A group of England fans who vanished after the 1986 World Cup in Mexico are set to meet again 40 years later, this time in Dallas for England's opening game at this summer's tournament in North America. Gary Allen, Stuart Bates, David Arnold and Garry Hardwicke will be together again on June 17, when England face Croatia.
The reunion closes a strange chapter that began when four childhood friends in their early 20s left the UK with little more than the bags on their backs and a few hundred quid. Allen said he had about £500 saved up before he lost his job, and that the trip felt like a reckless leap into the unknown. “In 1986, Margaret Thatcher was in power, a few of us had lost our jobs, so we planned to go to the World Cup in Mexico,” he said.
The men, who called themselves The Disco Firm, were Wolves fans from Stourbridge and Lye in Worcestershire, apart from Arnold, who was from Solihull and supported Birmingham City. They travelled via Gatwick, then through Houston and San Antonio before catching buses into Mexico, and spent the tournament moving between Monterrey and Acapulco to watch every England game. Allen said it was “one big adventure” and added that they thought it would be “the ultimate cool thing” to go to a World Cup on the other side of the world.
England’s exit came against Argentina, when Diego Maradona’s Hand of God goal helped end their run. Allen said he felt privileged to have been in the stadium for “one of the greatest goals of all time” before the handball that followed. Two of the fans even convinced a group of local women they were Peter Shilton and Gary Lineker while pretending to be part of the squad.
Then came the part that turned a holiday into a lifetime. Instead of going back to the UK, the men decided not to return home and built new lives in the US. Garry once told his partner he was only nipping out to buy a pint of milk, and he did not come back for 12 years. Over the decades, the four settled down, married and had 14 children between them.
Allen now lives in Atlanta, and the reunion in Dallas is a full-circle moment for men who left Britain for a football trip and ended up staying away for most of their adult lives. They will watch England’s opener together on June 17, with the same World Cup that sent them abroad now bringing them back into the same room.
