Signed for £50K in Sept 1972 (when I was merely a few weeks old) - that must have been a hell of a lot of money for a transfer back then.
The British transfer record at the time was £225,000 for David Nish from Leicester City to Derby County. So we paid a quarter of that for Hughie Curran. That's the equivalent of about £30m in today's transfer market!
Apart from what a great player he was for us, two things stand out for me.
Firstly, I was walking to work in the morning, reading the morning paper as I walked, and on the back page was the news that we'd signed Hughie from Wolves for £55,000. I was absolutely gobsmacked, as this was a real stellar signing for a Second Division side like Oxford United. Also, it really was a different era, as that is how you found things out back then, in the pre Teletext or Internet era.
Secondly was Swindon away. The game where we beat them and Hughie scored. Me and a mate had got t-shirts printed with "Oxford United" on the front, and "We Hate Swindon" on the back. The Town End had been taken by Oxford, as was usual back then, and our plan was to walk round to the halfway line, in the Shrivenham Road Stand, and run on the pitch wearing said t-shirts, as the players were warming up.
I went first, ran about 30 yards and looked behind me to see that my mate had bottled it, and I was on my own. I then went round shaking hands with Oxford players and walked towards the Town End for my big moment. I took my bomber jacket off and stood with my arms aloft facing the stand, with the fans seeing the front of my t-shirt. I then, somewhat theatrically, turned around, so that the Oxford fans could see the back of the t-shirt, bearing the words "We Hate Swindon" To a man the whole stand broke into a chant of We Hate Swindon, We Hate Swindon. It was incredible for a 17 year old to be doing this. More incredible was that nobody had stopped me, no police, no stewards, and the players weren't bothered in the slightest!
Then things changed a bit. As I went to climb triumphantly back into the Town End, The police appeared and two of them grabbed me, and started dragging me along the touchline toward the Arkels Stand, which had only just been built. Enter Hughie Curran. He remonstrated with them all the way to the corner flag saying in his broad Glaswegian accent "Ye cannae f*****g arrest him, he hasnae f*****g done nothing" Once it was apparent that they weren't going to release me, he said "Good luck son" and went to carry on warming up.
What a different era it really was, great days, and the kind of thing that got us kids addicted to football and our clubs. Imagine the outrage today, and how I'd have been banned, prosecuted, and castigated by all and sundry. Some idiot would probably categorise it as a hate crime! There's a funny little twist in the tale, of what happened next, if anyone's interested?
www.oufc.co.uk
