As good as it got
Burnley 2 Stockport 1, 29 May 1994
Intro.
I’d moved down to London in January. In
May, one day after my birthday, Burnley were playing our biggest game for ten years.
Naturally enough, with the presumption of youth, I took this in my stride. Of course that
was how it should be; it was clearly all arranged for my benefit.
It did ensure the birthday was shot through with
a before-the-Lord-Mayor’s-show damp squibness, however. We went to an anti-fascist
free festival in South London. I couldn’t really get into it. As well as the
anticipation / nervousness (I oscillated), I was also plain tired, because I wasn’t
sleeping well. I’d never believed in football anxiety dreams before, but I did now.
The London Clarets had emptied their account and took a hundred £24 tickets, of which I
had snapped up three, then put the cheque in the post, then realised I had no money. Like
everyone who’s just moved to London, I was finding life expensive and was
consequently utterly broke. My anxiety that they would pay the cheque before payday
brought the needed funds and it would therefore bounce, and there would go my tickets,
worked itself into ever more elaborate dreams. I would be sat at home, turn on the tv and
see the game kicking off, and realise I was supposed to be there, or I’d be at work
and someone would ask if I wasn’t supposed to be at the game, or I’d be stuck on
a train and look at my watch and realise… You get the idea. For about a week before
this was how it was, and I spent much time lying awake, wondering if I was equipped for
supporting this kind of team.
Build up.
At last the day came, and the three of us set
off – my not then wife, my visiting brother and me – all suitably attired for
the occasion. I had insisted on club shop Wembley crap as a birthday gift from my sibling,
and I was now wearing a new scarf and (oh dear) a rosette. I never wear scarves, not even
Burnley shirts to games, and would normally ridicule particularly the rosetted, and yet
here I was dressed like the proverbial Christmas tree. My only excuse was that this was a
special day, I had missed us last time at Wembley and did not know when the next might be,
so I was observing the customs. I thought this was what you did. The other custom was, of
course, the Wembley song, which formed the other part of my spectacularly tasteless
present. In hindsight it was terrible, but at the time I had suspended my normally
clinical musical judgement and was playing it to death. Both sides. We gave it a last spin
before we set off, along with The Fall’s Kicker Conspiracy, which sometimes
worked.
London being Europe’s largest city, I
naturally bumped into someone I knew on the tube. It was Becko. I generally disapprove of
that style of football writing which consists of a selection of drinking anecdotes about
someone’s mates, but Becko has a very special part to play in this story. Like me,
he’d been to both games against Plymouth (so there goes my plea of poverty). On the
way back from that dismal first leg, on a shared trip with some unbelievably smug members
of London Plymouth, Becko, a habitual football pessimist, had pronounced it all over, and
by way of emphasis, had declared that if we went up this season, he would drop his
trousers in the pub immediately after. Then came that never to be forgotten night at
Plymouth (of course better than the Wembley game, but I see it’s already been done;
it’s our version of the Sex Pistols at the 100 Club), and on the overnight train
back, between blasts of "Super Johnny Francis" and as the Plymouth lot moved
unaccountably further and further down the train, I reminded Becko of his promise once or
twice. Despite the euphoria, he was still pretty confident he wouldn’t have to honour
it. It was like betting against your own team, I suppose; either way he would have
something to feel happy about.
We made the rendezvous, a large pub near Swiss
Cottage station with which we were on friendly terms. This was still in the days of
useless licensing laws, but someone knew the landlord, and we had persuaded him to open
illegally both before and after the game for us. We gave the lookout the secret password
and were allowed into the sanctum.
Like at Plymouth I found I couldn’t drink
much and what I could didn’t have much effect. I was used to anaesthetising myself
against the coming disappointment, but today it looked like I would have to face it like a
man, sober. We’d planned the day to try to make it special whatever happened, and so
the buffet was organised, funds were collected, and now on the day I found it mattered too
much and I couldn’t eat a thing from the lavish spread laid out on the pool table. I
consequently abandoned my paper plate and half-eaten pork pie and circulated. Too many
people pointed out that (a) we never won on a Sunday (b) when was the last time we won in
London?, and (c), the clincher, we always got beat at Wembley. I am the sort of person who
believes these runs can never be broken, so that was that, and we may as well go home,
except I had just been presented with three large and attractive tickets, and after all my
anxiety, that was something. Block 220, Row 18, Seat 142. Even the numbers made my head
spin.
