It is a long time since Bradford City had much to celebrate at Brunton Park – 38 long years, in fact – with their most recent victory at Carlisle United’s ground coming in a year which will always have the most tragic resonance for the west Yorkshire club.
1985 is solemnly remembered as the year of the Valley Parade fire which killed 56 people. It so happened that Bradford’s first competitive game in the wake of the disaster came against this season’s play-off opponents in Cumbria.
Their trip to Brunton Park on August 17, 1985 came three months and six days after the horrific events of May 11. The match began a season for the Bantams which ought to have been simply about bright new adventure in England’s second division.
Instead, the toll of the spring's awful events was ever-present in the mind, the period afterwards filled with shock, sadness, funerals, memorials and the publication of the Popplewell Inquiry into safety at grounds which was launched as a result of the disaster.
One of the footballing consequences of the fire was that, because Valley Parade was out of action for a period, Bradford became nomads, playing home games for the full 1985/6 season, and a spell of the following campaign, at Bradford Northern’s rugby league ground of Odsal, Huddersfield Town’s Leeds Road and Leeds United’s Elland Road.
The new season for their team – including many who had been in the side and heroically helped people on May 11 – must have been, all in all, a strange and surreal experience as football action resumed.
Bradford, under Trevor Cherry, had been promoted as Third Division champions, their day of celebration against Lincoln City on the final day of the 1984/5 having been overwhelmed by the fire. The side that travelled to Cumbria in August included Greg Abbott, the future Carlisle manager and current head of recruitment, along with stars such as captain Peter Jackson and another man on his way to Bantams legend, Stuart McCall.
A crowd of 5,086, including a four-figure contingent from west Yorkshire, were at Brunton Park for the opening game of a season which saw United on a downward trajectory. It was to be their last campaign to date in the second tier, the fourth and final term of their most recent Division Two run, Carlisle having finished 16th the previous campaign in a signpost of wider decline.
Carlisle, under their veteran manager Bob Stokoe, could still field enduring figures such as Jack Ashurst, Mike McCartney and Paul Haigh plus the rising midfield talent of 20-year-old Ian Bishop, yet the opening game of 1985/6, from Carlisle’s point of view, gave an immediate indication of their path.
It turned out to be an underwhelming opener from the Blues and, for their opponents, something of a cathartic one.
Carlisle’s new goalkeeper, the former Newcastle United man Kevin Carr, was much busier across the 90 minutes than his opposite number, Peter Litchfield, and it was the burly figure of Bradford’s Northern Ireland international Bobby Campbell who set the lasting tone.
In midfield, Cherry’s men were also on top, McCall and Martin Singleton impressing as John Hendrie and Arthur Graham made inroads in wide positions. Carr did well to save two early Campbell headers while, from Carlisle’s counter-attacks, Bishop narrowly failed to meet deliveries from new boy Mark Gavin.
Both Gavin and Andy Hill had their chances for the hosts but, in the second half, Bradford gave their fans something to cheer. Hendrie was the 61st-minute provider and Carlisle were unable to prevent his cross reaching Campbell, who powered a header past Carr.
Bradford could then have put United away two minutes later when Adrian Thorpe swooped on a McCartney error before being brought down in the box by the experienced defender.
Yet when Abbott stepped up at the stadium he would come to know so well, Carr guessed correctly and saved a penalty which was not, as it turned out, the best-struck of the Bradford full-back’s career.
Carlisle tried to respond to this reprieve, Hill missing a good chance, but eventually the Bantams did get their second when Campbell controlled the ball, turned and smacked a left-footed shot past Carr from the edge of the box.
Stokoe brought on veteran Bryan 'Pop' Robson moments after this 74th-minute blow and Carlisle did get one back when Gavin supplied another new signing, Wayne Entwistle, to score eight minutes from time. But Bradford’s superiority was rarely in doubt and Carr, in saving from Thorpe, prevented the Bantams opening up a bigger winning margin.
It finished 2-1 to Cherry’s men and the afternoon of cheer this provided, at this particular point in Bradford City’s history, was undeniable. The Bantams historian John Dewhirst has written about the game: “Our 2-1 victory felt like a cathartic moment after the experience of the preceding months, and I will never forget the atmosphere on the away terrace in the sun that afternoon.”
Ivor Broadis, reporting in Carlisle for the Evening News, conceded that “the football world was willing them [Bradford] to a successful start after the end of season tragedy” and noted that enthusiasm and momentum from their promotion performances was still evident in their display at Brunton Park.
While the great Broadis also spoke of the 5,000 crowd who had supported the sides in the right manner, “with none of the obscenities that offend,” it is also the case that some Carlisle fans who were there remember a few in the home contingent singing fire-related songs – a sign that idiot minorities mocking tragedies is by no means a new phenomenon.
The inferno at Valley Parade had shocked all right-thinking people, its victims the subject of widespread tributes. It had been front page news in Cumbria, with extensive coverage of the tragedy on inside pages while, in the immediate wake of the fire that May, players, spectators and officials at the Cumberland FA Cup final between Haig Colliery and Carlisle United’s reserves had stood in silence to remember those who had died. Clubs in the county also did their bit for the disaster fund, Cleator Moor Celtic among those staging benefit matches for the stricken people of Bradford.
On the pitch, the Bantams went about their 1985/6 season admirably, given all the circumstances. Bound by a profound team spirit, they finished 13th in the table, seven places above Carlisle, who were duly relegated under Stokoe after he had taken charge again following Robson's short-lived autumn reign.
The surprise, given the clubs’ respective statuses and encounters over the years, is that Bradford’s 1985 victory remains their most recent at Brunton Park. Since then, they have made nine visits in the league and Football League Trophy and returned with three draws and six defeats. They have only scored four goals in that time, too, including blanks on six of their last seven encounters.
A draw would, in tomorrow’s play-off semi-final second leg, be enough for a club who may feel they are long overdue a successful occasion at Brunton Park. That poignant day in 1985 will always have its place in history, whatever Saturday’s outcome; in strictly footballing terms, the Blues’ task is to ensure it remains a landmark in Carlisle-Bradford meetings in all ways.
TEAMS
Carlisle: Carr, Haigh, Ashurst, Baker, McCartney, Gorman (Robson), Bishop, Halsall, Gavin, Hill, Entwistle.
Bradford: Litchfield, Abbott, Jackson, Evans, Withe, Hendrie, McCall, Singleton, Graham, Campbell, Thorpe. Not used: Clegg.
Crowd: 5,086.
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