Local fans turn out for battle of Manchester

The city of Manchester in northwest England is one of the great industrial centers of Europe. It also has a vibrant music scene, having produced the Hollies and Herman's Hermits and Davy Jones of the Monkees in the 1960s and, more recently, The Smiths, the Buzzcocks, The Fall, Joy Division, Oasis, Doves, Ten and a bunch of other bands of which I've never heard.

It is also home to two popular soccer sides, Manchester United and Manchester City, who on Monday played a one-game match to essentially decide the English championship that was watched by an estimated 650 million viewers in 190 countries.

To put this into perspective, an estimated 111.3 million watched this year's Super Bowl, and an estimated 530 million watched Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walk on the moon.

I was among the .00023 of 1 percent of those 650 million TV viewers - about 150 Man U. and City supporters, and one guy wearing what appeared to be a regulation Aston Villa kit - who watched the big game at the Queen Victoria Pub inside the Riviera.

(Normally, I would watch a fixture of this magnitude at the Crown & Anchor near UNLV. But I was wearing my red suede retro Pumas, and I didn't want to get Guinness and Bass and Harp Lager poured all over them, though that is part of the charm of watching English football at an English pub.)

Mark McGarry, a former chef from Coventry in the Motherland and one of three proper Englishmen who own the Queen Victoria, ushered me to a table outfitted with a built-in beer tap that was reserved, according to the placard, for Man City Mike and Manchester Jimmy.

Man City Mike is Mike Sagward, 64, who as a younger man was captain of the soccer team at Long Beach State. The former school teacher retired to Las Vegas six years ago.

Man City Mike grew up so close to Old Trafford, United's cavernous 75,811-seat stadium that opened in 1910, that he could hear the crowd roar when United scored. But he was raised a City man owing to his parents' friendship with Bert Trautmann, a former Nazi paratrooper who would endear himself to City supporters during his reign as their goalkeeper from 1949 to '64.   

Manchester Jimmy is Jimmy Grundy, 58, a fifth-grade teacher at Quannah McCall Elementary School in North Las Vegas. He has lived in Southern Nevada for 33 years.

Manchester Jimmy grew up in Longsight, a blue-collar neighborhood in Manchester's hardscrabble inner city. He has a huge scar on his forehead to prove it.

These two told me that Manchester United, situated in the south part of the city, and Manchester City, located in the north part of town, are separated by no more than five miles.

On Monday, Manchester Jimmy, wearing a red T-shirt proclaiming United as "19 Times Champions of England" and Man City Mike, sporting a yellow and dark blue vertically striped City alternate jersey with lots of room for championship proclamations on the back - City has never won a Premier League title since English soccer was restructured in 1992 - were separated by no more than five feet.

At least until the game started.

This might have been because Man City Mike had shown me a photo on his cellphone from a place back home called the Charleston Pub that had a message on its marquee stating all City fans would receive 20 percent off, and all United fans could (expletive) off.

Man City Mike said he later received a text message that said the start of the telecast at the Charleston had been interrupted by the sound of breaking glass.

It wasn't like that at the Queen Victoria, where the Man City supporters cheered for their side and the Man U. fans cheered for theirs. Occasionally, when one of the players would make a sublime run or inch-perfect tackle, as the soccer announcers like to say, they would cast loyalties aside and clink pint glasses together in admiration.

As the drama played out on the big screens, I learned that Man City Mike was school chums with Peter Noone - the affable lead singer for the aforementioned Herman's Hermits - and that they used to knock the tennis ball around at The Stratford Grammar School. And that while Manchester Jimmy had signed on to teach in North Las Vegas for just three years, he was now in his 17th, because he likes the kids there and enjoys trying to make a difference in their lives.

City won 1-0, and there were robust chants of "SIH-TEE" and many versions of "Blue Moon," Man City's theme song, that alternated between thunderous and off-key and must have given the "21" and baccarat dealers in the casino a real start.

Lots of people wearing light blue soccer jerseys raised their glasses in a toast to the champions-in-waiting, and very little got spilled on the floor or on my red suede retro Pumas.

Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ron Kantowski can be reached at rkantowski@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0352. Follow him on Twitter: @ronkantowski.