It got to the point where we had to set off too
early, which I understand is another custom one has to observe. The tube was full of
Clarets. My stomach started to turn with the regularity of a washing machine. Then we
stepped out of the station and saw Wembley in the distance.
So what? It’s a crappy old clapped out
empire relic of a ground. What made the hairs on my arms stand on end was what was between
it and us. Everyone described it afterwards as a sea of claret and blue, and I see no
reason not to use those words. All the way up to Wembley, as far as the eye could see,
everyone was wearing claret. We stopped a moment to look and remember. I won’t forget
it. This is a great club we support.
Occasionally on the walk up the ground Burnley
supporters encountered the odd knot of Stockport fans. At such moments we stood aside and
gave ironic applause. Stockport supporters should remember this, because it all got lost
in what happened during the game, but this game was big because of who we are and what was
at stake, not because of who we were playing. Doubtless there may have been a little
additional frisson if we were playing Preston or Blackpool, but Stockport brought nothing
extra to the table. Good-natured banter outside the ground is no sign of rivalry. I’m
sure that, for them, it was an opportunity to beat Burnley, a team they claim to hate, as
every game against us since has been an opportunity to avenge this day, but for us, this
was a chance to get out of this division, and against that, what did it matter who we had
to beat to do it?
First half.
We were inside the ground, sat high looking down
on a pitch bathed in sunshine, and at least our £24 had bought us a reasonable view,
which I understand was more than most got. We had somewhere over 30,000 it was reckoned,
and looked magnificent with it. Stockport had a smattering spread thinly around the seats
in the corner. The team stepped out, in all-over Claret, and we roared.
Then the game started and we quickly made a
shoddy show of defending to go a goal down. Less than two minutes had gone, and around the
ground, you could almost see confidence evaporating. Such was our numerical superiority,
Wembley fell still. Was it going to be like any old away game, after all this? It was a
lousy goal to concede. A free kick close to the corner yielded a truly terrible cross, but
fortunately for Stockport, it was met with even worse defending. The marking disappeared
and Chris Beaumont scored from a header.
After that we were shaky, with the normally
reliable paring of Davis and Pender looking vulnerable and Beresford showing his nerves at
every cross. This was also when it started to get physical. As in the first leg against
Plymouth, Stockport were paying Heath and McMinn the considerable compliment of kicking
them every time they had the ball. We got a string of free kicks for Stockport fouls. The
game was stopped more than started. Less than half of the first twenty minutes were taken
up with football. It would have been a bore for a neutral, but then I don’t have time
for neutrals and they had no business being there. I remember at this stage criticising
the referee for being too lenient, telling him to get his card out. Perhaps if he’d
started booking people earlier it would have calmed down.
Our only option looked like the ball over the
top for Francis to chase, which had worked at Plymouth, but then, to compound the misery,
SJF, King of Plymouth, went in late on the goalkeeper chasing one, went down, got up, went
down again and stayed down. So that was it, we were definitely going to lose and stay
down. Anyway, that was fair enough as we’d finished miles behind Stockport, we
didn’t deserve to go up, what with our away record, and in an ideal world you’d
get all the excitement of the play-offs and then the side that finished third would go up,
and anyway, wasn’t this part of the plan, to get to the play-offs this year, narrowly
miss out, and come back stronger next year and go up automatically, because we
weren’t ready to go up yet and if we did it would be a disaster.
Thankfully, the team didn’t share my
garbled pessimism.
It hinged on the sendings off, of course, and
that is Stockport’s gripe. Both were perfectly reasonable. Their grievances really
started when Francis wasn’t sent-off for his wild challenge, but as he was the one on
the stretcher, we could hardly be said to have benefited from it. His career never
recovered from that, and he ended up in the depths of non league, while we tore up our
game plan. He was booked even as he tried to get up. Did they want blood?
In any case, they cannot complain. The complex
psychology of the Stockport fan demanded this dénouement. Their history before this was
littered with Wembley failures and play-off disasters. This was the über-catastrophe,
literally the disaster to end all disasters. They needed to get this out of their system.
Since then, they have gone on to success after success. While it would be possible to
argue that winning this game was the worse thing we have done in years, given that we have
yet to recover from what happened the season after, for them it was the launchpad to an
incredible few years that would take them to respectability in the first division and a
league cup semi-final. This game made all that followed for them possible. They should
thank us.
