20- My Mersey Paradise and Man U
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 the ground, which was the original stand with a low slanting roof above the seats up top and a small standing paddock in front. I was in the wooden seats which like Hillsborough would make a racket when slammed down mindlessly. It was a ground I'd seen on the TV many times and I was not disappointed. The Church of St Luke The Evangelist was still visible in the corner between the main stand and Gwladys Street stand, which in those days had standing in the front.
Talking of West Ham Tony Cottee was walking around the pitch all suited and booted, he wasn't playing that day and some salacious scandal over his personal life had broken in the tabloids that week. I can't remember what it was but some of my fellow Leeds fans were having a laugh at his expense. Vinnie Jones too was taking a pre-match stroll around the Goodison pitch, which had won the best pitch of the First Division award the previous season, so at least they'd won something having finished 6th the previous season. Vinny wasn't in match gear so he was clearly not involved.
The Everton fans were piling in around us, breaking into sporadic song as the clock ticked towards 3pm. No doubt 26 year old Mike Saunders (above) a clerical officer from Clubmoor was amongst them. I had to do a double-take whilst flicking through the programme as I thought he was the guy who played Joe Mangel in Neighbours! However humble old Mike adored Graeme Sharp, like many Leeds fans didn't have much time for Emlyn Hughes and bemoaned the fact that allegedly the club kept the fans in the dark over injuries!
The game kicked-off and the atmosphere was electric, the Leeds fans doing their best to belt out "Marching On Together" to inspire their team who frankly were given no chance and at best a damage limitation exercise. However the unthinkable happened just 6 minutes in, Everton failed to clear a horrible bouncing throw-in and Chris Fairclough nodded Leeds who were wearing their yellow strip, in front at the opposite end to us.
But on 25 minutes, Chris gave away a penalty, cue the usual jeering and gesturing as we tried to put taker Neil McDonald off....it must have worked as he skewed it well wide of Lukic's right hand post! More manic celebrations and banging of seats commenced.
Then it just got even better and better. Imre Varadi a former Everton player bursts through onto a loose ball, colliding with Everton defender Martin Keown and keeper Neville Southall for boyhood Evertonian Gary Speed to skirm the ball into the net! Leeds 2-0 up at half time.
Then I and everyone else that day was witness to one of the most extraordinary things seen on a football pitch, Neville Southall the Wales and Everton keeper trotted out of the tunnel alone and plonked himself down at the Park End goal-mouth. After the astonishment had evaporated, we began to sing "Neville wants a transfer, Neville wants a transfer..". Eventually an Everton fan ran on to the pitch looking every inch your stereotypical if Jim Henson made Merseysiders, fuzzy hair and a tacked-on-tasche, daft hat on trying to gee Southall up, before being led away by the stewards.
Shortly after Varadi made it 3-0, cue more delirium and pinching ourselves but enter Pat Nevin, initially converting Kevin Sheedy's cross and then setting up John Ebrell to make it a nervy final 14 for Leeds. Largely thanks to John Lukic, who twice denied Mike Newell, we held on and I floated out of Goodison Park in a daze, almost carried along in the air by the throng of jubilant Leeds fans singing our heads off. There was one of those old blokes, religious nut-job holding a giant cross and preaching something about being atoned for all of our sins, in all honesty after what I'd just witnessed I don't think there was much space to believe in anything else!
Just three-days later, Leeds played their first home top-flight game for eight-years against Manchester United. I cannot overstress actually how under-whelming this game was given the antipathy between the two sides. The crowd was just over 29,000, a good 3,000 below capacity and this was reflected in a 0-0 bore draw. The Sun newspaper the following day urged shotshy Leeds to "Get Beardo" e.g. Liverpool's Peter Beardsley who was increasingly becoming surplus to requirements at Anfield. Barry reckoned he'd heard a rumour that the Tetley brewery were going to pay his wages, ironic given Beardsley was an avowed teetotaller, somewhat fanciful too as he crossed Stanley Park to join Everton instead.
There was a change in the PA announcers box too, like Mervyn Day "Uncle" Tom Schofield found himself surplus to requirements and was replaced by a guy called Jon Hammond (above) who apparently did the breakfast show on Radio Leeds, not being local I wouldn't have known this. I'm sorry but Hammond sounded too posh and clipped with his BBC voice, for example his pronuciation of Carl Shutt sounded like "Korl Shoot" much to the mirth of the Kop. It was also the evening that Leeds United, Jon Hammond and the Leeds Permanent Building Society launched Radio Leeds United, which basically was a PA broadcast promising "pre-match fun on the pitch", "music from visiting bands", "new mascots the then unnamed Leeds Lions", "pre-match interviews with celebrities, players and football experts", all designed to "boost the strong, family atmosphere being created at Elland Road".
The only other noteworthy event from that evening was Mick the driver tuned the coach radio into a new radio station BBC Radio 5, traditionally sports fans relied on "Sport on Two" for their coverage where Radio 2's "middle of the road" scheduling was shifted for the football etc. Barely 30 hours earlier, the BBC launched a new dedicated station to host "news, sport, children and educational programmes" named BBC Radio 5. Eventually this evolved into the Five Live we know today, but it went out on the analogue medium wave frequencies 693/909 for four-year's before becoming the rolling 24/7 station it is today.
The following Saturday, September 1st, Leeds rediscovered their shooting boots and gunned down Norwich 3-0 with two from Lee Chapman and another from Imre Varadi meant that talk of Beardsley coming was well and truly banished.
In his programme notes for Norwich, Howard Wilkinson refelected on his time spent at Italia 90 as one of Bobby Robson's "spies" and claimed that the "sweeper system" had arrived on these shores, including Tuesday night's visitors from Manchester and Wilko edged his bets whether or not Dave Stringer's Canaries would do the same. Meanwhile promising reserve midfielder Simon Grayson hoped to emulate his cricketing brother Paul Grayson, himself a one-time Elland Road trialist by breaking into the Leeds first XI. Paul meanwhile had broken into the Yorkshire and England U19 sides.
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