, a few more matches to go before I stop photographing England, maybe I’ll take my best ever shot tonight against Montenegro, who knows ?

I’ll finish with my favourite player to have given it all in an England shirt. Although many have played with passion and pride, none of them reached the levels of Bryan Robson. Looking through my camera, he just played on when others around him had lost heart. You can argue the case for many others and I accept that a telephoto lens isn’t always giving the whole picture. Kevin Keegan came a very close second.

Brian Kidd

Posted on by Welloffside

The 1973-74 season started with the invasion of Highbury by Manchester United fans, hell bent on letting everybody know they were the top dogs in the football hooligan league table, the one that really mattered in the lads world back then.


I’d just taken my O level exams a couple of months before and thought I was all grown up by working a summer job as a building labourer ahead of deciding what my next move would be, once I’d discovered whether I’d managed five, six or seven passes. I got two.


That made me feel like life amongst the lads on the terraces would be my calling and I was in the Gunners pub as reports of how many United fans had been spotted at Euston.


We were informed by the scouts that there were “Fousands of ’em”, we were a generation brought up on the film Zulu.


The wonderful old stadium looked a picture, beyond compare with a full house, when suddenly hordes of United fans charged straight down the pitch towards us packed on the North Bank.
Arsenal lads emerged from all sides to stop the invasion and drove them back.


The 3-0 win for Arsenal was but a sideshow to this adolescent and a mouthy United fan getting a pasting on the train home seemed a fitting finale to that day.


Fast forward twelve months and I was to have the same anxieties as I was given bottom of the barrel camera kit from the photo agency that I was now working for and dispatched to Orient v Manchester United in Division Two. My protests that it would be a huge story and an experienced photographer should attend were sneered at by photographers who didn’t want to be seen at lower league matches.


Yes folks, I’d got a job in a darkroom in October ’73, as my pride wouldn’t let me retake the exams and I’d somehow stumbled into a job with Sporting Pictures agency in Holborn. £12 for a six day week but something about it screamed ‘adventure’.


Anyway the United fans once again ran amok but this time I was supposed to capture it all through the lens of an antiquated camera. I failed miserably.


One week later, I was put back on to film running duty at Highbury for Arsenal v Manchester City, an altogether more peaceful prospect.
The deal was, as soon as the photographer had a decent photo, he would unwind the film, give it to you and you’d head down the Piccadilly Line, run to the darkroom and get the film developed, printed and run around the Fleet Street picture desks.


I hadn’t completely given up hope of making it as a photographer and I sat behind the other guys, with an old Nikon F with a 50mm lens, hoping for something.


Brian Kidd scored early on and the photographer for my agency, Joe Mann, was confident he’d nailed the goal ( no looking on the back of the camera for affirmation back then). However, this was a time before choreographed celebrations, nothing else was expected and as Kidd’s momentum took him behind the net, Joe Mann cooly rewound the film to hand to me. Only I wasn’t there.


I’d decided to follow Brian Kidd behind the net where he picked up a police sergeant’s helmet and inexplicably plonked it on top of his own head. The fans went wild and I took just the one frame on that roll of film. The result is shown here.


To look back now, exactly forty-five years this Saturday, and figure how I’d gone from standing on that terrace to becoming somebody who got a picture used on the back page of nearly every Sunday newspaper, is hard to describe. It was never going to be me out there on the pitch but capturing it through a lens, has run it a close second.


Forty-five years, no wonder my back is aching.