21 years ago today...

[Arriba]

as a few others have said,i think we would have easily stayed up if we had kept our place in the top flight.
we had a proper good side then with real quality from front to back. depsite the injustice i felt back then,the good memories outweigh the bad. my most enjoyable time as a town fan.nothing has ever come close since.

[TownEnders.com]

Some of the news footage from that period is uploaded on YouTube:

[fuzzy]

As a Town fan, memories of this episode and the current news about the shit that has been going on at FIFA which the FA have complained about makes me want to laugh. Corruption rools.

Bunch of cunts, the lot of em.

[herthab]

Weird time for me. My son was born in June '90 and I collected him and his mum from the hospital on the day the march took place.
As this was before the advent of the internet a lot of fans, myself included, didn't realise how much shit the club were in, even on the day of the final. I remember first hearing the news that we had been demoted 2 divisions - it felt like I'd been kicked in the bollocks.
This episode showed perfectly that, even over 20 years ago, money is the only thing that the football authorities care about.

The last 2 decades could and should have been so different.

[thepeoplesgame]

As a fan base, I don't think we talk about 1990 as much as we could or should...given what a seismic event it was in the club's history.  Those of us old enough all remember it.  Hearing these stories just makes me remember the sense of injustice and how wrong it all was.  Brings the memories right back.

This is true. The town reacted brilliantly at the time, but the Football League knew they could stitch us up because ultimately, in the long term, nobody outside Swindon would give a shit. And they were right.

It stands as one of the greatest injustices in English football history, yet how many fans beyond our own even know about it today? If it had happened to Liverpool (which, of course, it never would) you'd never hear the end of it. Perhaps it stems back to the way the club just meekly accepted the decision at the time.

Presumably the statute of limitations has long since run out regarding our popping a belated claim for compensation through the Football League's letterbox?

[ScillyRed]

I worked around Lincolns Inn at the time and watched some of the court case in my lunch hours - did not really have a clue what was going on - remember the FL barrister was highly Eton/Oxbridge - our was excellent but totally off the wall. Went for the final decision where there was a massive discussion re costs but had to wait for the Evening Standard to understand what the final decision was  Ozzy was there watching and I think he was legally trained.  Bad times - thought it could only get better 

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I worked around Lincolns Inn at the time and watched some of the court case in my lunch hours - did not really have a clue what was going on - remember the FL barrister was highly Eton/Oxbridge - our was excellent but totally off the wall. Went for the final decision where there was a massive discussion re costs but had to wait for the Evening Standard to understand what the final decision was  Ozzy was there watching and I think he was legally trained.  Bad times - thought it could only get better 

You are right, Ozzy was legally trained.  He came out with a classic line about the town being a "sacrificial lamb at the altar of hypocrisy". 

[Bewster]

watching those videos makes me feel sick and angry. Cunts the lot of them.

[Summerof69]

Opposition fans used to call us 'Swindle Town', but at the end of the day we were the ones that were swindled.

The amount of 'tax free'money that was involved was estimated to be about £100k, which is what Rooney gets paid in 3 days nowadays. Did we fix matches? No, but Juventus did over 3 years to help them win the title in each of those years and they got the same punishment as what we did.

You look what other clubs gone soon afterwards and you see that we were the ones that got screwed over :

Chelsea got fined for illegal loans in 91
Spurs got a £1.5m fine in '94 for illegal payments
Chesterfield got a 9 point deduction and fined £20k for illegal payments in 2001, but still got promotion that season.
And of course Boston got a four point deduction and fined £100k, when they used dodgy means to get promotion to the FL, where their manager was also found guilty of being involved in a cover up....

http://www.twohundredpercent.net/?p=8698

[leftside]

I was in a nightschool class at Swindon College when I heard the news on my personal stereo. I went to the CG and the gathering at the Magic Roundabout. There was an ace herse with 'people in glass houses ...' or something similar painted on its window. The spontaneous march up to Old Town and then back down town was something I don't think I'll ever experience again.

My mates and I spent a number of the following nights at the CG playing footy on the pitch in the dark. It was quite eerie, but there was a genuine sense of cammeraderie despite the obvious futility of trying to fight the powers in charge.

We were some of the fans that drove up to the Football League HQ at Lytham St Annes on a Sunday. Of course it was closed up so we performed a few chants, deposited our old style ST banner on the porch, and drove back to Swindon. Fuck all good that did us. And my mate had his car number plate broken off (accidentally) by one of two unknown Town fans who came with us...

I was angry at the punishment at the time, but I'm actually now glad that teams get points deductions for going into administration - after all they do, to some extent, commit football fraud by operating a team that they should not be able to afford to sustain (hello Crawley?).

The absolute killer has been the knowledge that we were singled-out as an example to all, yet no club since has suffered the equivalent points deduction that we were subject to. Every time some kind of football financial irregularity comes to light in the news I feel genuine anger at how our punishment NEVER set an example at all.

[OOH! SHAUN TAYLOR]

It's something that's still so vivid for anyone who was around at the time. It's the footballing equivalent of 'Where were you when Kennedy was shot/the twin towers went down'.

I'm not directly comparing it to those events, just how indelibly certain things imprint themselves on your brain

[leefer]

I still have the letter from the FA explaining to me on there decision after i and many others had asked them about the fiasco.

[steptoe41]

i was 15 and this came at the time when stfc was the most important thing to me.i was well hooked and followed the club up and down the country.
i remember a group of us were at the fair on wootton bassett road and someone had a radio.the news came through and everyone went to the county ground. roger malone was there and got abused by the fans.one fella in particular went mental at him.

Roger Malone. What a grade A Tosser Bristol City supporting Kunt he was.
Wasn't there a song sung about him in the Townend?
Something about him taking little boys home if I remember correctly.

[joteddyred]

I still have the letter from the FA explaining to me on there decision after i and many others had asked them about the fiasco.

I wonder how many letters they got? I think my response is in a box with other letters at my mum and dads.

I was 15 at the time.  I was just about to go babysitting at a neighbours when the news came through.  I couldn't stop crying and eventually went to their house unable to speak through the tears. I made them about half an hour late going out, because they were worried about leaving me.

My dad wasn't in when the announcement was made.  He didn't come home until the early hours after joining the hoards who went to the CG as soon as he heard.  I vividly remember seeing the news the next day and my friend who had also gone to the CG, was crying hysterically and some twat pushed a tv camera asking for her view - pretty obvious really!

Ardiles is right, it doesn't get talked about much anymore, but it will always be there.  The worst ever day in the history of STFC, my worst ever day as a football fan and so wrong  in every sense.

When we were back at Wembley in 1993, I went with friends.  Before the days of mobile phones,  I didn't see my dad until around 8pm that evening on County Road.  The first thing he said was something like 'We're really there, no bastard's going to take it away from us this time'. I don't think I honestly believed it until we kicked off the following season.

[Munichred]

We were superb against Sunderland and we were lucky enough to give Steve Cram some stick afterwards. On the positive side Sunderland fans got a real hiding that day.

Not quite sure what you mean by a real hiding. Our coach was in amongst a load of theirs, and quite a few of their fans got on our bus after the game, but only to congratulate us and swap scarves. They were asking us why we were looking so deflated. Even then, there was an air of foreboding of what was to come..