I don't think they will. And such post-hoc
psychological babblings were as far from my mind as theirs on the day. Their bloke got
sent off and all hell broke lose. McMinn went down the wing, was body checked by left back
Michael Wallace, and as he lay on the floor, appeared to be kicked. We later found out he
was spat at. Stockport fans have subsequently accused the great Tin Man of play-acting,
which seems to suggest that being sent flying and then spat on is okay as long as no-one
makes a meal out of it. Tin Man was furious, red-faced, and had to be held back by Joyce
as Wallace was sent off. McMinn was booked for his reaction, a pedantic decision. After
this, people started to sense that the tide might turn. We gradually reasserted ourselves,
and it started looking like a more even game. Francis’ substitution at least enabled
club stalwart and sole survivor of Wembley ‘88 Andy Farrell to get a game, which was
fitting.
After 29 minutes the great David Eyres picked
the ball up outside the penalty area. You know what happened next. He ran across the
penalty area, beat one man, beat the next, beat a third, shot with his left foot and the
ball flew into the back of the net, and my powers of description take me no further. It
was magnificent. At the time it seemed like no finer goal had ever been scored at Wembley.
The place erupted. I can’t remember much else of the moment. My memory fails, and all
recollections are tinged with doubt. The picture I have in my mind is of Eyres in the full
flight of celebration, yet this is not a memory from the match, but from a newspaper the
next day. Indeed, everything I’m telling you is dubious, and shouldn’t
necessarily be believed. If I think I remember the match it may only be because I’ve
watched the video a few times. Whatever, it was a hell of a goal. I do remember reading in
some Stockport rag the next season that this goal was apparently also the referee’s
fault, as their defenders, trying not to get sent off, stood off and allowed Eyres to
score. Sad. Fancy some of these grapes?
The rest of the half is a blank. We can’t
have been troubled by Stockport. Having checked the records, it seems they kicked our
players a few more times and Eyres came close once or twice more, hitting the bar one
time. I can believe it. He had a fantastic game (he’d had a fantastic season), pushed
up to replace Francis as part of an outstanding attacking trio with Heath and McMinn, on
song and fully able to exploit the gaps left in the defence by the sending-off.
I can’t remember half time either, but I
can guess what it was like, cautiously optimistic, deliberately restrained, conversation
full of gaps. David Eyres’ goal, coming at the psychologically important time of
whenever, had provided us with a different kind of tension. Surely now against ten men and
back on level terms the tide had turned in our favour after a shaky start. Football
supporters adopt the language of television punditry when they’re looking for
reassurance.
Second half.
We started on top. Our next goal could only be a
matter of time. Heath messed up a good chance when clean through, and Eyres again came
close. It was while Eyres was chasing a ball that the second sending-off occurred, a mile
from the action. Everyone missed it except the linesman, who immediately called the
referee over and explained the situation, whereupon Stockport scorer Beaumont was
dismissed. Again, it was quite justified. Beaumont had stamped on Thompson. Thompson had
two possibilities there; he could retaliate, and himself be sent off, or leave legitimate
justice to take its course. Rather surprisingly in retrospect, he chose the latter.
Once more, should we criticise the player who
gets fouled or the one who does the fouling? Stockport fans chose the former. In such a
game as this, I find it hard to believe that they never chose to blame their team for
blowing it so badly. In the face of their kamikaze aggression, it wouldn’t have been
surprising if they’d had more sent off. They just went crazy. It was astonishing to
watch. Who will know if we would ever have beaten them if they’d been able to keep
their cool and eleven players on the pitch? They said the same thing afterwards, of
course, but characteristically chose the wrong person to blame. It wasn’t the
referee; it was the players themselves who lost control. So blinded by malevolence were
they that they couldn’t see it. Those players must thank their lucky stars that they
escaped the vilification that should have followed.
After that we were bound to win. Every single
one of us tried to forget that we have lost before against nine.
Joyce was put through with only the goalkeeper
to beat, steadied himself, took aim, and as we rose from our seats, shot just wide. We did
that hands on head thing that is the universal gesture of the agonising miss. Thankfully,
the team kept the pressure up. It’s the clearest indication of the space available
against nine that Gary Parkinson scored the goal. Providing the overlap for Eyres, it was
probably as much to his surprise as anyone else’s that he found himself in the box
with only the keeper to beat. He panicked, tried to control it, failed, saw it running
away from him and poked at it, hoping for the best. Their keeper, who’d had a good
game, dived, got a hand to it, but it somehow bounced off at an angle, rolled, and crossed
the line. The records tell me it was scored after sixty-six minutes.
