When Birmingham City, then still known as Small Heath, moved from Muntz Street to build a new stadium at St Andrew's in 1906, tradition holds that the site was cleared of a Romani encampment beforehand, and that the evicted travellers placed a curse on the ground that was destined to last a full hundred years. The story has been used ever since to explain the club's remarkably long run without a major trophy, and it acquired enough genuine currency inside the club itself that in the 1980s manager Ron Saunders reportedly hung crucifixes from the floodlights and had players' boot soles painted red in an attempt to counter it, while Barry Fry, manager in the 1990s, was advised by a clairvoyant that the only real fix was to urinate in all four corners of the pitch personally, and duly did exactly that.
The hundred years supposedly ran out in 2006, and five years later, in 2011, Birmingham City won the League Cup against Arsenal, a result fans and pundits alike immediately treated as confirmation that the curse had finally lifted after more than a century of misfortune.
Local historians who have researched the claim in more detail have found no contemporary record of any Romani encampment actually on the site before construction began, describing the ground instead as simply undeveloped boggy land at the time, which suggests the curse story was likely invented or at least significantly embellished well after the fact rather than genuinely reported at the time of the stadium's construction. It remains, regardless of its shaky historical foundation, one of English football's most repeated and best-loved stadium curses.
Comments