Ridsdale and I

A legacy of my failed teenage relationship was a Young Person’s Railcard. I’d got this in the summer of 1988 to save money on my rail journeys to see my then girlfriend- having given up on the morbidly slow and utterly unreliable National Express Coaches. Ironically Gary Glitter advertised the YP cards, British Rail were blissfully unaware of his sordid private activities. It was another twist of irony that the ad men at BR also employed Jimmy Saville to tell the unsuspecting British public that this was indeed the age of the train. Its going to sound a bit old-fogeyish now, but my first trip to Elland Road probably cost me around £12.50 by the time Id factored in my reduced rail fare, refreshments, admission and a programme. It didn’t include the Leeds A-Z from WHS I bought and crudely stuffed into my denim jacket inside pocket as I tried to navigate a short-cut via Sweet Street and the back streets of Holbeck, shuffling beneath the shadows of huge mail-order catalogue warehouses, bac...

 My long awaited Elland Road debut could not come soon enough and it occurred perhaps not in the most ideal of circumstances when my girlfriend decided to dump me, on my 17th birthday, 5th January 1989 by telling me she'd met someone else! Charming! She did me a massive favour though despite her brazen infidelity, utter shithousery and lousy lack of timing that would have embarrassed John Pearson. She freed up my Saturday’s, no more holding hands in Argos with dreams of sterling silver and cubic zircona, watching rubbish films in smoky cinemas Beetlejuice springs to mind - sorry I hated it! I was now free at last to realise my long-awaited dream, to head to Elland Road, to watch the mighty Leeds United in the flesh. In the meantime, she couldn’t make up her mind if she supported Wimbledon or Spurs; so it never would have lasted between us. So Leeds United stepped into fill the void and I can honestly say they have never, ever let me down, unlike women!. It was Sunday January 8th 19...

Back in 1988 we didn't have social media and the net to satisfy our football gossip cravings, our sources were mainly from Red Top newspapers like the Sun, Mirror and Daily Star.  Back then I was 16, not long left-school, I found a job in a garage/main dealership I didn’t particularly enjoy it. I lived at home with my parents in Ashby-de-la-Zouch, Leicestershire- well it was a pub actually and my Dad is still there. So it wasn’t that bad. The job was a means to an end, £42 a week, I had a girlfriend too so I had enough income to treat her now and then to a bag of chips, a bottle of L’Jardine perfume or even a cinema ticket if she was really lucky. Like the billions of Manchester United fans on the planet, I’d not seen my team live in the flesh, at the time that is. Leeds United were in the old Second Division back then. The football coverage on the TV, ITV’s Big Match on focused entirely on the First Division, Liverpool, Everton, Spurs, Arsenal and Manchester United. Manchester Cit...