I realised that what we’d done after
Eyres’ goal had only been a rehearsal. The place went mad. Parkinson ran, a man
possessed, briefly became a hurdler, took the anti-hooligan moat at a single leap and
threw himself on the fence to be embraced by a delirious crowd. Chaos, joy, immediately
followed by a look at the watch.
As soon as things settled down I looked at my
watch. Then I looked again. I looked again after that. There was ages left. To try to keep
the narrative from stalling, just assume from this point on that I’m looking at my
watch at least twice a sentence.
Now Stockport started to attack, aware that it
was all up. We never look comfortable playing against Kevin Francis and we started to give
away free kicks. They brought Andy Preece on, who I feared, but thankfully he wasn’t
fit. Jim Gannon missed two excellent chances before giving way to David Miller, who of
course has Claret and Blue blood in his veins. Opinion around me was divided between
don’t-you-dare-do-anything-or-you’ll-never-set-foot-in-this-town-again and
he-won’t-do-anything-against-us. I wonder what his Dad, watching, thought?
At some point in the second half - look,
I’d pretty much lost it by then, so don’t expect details - some Stockport fans
decided to vent their frustrations by tearing up seats. Odd, I thought we were the
Neanderthals and they were the friendly club? Still, at least they had plenty of spare
seats around them to grab. Not particularly fitting behaviour for the home of football,
but there you go.
They had at least two more clear chances. We had
many on the break. David Eyres hit the bar for the second time. I didn’t experience
tension like it again until the game against Plymouth in 98. All around me were people
with agony and rapture written across their faces. Every time the ball went out of play we
thought it must end. We actually did play about eight minutes of stoppage time, I believe,
but you know it seemed like longer, and those who’d started whistling for the referee
had to keep it up for more than ten minutes. It was right at the end that Steve Davis
picked the ball up deep in his own half and started running. He beat most of the remaining
Stockport players as he ran down the middle of the pitch, cool, oblivious to everything.
We all stood, sensing something special. He just kept going. He sped towards goal, one on
one, an easy pass to make for a certain third if he fancied it, but he decided to shoot.
What a goal this would be. Sadly, at that very moment, he remembered he was a defender,
and his scuffed shot went hopelessly wide. In my memory it goes out for a throw in, but
that may be embellishment. I always was a bit of a Steve Davis fan. It was a glorious
moment, and a final assertion of the football superiority that won us the game. You see,
despite all the aggression and ugliness, we played all the football, and that’s why
we won. We deserved to win. We were the better side.
David Miller got the final kick of the game as
the ref blew. Predictable bedlam ensued. There were the familiar celebrations, laps of
honour, the photo where for some reason players have to bounce up and down, the walk up
the steps which Jimmy Mullen joined in with, medal presentations, players wearing hats and
scarves thrown from the crowd, someone sticking the trophy hilariously on his head, that
for any other team seem so corny, but not for us, because we don’t get as much of
this as we deserve. The rest was all hugging and some tears, and there’s no point
going further, because if you weren’t there you’ll just have to regret it for
the rest of your life.
Afterwards.
We reluctantly made our way out, moving slowly
down the staircases that wind around the outside of the stadium, taking in the grim North
London vista of high rise slums and industrial estates. My memories are shot through with
sunshine, although that may not have been the weather. Outside in the carpark celebrations
continued. A man kneeled down, faced a putative north and prayed, but again, I can’t
remember whether I actually saw this or just filled it in later from the video. There was
happy madness in the air, scenes of joy all around. I was reluctant to leave, but my
companions dragged me away and we went to face the chaos of the crowded tube. Back in the
pub it was more of the same. Exhausted and hoarse, we had to take on cold and
non-alcoholic fluids before we could commence the evening’s drinking. A then friend
hugged me, saying, "we’re finally out of the shit." Every so often the side
door opened and introduced another bunch of damp-eyed revellers.
The evening took a predictable shape from this
point. The pub’s kindness in opening early was clearly leavened with some thoughts of
self-interest, as beer sales were high. I had much to drink. I remember at one stage
feeling ironically hungry, now, when there was no food to be had. I’d had nothing to
eat all day. There was more hugging, male bonding and talking of nonsense. At some stage,
I recall, we were led behind the bar and, through some complicated journey, into another
room, where we could continue our carousals without disturbing the regulars who were now
filling the pub.
