Ridsdale and I

Derby were our next visitors to Elland Road and you'd thought I'd be buzzing after being at Maine Road the previous weekend and watching the Rams being put to the sword, but I was still going through post-Dimples depression and making everyone's life a misery with my abject moaning. I'd befriended a guy from Swadlincote called Derek,  who was married to a much younger woman, life seemed so easy for him! She'd drop him off at the coach and no doubt have dinner and "afters" waiting at home for him. Anyway we swept aside a poor Derby side, who were second from bottom, with relative ease. They had Peter Shilton in goal, who got some stick from the Kop. Shilton was the keeper Brian Clough wanted to sign for Leeds from Stoke City 16-years earlier and in one interview he claimed this was the catalyst behind his infamous sacking after 44-days, the fate of David Harvey unsettling the rock-solid dressing room-but some fans were shouting "Tina! Tina!" at Sh...

  Being young, free and single (yet again) I could spend my weekends watching Leeds United. I was still hacked-off about Dimples, she had started coming in the pub with a tall, blonde guy with a flat top haircut who looked like the rapper Vanilla Ice. The antithesis to me being a few inches under 6-foot, dark and cuddly. But I had a visit to Maine Road, Manchester to look forward to on Sunday November 11th 1990, Armistice Day. With that in mind and not wanting to spark any debates or disrespect, there was no commemoration of this whatsoever at the grounds back then. No poppies on shirts, no pre-match regimental parades, no wreath laying, no minutes silence, no last post, nothing. Other than wear a poppy or go to a local parade, there was nothing much more than you could do to remember the fallen. Because the game was in the north-west, the Burton contingent, myself included had to head out Cannock way to meet the coach. Barry had arranged pre-match refreshments but they were in som...

  Dimples, my newish girlfriend was acting a bit odd. The Leeds Teddy bear I got her before the QPR defeat barely registered a murmur of gratitude. She cancelled our planned rendezvous on the Wednesday night and on the Thursday night, I picked her off and whizzed her into Nottingham, ironically our next home league opponents were Forest. At the time I drove a 1980 Mark One Ford Fiesta, white with blue go-faster stripes down the side, my Dad had helped me install a tape-deck in it and I thought Batley lad Robert Palmer' s Greatest Hits might get her in the mood, nope. He was back in the charts too with UB40 doing a cover of Bob Dylan's "I'll be your baby tonight". It was late night shopping in Nottingham that night and having pulled into the car park she said she didn't want to get out but go home instead because she'd got a headache. No surprise she dumped me the next day! She said the usual "it's not you but me" and "I hope we can still...

  For the sake of anonymity, I'll call her "Dimples". During the summer of 1990 she started coming into my Dads pub and I developed a massive crush on her. She had that typical late 80's, early 90's styling, short hair flicked over, I think id got longer hair than her in fact because I had succumb to the dreaded mullet. She wore baggy jackets and turned up jeans and when she flashed her toothy smile, her cheeks inset on fine high cheekbones would dimple. I was besotted Obviously the likes of John Pearson put my own scoring record to shame, it had been nearly 20 months since my split with the girl from Somerset. Single-life kind of suited me, after all it was a thrilling time to be a Leeds fan with the promotion-season, the arrival of all the big-signings in the summer of '89, so there was not any time or need for another girlfriend. I asked around and found out that she was part of a section of society who were probably more despised than even us Leeds fans at...

  Leeds finally came unstuck....at Luton Town of all places on September 8th 1990, a one-nil defeat. I think away fans were banned at the time. I must admit I did phone and ask for an application  form to become a member of Luton Town FC but couldn't be bothered when it arrived! No doubt the Luton ticket office had hundreds of similar  requests in the run-up to the game. What I did miss was Vinny Jones's final outing for Leeds on the plastic pitch at Kenilworth Road, in a patched up Leeds side. His omission in recent weeks had bee  the elephant in the room, but Leeds were doing fine without him and the links with his old boss Wimbledon boss  Dave Bassett now at Sheffield United grew stronger and stronger. The following week, Gazzamania and Tottenham Hotspur rolled into Elland Road. Going back to the infamous picture of the pair, Vinny couldn't get in the Leeds side, meanwhile Gascoigne's stock had risen after the Italia 90 World Cup to fever pitch. Like many nat...

