Fifty years. That is the distance in time from an unassuming, muddy football pitch in Sheffield to the modern, socially evolved world that now celebrates one of the most unexpected moments in English sporting history. Captured in April 1975, the fleeting, millisecond ‘kiss’ shared between Sheffield United’s Tony Currie and Leicester City’s Alan Birchenall remains a photograph that few can forget. This impromptu pucker-up, an act of pure, unscripted humour between rivals and friends, sparked a seismic reaction across Britain, igniting debate in the press, dividing opinion, and—astonishingly—even reaching the floor of the House of Commons.
The setting for this legendary moment was a dismal afternoon at Bramall Lane, where the Blades were soundly beating a struggling Leicester City side 4-0. The match was well past the point of competitive tension when Currie, the silky playmaker, and Birchenall, Leicester’s famed joker, collided heavily while challenging for a high ball. They fell to the turf, two opponents momentarily incapacitated.
It was Birchenall, never one to let a serious moment pass without a gag, who broke the tension. Recalling the moment, with the game already lost and his spirits low, he cheekily demanded of his former Sheffield United teammate, “Give us a kiss, TC.” Currie obliged with a quick peck—a spontaneous, “kiss and make up” gesture after their tumble.
What the two players didn’t know was that a photographer’s zoom lens had frozen that split-second exchange. When the image was published in the Sunday newspapers under sensational headlines, the seemingly innocuous joke exploded into a national controversy.
In the years following the incident, the two players have cemented their statuses as club legends. Birchenall, now Leicester City’s official ambassador, speaks about his friend and the furore with both pride and amusement, offering insight into Currie’s legendary talent and the conservative climate of the era.
“What a talent Tony was,” Birchenall continued in an interview for The Star in 2018. “He’s got the same role as me now at United and quite right too because I don’t think there was anyone better. I actually left United to go to Chelsea and the £100,000 fee was a lot of money in those days. TC cost a fraction of that and I think it’s fair to say United got a bargain because can you imagine what someone as good as him would cost now? I reckon most clubs in the country wouldn’t be able to afford him.”
Although people now reflect on their embrace with fondness, Birchenall admitted it didn’t receive universal approval at the time. The spontaneous affection was thrown into a deeply divided social context. Just a month before the match, the National Front had marched through London.
“I got letters from all sorts of people saying it was disgraceful,” Birchenall said. “You’ve got to remember, the country was a very different place back then. On top of the hate mail, I even got told it got brought up by an MP on the Floor of the House, asking: ‘Is this what English football is really coming too?’ Most folk, though, weren’t bothered and they took it for what it was: a joke between two good mates. You can’t take life so seriously all the time.”
Fifty years on, the moral panic has long faded, leaving behind the charm and humanity of the original gesture. The photograph is celebrated as a piece of brilliant sporting theatre that captured a moment of pure, unscripted humanity. It is a powerful cultural marker that highlights just how dramatically the culture of football—and society as a whole—has evolved, all thanks to two friends and a shared, unforgettable pucker-up. The Currie-Birchenall kiss serves as a reminder that even on the football pitch, humour and camaraderie can momentarily triumph over fierce rivalry.