That was the theory, anyway. I don’t know
how it happened, or whose idea it was, but someone had noted the large, flat and inviting
picnic tables arranged so thoughtfully outside, and it somehow got decided that the right
thing to do at this point was to go and dance on them. I didn’t stop to argue with
this analysis. Next thing I knew we were outside on the picnic tables, dancing and
singing. This is not normal behaviour. This was not a normal day. I noted with some
distress the song we were singing, "2-1 to the Burn-er-ley," of course to the
tune of Go West, bore a close resemblance to an Arsenal song, but my doubts quickly
passed. It was a rousing chorus, if a little repetitive. We kept it up for ages, and why
not? This was a moment that will live with me for as long as I am a Claret, which I hope
will be the rest of my life. This was an experience I rank alongside invading the pitch at
York, Plymouth, and indeed, Turf Moor in May 98, and Jimmy Mullen’s Claret and Blue
Army at Derby in 92. My brother and a good selection of other London Clarets were up on
the table with me. Some of these – I do not exclude myself – are not the
slightest of men, and the table shook alarmingly, but it held out. Of course, not everyone
could be persuaded up onto the table; we had divided into two camps, the determinedly
stupid and the happy but still restrained. I frowned on those who would not get involved.
In a career supporting Burnley, one does not get many chances to dance on picnic tables in
unrestrained joy; one gets rather more misery and heartache. When you get the chance to
celebrate, you should seize it, because you don’t know when the next chance might
come. People are always trying to complicate football, but it is the one area of my life
where I allow myself a simple polarity: things are black and white, good or bad, and there
is no in between.
Again, this is after-the-event justification. At
the time there wasn’t much thinking going on in my head, or anyone else’s. This
was a good thing. This may have been about as close as I can get to public ecstasy,
without breaking more than the odd local by-law. Cars honked their horns as they drove
past – did I mention the pub is on the corner of one of North London’s busiest
road junctions? And, however much money we poured into the pub’s coffers that night,
we managed to put one or two potential customers off. Occasionally some love’s young
dream couple would approach this fashionable watering hole hand in hand, take one look at
the pissed-up hordes dancing on the tables and veer away sharply, coincidentally deciding
it was a video and off-licence kind of night.
Eventually the growing cold and tiredness set in
and we went back inside. The rest of the evening’s a bit of a blur. As Sunday night
went on, people started to wander home. Those bound for the home counties shuffled off to
a pub nearer central stations. I couldn’t get out of my seat by this stage, so
resolved to hang on until the bitter end. Besides, there was the small matter of
Becko’s forfeit to be performed. Finally, when all who were going had, and half those
remaining had dropped off, and after several promptings, Becko clambered onto a chair and
slowly did the necessary, while attempting what I can only guess was a kind of dance. As
his trousers slithered south, I noted that Becko was wearing underwear longer than I had
ever imagined underwear could be. That morning, when he had got up, for all his pessimism,
he had clearly entertained the prospect of a Burnley win, and taken suitable precautions.
I found this heart-warming.
Finally we were ejected from the pub and we made
our way home. To the surprise of all, we got there. At Victoria we bought some early
editions of the next day’s papers and tried to read them on the bus back. The only
other thing to report is that somewhere en route we misplaced our copy of the oversized
expensive programme. I’m no programme fetishist, but I never so much as glanced
inside the thing, a souvenir of one of our finest hours, and it was gone. To this day we
don’t know how this happened, but we have dim memories of throwing all the bits of
newspaper we didn’t want out of the window of the bus as we sped along.
The hangover.
Last night I went out and had far too much to
drink (with Becko, for reasons of internal consistency), so that today I would have a
hangover and be in the correct frame of mind to write this. That next morning was not
easy. We got up, probably sat around for a bit watching crap tv and then dragged ourselves
out. I slipped on the beer-stained Endsleigh shirt, naturally enough; today I was proud to
be a Claret and I wanted everyone to know. I had to put my brother on his coach to make
the seven hour journey back north. I think it was after this day that he became a habitual
rail traveller. We encountered a few Leicester fans, down for their play off with Derby,
and they saw the shirt, congratulated me and I wished them luck and hoped they didn’t
have tickets for the seatless spots in the Stockport side. We stopped off at the newsagent
and bought one copy of every newspaper we didn’t already have, even the Tory tabloids
I would normally turn my nose up at, and sat down at Victoria coach station to read them. The
Sun supplied the photo of David Eyres celebrating that became my artificial memory. I
have them all to this day in my "Burnley archive" (a drawer under the bed).