  Saturday August 25th 1990. A sweltering hot Sunny day, I drove to somewhere near Cannock to meet the WM branch Go Whittle coach which whizzed us up the M6 to Merseyside. I don't think we stopped off for pre-match refreshments and soon we were crusing through the crumbling buildings of Toxteth or was it Croxeth. The grey lumps of prefabs lay scattered on the streets like a warzone whilst street urchin's wearing the blue of Everton or bright red of Liverpool kicking a ball around. Say or think what you like about the place, it is a proper footballing city. We parked up somewhere in Walton and strolled to the match. I remember seeing two blokes in a Ford Cortina wearing what looked like Hibernian shirts. Hibs were away at Aberdeen that day, so if these two fellers were lost they were over 350 miles away from their destination. I later picked them out in the lower Bullens Road stand, the green of their jerseys standing out from the uniform blue. We were housed in the Park End of ...

  As the post Bournemouth storm clouds slowly cleared, Leeds moved quickly in early June to strengthen their squad for their return to the top-flight. Thirty-years later, Messers Rodrigo, Liorente, Koch and Rafinha cost us nearly £80m, back in 1990 the outlay was around £2.6m; John Lukic returned from Arsenal for around £1m, a similar amount was spent on Leicester's Gary McAllister, Chris Whyte of West Brom cost just £550k, like McAlister his fee was decided by an independent tribunal who in those days would sit when the club's were unable to agree a fee. It's notable that the latter two players were playing Second Division football as the 90's dawned, although both had played in the top-flight earlier in their careers. Lukic, who began his career at Leeds during the Adamson era was rendered surplus to requirements at Highbury as George Graham signed David Seaman for £1.3m from QPR, ironically Seaman had been on Leeds books the same time as Lukic but we'd let him go...

  In the three days that passed from our slip up against Barnsley and our penultimate game of the season, our last at home, against lowly Leicester City, there sure seemed to be a lot of Foxes fanatics crawling out of the woodwork to remind me that their underachieving side, with kerbcrawler manager David Pleat in charge were coming north to spoil our party - I would not witness such an upsurge or interest in Leicester City's fortunes and those proclaiming to be fans of theirs until 2015/16! I was in the South Stand that day, a muggy day, the ground heaving in anticipation. Leicester began their shithousery by sending keeper Martin Hodge to defend the Kop in the first half. Hodge was known to Howard Wilkinson as he'd faithfully kept goal for Sheffield Wednesday during Wilko's time at Hillsborough- in fact Hodge had been involved in a well-publicised spat with Bobby Davison in 1985 following a bad-tempered FA Cup tie during Bobby D's time at Derby. I doubt even Wilko cou...

  Wednesday 25th April 1990. It was a nice, warm Spring afternoon. One of the advantages I had then waa finishing work at 4pm and speeding off in my little white Ford Fiesta to Burton to meet the Go Whittle Coaches off the A38. The sun was shining, the traffic flowed freely and as I hit Burton I noticed that someone had stuck a load of bill-stickers on a derelict wall advertising the Leeds-based Indie group The Wedding Presents single "Brassneck"-surely a good omen and a signal, to quote Tom Schofield the Leeds PA announcer that we were indeed "going places"? although I don't recall him spinning many "Weddoes" discs! Dusk was looming as we arrived at Elland Road, I nipped into the club shop and bought my first ever Leeds home bar scarf- I still have it to this day. I bought the programme for £1 and paid particular attention to the article on page 18 by Mr David Clarkson QPM, who was West Yorkshire Police's Divisional Commander for Leeds South Divis...