Twenty-five years on, it is still the defining image of the Premier League era: Eric Cantona, one of the game’s iconic figures, launching himself studs first at a Crystal Palace supporter at Selhurst Park in an all too literal attempt to kick racism out of football. The moment was entirely without precedent and it’s hard to think of a more subversive or shocking sporting moment to have occurred in the intervening years.

The match was a drab affair with chances few and far between. In January 1995, Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United were chasing their third title in a row but events on the pitch did not suggest this was an epochal side. Richard Shaw was engaged in a personal battle with Cantona, niggling away at a player whose fiery temperament was infamous with a series of unpunished kicks to the shin. As the teams trudged off at half time, the Frenchman maintained his composure and inquired of referee Alan Wilkie, “No yellow cards, then?” His manager was somewhat less polite and went with, “Why don’t you do your f*****g job?”

Just after the hour mark, Peter Schmeichel punted a hopeful ball upfield and Shaw kicked Cantona once more, the straw that broke the camel’s back and ultimately led to the unprecedented scenes. Cantona petulantly kicked out and Wilkie brandished the red card. The mercurial forward did not complain and began to make his way towards the tunnel without a word. Crucially, he pulled down the famous upturned collar in a manner that almost seemed to imply the man who’d go on to star in feature films was no longer playing the role of a footballer and was therefore not responsible for his actions.

The atmosphere by this point had turned toxic and United’s kit man Norman Davies did his best to usher their star player towards the dressing room. The players would later nickname him ‘Vaseline’ after his initial attempt to get hold of Cantona failed. One thing he did manage to keep hold of was the No 7 shirt worn on the night, an artefact he donated to the Manchester United museum. When Cantona was informed of Davies’ passing in an interview years later, he was uncharacteristically lost for words.

Cantona was incensed by the abuse directed at him by one Matthew Simmons, a man who, it transpired, had rushed down eleven rows of the stand for the express intention of bidding farewell to the United icon. He memorably informed The Sun his exact words were: “Off you go Cantona – it’s an early bath for you!” More reliable witnesses have suggested it was closer to: “F**k off, you mother-f*****g French bastard.”

The rest is noise. Cantona broke free of Davies and launched himself at Simmons before throwing a punch. Davies and Schmeichel proceeded to escort United’s talisman down the tunnel as cups of tea and other projectiles were hurled in their general direction. The atmosphere had turned toxic and things reached fever pitch the following morning with the most recognisable football photograph of the Premier League years gracing the cover of every newspaper in the land.

The media went into Draconian overdrive in the days that followed but there were a couple of notable exceptions. When it emerged that Simmons had been convicted for assault and was a BNP and National Front sympathiser, Richard Williams wrote in The Independent on Sunday: “You didn’t have to look very long and hard at Mr Matthew Simmons of Thornton Heath to conclude that Eric Cantona’s only mistake was to stop hitting him. The more we discovered about Mr Simmons, the more Cantona’s assault looked like the instinctive expression of a flawless moral judgement.”

Danny Baker, at the time the presenter of the BBC Radio Five football phone in 606, spoke for many ordinary supporters: “Why the moral outrage? Most football fans just found it incredibly funny.”

Lee Sharpe certainly did and tells a brilliant story about Ferguson’s double standards when it came to his star man in the wake of that draw at Palace: “The gaffer comes into the dressing room and is fuming. He screams at David May and Gary Pallister, ‘You effin’ this, you effin’ that’. He turns to me and Giggsy, ‘you effin pair of useless c***s. What the eff were you doing out there?’ Then he sees Cantona and he unleashes both barrels at him, really gives him what for: ‘Eric old son do you think maybe, on second thoughts, that wasn’t such a good idea?’

For a generation of United supporters, it has become a JFK moment. Where were you when Eric jumped into the crowd? It’s always been an easy enough question for me to answer since I was sat in that very stand at Selhurst Park watching as an impressionable 10-year-old. Cantona has said, “If I want to kick a fan, I do it. I am not a role model” but for many of us that’s precisely what he was and his response to provocation was a lesson in how to mete out justice.

It seems only right to give Cantona the last word since that was what he ultimately had on the pitch once he returned from his ban. Here’s what the United great had to say years later with not a reference to seagulls or trawlers: “My best moment? I have a lot of good moments but the one I prefer is when I kicked the hooligan.”

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