In the light of all the nonsense talked
afterwards, it is interesting to note that all the papers reported that Stockport had
"self destructed"; none of them blamed the referee. This is confirmed by spies
we had in the press box, who reported two things: that a very famous football writer was
utterly pissed throughout the whole game, and that Danny Bergera called what had happened
"bizarre" and said his team had gone "berserk." Afterwards he realised
that this wouldn’t serve the myth, and history would have to be altered to fuel their
next campaign. I didn’t want to bang on about Stockport when I started writing this,
as I have never considered them rivals, but it’s impossible not to get into a bit of
that if I try to reflect the atmosphere of that day and the aftermath. How far their myth
making went was ridiculous. I even read that it was a conspiracy by Endsleigh, then
sponsors of the league and therefore the play-offs, to get "their" team in a
high profile division. What? But playing them again seemed a long way off as I waved off
our kid, then went back to bed and for the rest of the week was hungover, euphoric and
tired.
Subsequently I bought the video, which is a
truly terrible production that does profound disservice to one of our finest hours. Trust
our club to take treasured memories and turn them into something cheap and shoddy. I tried
to watch it to help me write this, but I only got as far as the teams walking out. I
didn’t get as far this time as the appalling commentary. The pre-match build up is
utterly execrable, poorly edited, awash with cheap music, inane. Did they deliberately
seek out the most stereotypical Clarets to ask dumb questions? Mind you, I always enjoy
the Stockport fans who, when asked if they feel outnumbered, reply rather un-prophetically
that it’s eleven against eleven on the pitch. And if you stick at the video enough,
you do get exclusive footage from the open-topped bus. Far better is the Radio Lancashire
commentary tape, which I also bought, if only for the loopy musings of Paul Mariner. When
Steve Davis made that glorious, mad dash forwards, he is described as being "on the
Beckenbauer tablets." Where do you get those from? I listened to that to help me fill
in the blanks for this while trying to keep a few visual memories intact. I enjoyed Frank
Teasdale telling them at the end what wonderful supporters we are. But god help me, as I
listened to the last few minutes of commentary, I found myself getting tense.
And that’s what happened, or at least,
that’s how I choose to remember it. When she wanted to annoy me, my wife-to-be, who
averages four away defeats a season, described it as "a good day out." I tried
to tell her it had more significance than that. Then came that wretched season after. When
we got relegated, I was forced to agree with her. Yes, it was a good day out, and nothing
more. History isn’t fixed; it changes according to what comes after. Everyone is
familiar with the maxim that history is written by the victors, but in this case, we
rewrote it from the point of view of failure and defeat. What happened the next season
undid the meaning of this game, it took all the significance of it away, it even made it a
bit of a bad thing. Things were to get even worse, of course, and in 98 we nearly took
away the halcyon moments of The York Game of 92.
Looking at it now, little survives. The season
after we spent a million quid on players to try to keep us up, but never had the guts or
the cowardice to knife in the back the manager who took us there, so went down, and got
nothing back for any of those players. We spent most of our cash then, let Waddle throw
away the rest, and built a ground that we can’t fill, although fortunately it looks
nice empty. The players who that day became special, Davis, Eyres, McMinn, all fell out
with managers and left cheaply. Tin Man, my favourite ever Claret, who had all the flair /
panache / flamboyance / swagger you could ask for, ended up an old man who kids threw
sweets at the next time we played at Edgy Park. Now, in the summer of 98, all we can do is
dream of some rich bloke coming into the club and chucking his money around, and if it
doesn’t happen then nothing much else will. So, if I tell the story of this day as
one tremendous piss-up, that’s because that’s all it was in the end. We should
be thankful that we had the chance of a piss-up and a few moments of celebration. Until
now, this day is still as good as it got. We haven’t got over the hangover yet.
Beresford, Parkinson,
Thompson, Davis, Pender, Joyce, McMinn, Deary, Heath, Francis (Farrell 15), Eyres. SNU:
Lancashire, Williams. Att: 44,806.
(originally written for
the Clarets Archive website) http://www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Track/6698/memo.html
Firmo
December-January 1998-99
More from this day at
Wembley
