We’ve been watching a documentary series about Crystal Palace Football Club and its recovery from near extinction in 2010. It was compulsive viewing, and brought back all sorts of memories.
One of last month’s television highlights was a documentary series, When Eagles Dare, on Prime Video from Amazon, telling the remarkable story of the rescue of Crystal Palace FC from near-oblivion in 2010 to a return to the Premier League in 2013.
The series opens with the club in administration for the second time in a decade, points deducted and in danger of relegation from the Championship to League One (effectively a return to the old third division, a division in which they had not played for 25 years.
To make matters worse, the freehold of the Selhurst Park stadium was owned by a separate company which itself had also gone into administration, meaning that the ground was now in the hands of Lloyds Bank. Liquidation was a real possibility, and a crucial meeting at the bank’s HQ was the scene of demonstrations by club fans in an attempt to save the club, a South London institution that was 105 year old.
In a series of candid interviews with the personalities involved, the series tells the story of the club’s rescue and restoration to Premiership glory. It is a fascinating story compellingly told and is at times very moving.
It’s a measure of its quality that husband Michael – who is by no means a football fan – was engrossed in the programmes – and felt that by the end he’d learned a huge amount about professional football, about team dynamics and the skills required to manage it all.
My own perspective on the series was rather different. I’d first attended a match at Selhurst Park in March 1958 (Palace won 1-0 against Port Vale in the old Third Division South). I was seven years old at the time and have to confess to being more interested in the ride on the 654 trolleybus to get there and back than on the quality of the football.
We moved to South Norwood in the summer of 1959, and the new place was much nearer the ground, being a ten minute walk away. We became regulars at home matches thereafter. Palace by then were in the newly formed Fourth Division but were promoted at the end of the 1960-61 season – the start of a steady rise through the league until they reached the top flight with promotion to the old First Division at the end of the 1968-69 season.
There are many happy memories of those days, including highlights such as the 1962 friendly match against Real Madrid, the 1965 cup run with victories against Southampton and Nottingham Forest, before succumbing 0-3 to Leeds United. Most notable of all, though, was the club’s first match in the First Division in August 1969, when Palace entertained the Manchester United of Bobby Charlton and George Best before a crowd of over 48,000. I’ll never forget the roar when the Palace scored first in what was ultimately a 2-2 draw.
A few weeks later, I set off for University and a career which took me out of London, so I was only an occasional visitor to the ground and last saw a match in 1979. Thereafter, there was a 40 year gap until I was a guest of my pal Alex Warner, himself a devoted Palace fan, at a game in November 2019. The game was against Bournemouth, and like my first match in 1958, ended in a 1-0 victory for the home team. And the club’s anthem, Glad All Over by the Dave Clark Five, is still played at home matches to greet the team, as it has been since the song’s first release back in 1964.
Thus, When Eagles Dare brought back all sorts of powerful memories of those days, and I was riveted by the series. It was good to see people not only owning their successes, but also their mistakes and failures. As I write, it’s a time of great uncertainty for the club – rumoured to be the subject of takeover talks as they search for a new manager to replace Roy Hodgson – and indeed for the wider game as it begins the long process of recovery from the Covid 19 pandemic.
But the events of June 2010 offered a vivid illustration of how loyal the fans are to the club and what a special place Crystal Palace FC holds in the hearts of the people of Croydon and South London. Long may it remain so!