A new football adventure was a lifeline for this awkward 15-year old. We would occasionally venture off to other grounds, such as Leicester’s Filbert Street and The Dell at Southampton.īy 1988, we were spending less time together, so he suggested we visit all 92 league grounds. I was desperate to get my birthday mentioned in lights on the huge scoreboard. I loved seeing him becoming more engaged in the weekly drama and sometimes joining in with the old lady who sat next to us, as she needled the opposition manager. We spent a season watching Watford gain promotion to the First Division, under Graham Taylor, in 1981-82. The experience set me on a path I’m still on to this day.ĭad’s interest grew. But through a friend who knew Arsenal midfielder David Price, he secured two tickets for Arsenal v Ipswich Town at Highbury. My father wasn’t a natural football fan, and I don’t think he had been to a match before I started pestering him with my love for the game. I was seven and a half when I went to my first match. My grateful dad handed over £10 to buy them both a couple of drinks and we were back on our way – the two of us, to Oakwell and beyond. With super-human strength, they lifted the car from its resting place and back on to the road. They may have been bemused, but they recognised how desperate we were to get to the ground. Despite the pouring rain, we managed to flag them down, and told them of our odyssey. Help came in the form of two Barnsley fans. It was football that had inspired this trip and it was football that got it back on the road. As well as Paul Mariner or Ian Rush, I wanted to be Craig Madden or Trevor Senior. I would re-enact the previous weekend’s goals in the garden on my own, taking the scant details from Match magazine - all the way down to Bury v Reading in the Fourth Division. I would write down all the season’s transfers in my Rothmans Football Yearbook. Panini sticker albums were my pride and joy. I had been obsessed with the sport since I could remember. It was a journey my father and I had mapped out, to indulge my thirst for all things football. We were stuck outside of a town neither of us knew, trying to reach yet another of England and Wales’ 92 Football League grounds. Oakwell, the home of Barnsley Football Club, seemed a long way off now. No mobile phones, no apps to contact a rescue service, no sat-nav to tell us exactly where we were. Not quite in an ‘Italian Job’ style, but we definitely weren’t going anywhere fast. We got out and found he’d reversed over a steep dropped kerb, and the back of the car was dangling over the edge.
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