St. Pauli's 1st Bundesliga Adventure -
a brief pleasure 30 years ago

In 1977 FC St. Pauli were promoted to the top flight for the first time

After our suggestion in the last Uebersteiger that the club's centenary celebrations should be brought forward to this year, we've come up with a real anniversary for 2007; it's 30 years since FC St. Pauli took the stage for the first time in the 1st Bundesliga.

Since the founding of the Bundesliga in 1963, when the German FA (DFB) used all sorts of bluffs and accounting tricks to keep our club out of the top division (OK, there were other factors), St. Pauli had been 2nd class - first in the Northern Regional League, then as a member of the 2nd Bundesliga (North). We'd often struggled hard to get up through the play-off rounds, but somehow it had never been enough. Then, on 7th May 1977, Niels Tune-Hansen's goal against FC Herford shot us onto cloud nine; St. Pauli finished the round as 2nd Division champions and with Franz Gerber as the league's top scorer (27 goals). So in August 1977 St Pauli's First Division Adventure kicked off.

Small Squad

The result is well-known; only 6 wins and 6 draws - the other 22 games all ended in defeat - but the team was better than the bottom line, and perhaps they were least of all to blame for the way it turned out. The situation at the start of the season was worryingly bad: three players, Siegmund Marsollek, Lazar Mutapdzija and Dieter Schiller had left the club, only three new players had come. This meant a rather meagre squad of 18 players, one of whom, the forward Soeren Skov, who had scored seven the previous season, then left the club in disgust before the new season had even started. His "successor" Maik Galakos, a Greek international player brought in from Olympiakos Piraeus, had already played two Bundesliga games for Duesseldorf in 72/73 without scoring - something that wasn't to change in his season with St. Pauli.

The other newcomers made more of an impression: Rudi Sturz played in all 34 games and Horst Feilzer made it to 18. In September, the club strengthened the squad, getting Klaus Beverungen from Eintracht Frankfurt for the midfield. There were good reasons for this; the club's medical facilities were anything but 1st Division material. Walter Frosch could only manage 18 games due to injury, libero Gino Ferrin only four and the intended sweeper Manfred Mannebach only three. Another re-inforcement came in December, in the shape of ex-Hamburg SV libero Klaus Winkler. Then it was Beverungen's turn to get injured - he only managed 19 games. So there were no further new signings during the winter break; the medical department was replaced instead.

Just behind Werder and Bayern

At this point, FC St. Pauli were just two points behind Werder Bremen and 4 behind Bayern Munich - St. Pauli were 17th, Bremen 16th and Bayern only 13th. It may have been in this season that the myth of the invincible home team was born: "Niemand siegt am Millerntor!" - and in spite of the poor overall performance, no team did manage an away win at Millerntor.

Then again, there were only five games played there the entire season. Marketing strategists working for the club management had calculated (based on an average attendance of 7500 the previous season) that a) the city of Hamburg could cope with two Bundesliga clubs (which is true) and b) if HSV and St. Pauli were not playing at home simultaneously at the weekend, then the entertainment-minded Hamburger, who may not be a dyed-in-the-wool St. Pauli fan, would still want to go to a Bundesliga game every week. This led them to predict a gate of 16,000 to 18,000 spectators per game. The resulting delusions of grandeur among the management led them to move 12 of the 17 home games to Hamburger SV's Volksparkstadion - although even with 18000 attending the matches, Millerntor would have been sufficient. And they were already talking of a DM 500,000 surplus as a result of increased gate money. This proved to be complete pie in the sky; the entertainment-minded Hamburger was at the time also rather success-oriented, and the Bundesliga brand did not have such a pull on the masses as it does today. After the derby against HSV (Att.: 35,000), the best home gate was the opening game of the season against Bremen - and this was at Millerntor, due to the German gymnastics festival, in front of 20,000. Apart from those two, an average of only 13,800 wanted to see the St. Pauli "home" games that season. As already mentioned, none of the home games at Millerntor were lost: 3 wins, 2 draws. The situation in the Volkspark was, of course, completely different: 2 wins, 3 draws, 7 losses. You can't help wondering what might have been possible if the team had played the home games in their own stadium, in front of their own fans. OK, the sticking point was the away games, of which fifteen were lost, with only one draw and one win, although the curious thing was...

