29- Capital Pain and Chicken George
Not for the first time in my life I think I was losing the plot by late January '91. I'd asked Dimples, the girl I'd briefly dated in the Autumn if she would go out with me again, she said "maybe" but she was letting me down gently and one-night in the pub came up to me and said basically "No chance"-I knew exactly how John Lukic must have felt when George Graham told him Arsenal were signing David Seaman.
"Your loss!" I grunted, she retorted something about it wasn't and she sat down before I could mumble another response. During our brief courtship she'd often mentioned about going down to London, I was about to tell her that I was going not once but twice in six days but I don't think Highbury and White Hart Lane would have impressed her.
Due to the latest rejection, my sleep pattern was all over the place. I set off to Burton to pick Barry up and drive out to Cannock where we'd pick up the West Midlands coach for our trip to Arsenal on January 27th 1991 in the FA Cup 4th round. For games in London and the South they didn't venture our way so we met them and did a couple more pick ups including one outside the famous Rotunda in Birningham's Bull Ring. I actually arrived an hour early to meet Barry. I think I turned round and drove back. I was all over the place.
It was a Sunday afternoon kick off and the shadows of gloom were fast falling on Islington as we parked up in a coach park not far from the stadium, you could see the floodlights twinkling in the distance from the famous old ground. I was struck how friendly the Arsenal fans seemed, one or two waved at us, smiled as we burst into "We are Leeds" ad infinitum and we entered the Clock End of the stadium without any hassle. It was a magnificent but dated stadium, one of the stands, the East Stand was a listed building and the fact it was in a residential area scuppered Arsenal's hopes of extending it. However they would press on with the redevelopment of the North Bank which stood opposite. The implications of the Taylor Report meant that famous old terraces such as the one at Highbury, our very own Kop, the Holte End at Villa etc were living on borrowed time.
Arsenal's plans to redevelop the North Bank were not without controversy. They planned to raise £16m by offering a debenture to their supporters, which was more commonly known as "bonds". For £1,100 or £1,500 Gooners would have to buy the right to buy a seat in the new stand. Obviously this outraged many fans who had stood by the club through thick and thin. Down the road at West Ham, the protests were more vociferous at their own similar scheme and in comparison to these, the Leeds bond which was launched the following year to fund the East Stand redevelopment was unbelievably generous! For example, a mate of mine who stood on the Kop paid £142 for his season-ticket, his £500 bond got him.a seat in the East Stand plus £100 discount for seven years, so he paid just £42 for the remainder of the 1990's.
We shivered our way back to the coach and there seemed to be a disagreement with Barry and this black guy. Barry seemed to be telling him there was no way he was riding back to Birmingham on our coach. It had nothing to do with skin-colour, Barry did not have an ounce of racism in his body. The guy was looking around, trying to catch our eyes to try and "borrow" some cash off somebody, I just shrugged when he asked me. Apparently his nickname was Chicken George, after the character on the TV series "Roots", he was a well-known troublecauser and owed the branch money hence Barry's hostility towards him.
I do remember a lighthearted moment on such a drab day before we left Highbury and Chicken George behind, when the "Grange Hill" theme blasted over the coach radio, you know the one! Then it went silent before playing again. "Barry turn this fucking shit off!" someone yelled. It was BBC Radio 5, still in its infancy having been launched just five months earlier and clearly they hadn't settled on its format just then. Mind you I'd have rather listened to that all the way home rather than Rick Astley's comeback single which appeared to be on every single station as we journeyed back to the Midlands in the dark.
Three nights later, the replay at Elland Road finished 1-1 after extra-time, Lee Chapman scoring for Leeds, Anders Limpar on target for the Gunners, so the second replay would take place on February 13th. In the meantime we travelled back to north London on February 2nd to face Tottenham.
In contrast to the elegant villas that surrounded Highbury, the area around Tottenham was a dump. We'd journeyed down from Cannock and being hungover from the night before, I didn't bother joining the throng at this pub Barry and booked us into near Epping, but instead stayed on the coach and tried to instigate a chat with a new member of the branch, a young lady I'd never seen before. Although she did offer me a sip from her can of Diet Coke, she seemed mightily relieved when I decided I'd take my patter into the pub, alone.
I remember thinking, as I watched a second dreadful 0-0 draw in the capital city inside a week, how ugly I was! The lass on the coach was hardly a looker but she wasn't interested, Dimples didn't want me back and who could blame them? There I was, stood on the sleet-lashed terraces of the Park Stand at White Hart Lane, pretending to enjoy myself with a horde of beer-monsters, occasionally slipping out the odd pungent fart and some regrettably were singing anti-Semitic songs about Spurs going to Belsen and hissing like gas would to micmick the gas chambers. Many Spurs fans sat in the West Stand to the left wearily got up and ironically clapped and cheered those who came out with such vile songs.
If the afternoon could not get any more horrific, Lee Chapman was carried off when following an accidental collision he slid across the perimeter track face down after just two-minutes. Chapman was taken to hospital as a precaution and robbed of our top scorer and Tottenham missing the mercurial Paul Gasgoigne, it was destined to end goalless. Looking back it's remarkable that this would be our only league game of the month due to our involvement in three cups, the first league game to fall was Sheffield United at home on February 9th as we had an important date with "old friends" the following day.
Instead of hosting Dave Bassett's Blades we instead headed to Old Trafford for the Rumbelows League Cup semi final 1st leg. I wasn't lucky enough to get a ticket and remarkably a scarred and bruised Chapman played against the club he claimed to have supported as a boy, until he sent his autograph book to them in the post and suspected the cleaning ladies had pretended to be Bobby Charlton and co. Lee Sharpe gave them the lead before Chris Whyte equalised with a rare goal, alas Brian McClair grabbed their winner but I and no doubt many Leeds fans fancied our chances against them a fortnight later.
However the three pronged assault to Wembley became two when Arsenal knocked us out of the FA Cup. Some serious snow fall put me off going to Highbury on the Wednesday, another 0-0 draw on the 13th, this meant the Derby County away game on February 16th would have to be rearranged to accommodate our third replay against the Gunners on that day. Chapman was back amongst the goals but sadly Paul Merson had already put Arsenal ahead with a sensational solo goal and Lee Dixon grabbed a second. Personally I was glad to see the back of this tie, surely we'd still get to Wembley in either the Rumbelows or Zenith Data Systems Cup?
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