32 years ago this past week, City played 18 minutes of a First Round FA Cup tie in a game that would not be concluded, stopped by the collapse of a wall that endangered supporters. (This article first appeared on the now defunct Amber Nectar site, video courtesy of TigerTube)

Rarely recalled these days, precious little mention of it on the internet, an incident which might as well be described in Swahili for all the recognition that it would elicit from a good 90% of current City “regulars”. But for some it remains a chilling memory, as much by virtue of being a genuinely frightening experience as for the fact that it came very close to resulting in widespread injury among City supporters and going down as the blackest day in the Club’s history.

The date was 12th November 1993. The occasion was the first round of the FA Cup. City at that time were a perpetually cash-strapped outfit, the team comprising a motley bunch of has-beens, never-weres and Dean Windass under the managership of Terry Dolan and Jeff Lee but who, runaway favourites for relegation at the start of the season, were to defy all the odds in coming to within an ace of securing a play-off place in what is now League One both that season and the next. On the day over a thousand City fans (a decent enough turnout for that sort of game in those days) descended on the Cheshire town and made their presence felt in the local pubs from opening time, before trooping off to the Canal Street home of the then Conference perennials to witness a fixture that bore all the hallmarks of a potential banana skin: we certainly wouldn’t have been the first League outfit to come to grief there.

For those City fans who stopped to ponder such things, the first impressions of Canal Street were somewhat out of keeping with what might have been expected of the home of a team with genuine aspirations of League status, being faced as they were with a trudge across a muddy training pitch in order to reach the away turnstiles and, once inside, with pre-pubescent stewards and temporary loos. The area allocated to City fans was L-shaped, consisting of maybe a dozen steps of open terracing behind one goal, devoid of crush barriers, which continued round the corner and along the side until it met the main stand, itself a typical non-League fifty-yard long effort straddling the halfway line.

The more vocal element of the City support – about half of the total following and, typical of those days for that sort of game, well tanked-up and including a fair few ne’er-do-wells – packed together as close to the main stand as they could get, with the local constabulary keeping a watchful eye close by. It wasn’t an altogether comfortable atmosphere as the game kicked off, and there was a palpable hint of menace hanging over this section of the ground, a slight nagging worry, for no specific reason, that things might get out of control. A few fans, sensing this, wisely moved away.

For the time being, however, one place where things were very firmly under control was the pitch. The Tigers looked easily two leagues higher than their opponents, being disciplined, organised, and in no mood to permit the home side even a whiff of an upset. All it needed was a goal for City to stamp their indelible mark on the game, and we didn’t have that long to wait. Just before the half-hour a deep cross from the right found Graeme Atkinson, whose astute header looped over the Runcorn keeper and into the net from twelve yards out.

Among the City crowd by the main stand, the pressure that had been building up since before kick-off finally had an outlet and wild and prolonged celebrations ensued. But then it happened. Whether it was fans at the back pushing in the excitement, or someone losing either their balance or their footing has never been established, but the whole mass of fans suddenly tumbled forward, out of control, like a snowball gathering pace down a hillside, until its course met resistance in the form of the perimeter fence at the front. Now, such happenings may well have been commonplace on the Kop a dozen or so miles away, but the sturdy enclosures and sunken terracing of Anfield generally ensured that no damage to life or limb resulted. In contrast, the flimsy wall at Canal Street didn’t stand a chance, and with a resounding crack as the fence disintegrated the entire human avalanche landed unchecked on the field of play.

Celebrations on the terraces gave way to shouts and screams, some of pain rather than panic. Amidst the general confusion, the first to react and render assistance were the Runcorn players, who were lining up for the restart in front of the broken section of wall. Chaos ensued as the mood turned angry and the police struggled to maintain order with remonstrating fans. A press photographer trying to take photos was punched by a Southern Supporters stalwart of that era before being dragged away by others for his own safety. Anxious City Chairman Martin Fish arrived on the scene, trying to calm fans down and ascertain what exactly had happened and how many had been hurt. Other fans helped the police and Runcorn officials to remove smashed concrete posts and other debris from the pitch. Nobody seemed to notice that referee Lynch had taken the players back to the dressing rooms.

And they were not to return. The collapse of the fence had resulted in a good deal of metalwork being exposed and, although the fire brigade arrived and started cutting it away, and although the police, numbers swelled by reinforcements, had restored calm among the Tiger Nation, it was announced, some twenty minutes after it all happened, that the game had been abandoned. There was some (forcibly expressed in some cases) suggestion at the time that it could have resumed, with the wall being made safe by the fire brigade and the damaged area sealed off (there being plenty of room for all the City support on the remainder of the away terracing), but in truth everyone’s heart had gone out of it and the correct decision had been made. One of the abiding memories of walking back to the station for an earlier-than-expected train back to London was the near-total silence among the departing spectators.

In the event, casualties were relatively light – nine fans injured and only four hospitalisations – but it could have been so very, very much worse. Barely had the two sets of club officials retired to the sanctuary of the Runcorn board room before accusation and counter-accusation began to fly. The whole thing was down to hooliganism on the part of the Hull fans, declared the Runcorn chairman. Nonsense, countered Fish: the fans were simply celebrating a goal, and the ground was a deathtrap, totally unfit to stage such a game. This, of course, all spilled very messily into the press over the next few days.

To give credit where it’s due, Fish handled the whole business extremely well, publicly and resolutely defending the City fans, and insisting that City should not be made to return to Canal Street for the replay – an issue over which he got his own way, the game eventually taking place at Witton Albion ten days later amidst an atmosphere of no little hostility between the two sets of fans. To be sure, when the definitive magnum opus on football stadium disasters is compiled, it is unlikely that the events of 12th November 1993 will merit more than a footnote. For those who were unfortunate enough to be caught up in the midst of it, however, it is not a day that will be forgotten.

Mind you, there was a happy ending. Had it not been for the wall collapse at Runcorn, we would never have got to see striker (as he then was) Chris Hargreaves score for City, his only goal for us in over 50 appearances coming in the replay at Witton, which the Tigers won 2-0.