Gerber, Kulka – 2-0!

It happened in the 6th game, in the very stadium in which St. Pauli normally played their home games, for the opponent was Hamburger SV, at that point holders of the European Cup Winners' Cup. HSV had just lost its most important man, trainer Kuno Kloetzer, who had been replaced by Rudi Gutendorf, but the squad was still full of excellent players such as Kargus, Kaltz, Nogly, Memering, Keegan, Volkert, Steffenhagen and Reimann. However, the Cup Winners' Cup winners put up a bland performance against their local rivals that day, Saturday 3rd September 1977. With referee Walter Eschweiler in charge of proceedings, Gerber put St. Pauli in front after 30 minutes, and Wolfgang Kulka put the result beyond doubt in the final minutes. That was certainly one of the few highlights of the season. The 12th game was the last one which saw St. Pauli above the relegation zone; after that, it was a fight for survival, which was eventually lost. Apart from the victory against our unloved neighbours in an unloved stadium, another result stands out - the 3-1 win against Werder Bremen in the opening game of the season. It was a typical, hard-fought Millerntor game. The stadium was full. Roentved put Bremen in front in the 72nd minute, but in the last 10 minutes, the Millerntor Express struck back. Dietmar Demuth scored two from the spot, and Gerber made it 3-1 just before the end.

St. Pauli vs. Bayern not sold out

The club leadership eventually came to its senses, and moved another home game back to Millerntor, and it turned out to be a cracker, with the divas from Frankfurt-am-Main, who were still eyeing a UEFA Cup place, against the almost-certainly relegated club from the Elbe. St. Pauli got off to a great start - Beverungen, finally free of injury, opened the scoring in the 5th minute. Frankfurt came back, with Reichel equalising (36) and Borchers (44) putting them ahead, but Sturz got one back before half-time. In the 2nd half, Grabowski put "Bankfurt" ahead once again (55), but then the Millerntor Machine got into gear: Sturz (73), Walter Oswald (77) and Gerber (81) took eight minutes to seal a glorious 5-3 win.

A draw against Bayern can certainly be rated a success, too. Bayern had won the game in Munich 4-2, thanks to 4 goals from Gerd Mueller, and the return match was the last game of 1977. Of course, the Bayern team that season wasn't THE Bayern team, but a 0-0 can still be regarded as an achievement. There's something else worth mentioning about this match, though. Having been unable to realise its intended crowd numbers, and hence its financial targets, the St. Pauli board decided on a desperate idea to finally get a full stadium for the first time since the opening game; it gave away 10,000 tickets to Hamburg schools. There were 17,000 spectators in the stadium, of whom 12,000 had paid. Only half of the free tickets had been used - that was the level of interest in the duel between the 16th (Bayern) and 17th (St. Pauli) teams in the Bundesliga...

The squad: 

(An amusing aside: Due to the DFB's rather strange "licensed player" status of the time, very few players actually gave their occupation as "footballer". So almost every St. Pauli player, even if he did nothing else to earn his keep, also had an "honest" job, as listed below.)

The trainer:

Diethelm Ferner, date of birth: 13.07.1941

231 Bundesliga games (21 goals): 1963-1969 for Werder Bremen, 1969-1971 for Rot-Weiss Essen; 1971-1973 two games for Essen in the Regional League (West), 2 internationals.

Trainer 1973-1975 at Rot-Weiss Essen, 75/76 at Wuppertaler SV, 1976-1978 at FC St. Pauli, then at Hannover 96, Schalke 04 and Alemannia Aachen.

author: BC
translation: Zim