33- Midland Bankers & Blunting Blades

For the life of me I cannot remember why I ended up watching our win at Derby from the Normanton End of the Baseball Ground amongst their fans. I'd guess that this was a rearranged game thanks to the weather and the fixture pile-up brought on by our three cup runs and replays. I'll lay the blame at Derek's Door, my newish found friend from Swadlincote had the knack of persuading me to do things against my better judgement and going down to the Derby ticket office one frosty morning to buy tickets for their end was one of them. I'd later find out, as I long suspected, that Derek liked to wind people up! The problem was he wasn't exactly a big guy and was a few years older than me so might not have been that quick to make a run for if if we bit off more than we could chew.

Obviously I knew the old Baseball Ground quite well and it was on its last legs. The state of the roof above us was probably more of a threat to our safety than the irate Derby fan who sat several rows behind us and from Derek's inability to keep his trap shut, had soon twigged we were Leeds fans. A couple of coppers wandered over for a chat, they were okay with us and the Rams fan frothing from the mouth vanished shortly after Carl Shutt scored the only goal of the game after 30 minutes. Derby really had far more pressing problems than two extra Leeds fans boosting their crowd to around 12 and half thousand that night. They were still under the ownership of Robert Maxwell, the publishing tycoon who seemed to be content to shipwreck the club, no pun intended. Derby had just had their relegation back to the Second Division confirmed and Maxwell had put them up for sale at £8m. He'd been planning on buying Spurs but that fell through. Luckily for Derby he'd sold up just a couple of months before he met a grisly end in the Mediterranean when he fell off his yacht, the Lady Ghislaine named after one of his daughters.

Like Derby, Aston Villa were having issues with someone who was born in Czechslovakia, in this instance Dr Jozeph Venglos. The West Midlanders arrived at Elland Road on May 4th 1991 battling to avoid the drop and their experiment to replace England bound Graham Taylor with the first manager to be born outside the UK or Ireland to take charge of a top flight team had pretty much backfired. Villa did prove a little stubborn to shake off, equalising both Gary McAllister's opener then Carl Shutt's second but Leeds clicked into cruise control and ran out comfortable 5-2 winners to heap more pressure on Venglos and Villa. They did survive but Dr Jo was soon on his way and was replaced by Ron Atkinson.

After beating Villa I agreed to drop Derek off in Swad as it was on my way home and he persuaded me to have a swift shandy in his local pub. A load of blokes in red and white scarves trooped in and they were fans of nearby Gresley Rovers who'd just got back from Wembley having drawn 4-4 with Guiseley in the FA Vase final. Derek got nattering to them and the replay was at Bramall Lane the following Tuesday. "Do you fancy it?" he asked. "Why not!" I replied. It would be a night out and the chance to offer some support to one of our local sides who admittedly I'd never seen play before - so I thought.

We arrived in Sheffield in good time on the Tuesday night and milled around the stadium. We headed for the John Street Stand, I corrected Derek and pointed out the Gresley fans were in another part of the stadium. He then announced that we would be supporting Guiseley! There was some bloke selling Guiseley scarves, so he buys one and we queue up to pay to get in their end.

I suppose it made sense for us to support a team from Leeds, who turned out in all-white that night rather than a team from Derbyshire who wore red! Much to Derek's delight, Guiseley won 3-1 and after we watched them parade the trophy, we headed home on the A61 and stopped at a couple of pubs so he could toast Guiseley's victory, I was driving. He also managed to upset some road-workers in one pub comparing their day-glo hi-viz vests to Sheffield United's away kit. Ironically our final home game of the season was against the Blades the following night.

If I thought my friends shithousery was over and done with, I was wrong. With a couple of pints in him, he was an even bigger pain in the arse. We came home down the A38 and then onto what was the A50. I slowed down as a coach pulled in to the roadside, carefully overtaking it I noticed the passengers disembarking were dejected Gresley Rovers fans. Derek meanwhile wound down his window and brandished his Guiseley scarf started hollering and hooting with joy. I did feel for those lads, the last thing they expected to see was some short guy with a droopy tashe, hairstyle and leather jacket which looked like something out of the 70's brandishing a Guiseley scarf out of a 11-year-old white Ford Fiesta window. I silently prayed they'd not made a note of the registration plate and would hunt me down in Ashby.

The Sheffield United game passed off incident free, Derek sat in the West Stand so he couldn't get me into any more lumber on the Kop. It was the final home game of dvd season, played out in a good atmosphere on a warm Spring evening, warm enough for short sleeves on the Kop. Mel Sterland put us in front on 11 minutes with a "daisy cutter" free kick which bobbled on the threadbare Elland Road pitch. With his pedigree steeped in favour of the other team in Sheffield, Mel always seemed to celebrate goals and victories against them more enthusiastically than he would do against other opponents and he just loved scoring and playing to the crowd full stop - ironically just a few years later he donned the colours of Sheffield United to play a bit part role in the Sean Bean film "When Saturday Comes". Another player who'd go on and grace the big-screen was Vinnie Jones, who was back at Elland Road in the colours of Sheffield United. Vinnie had made his debut for the Blades just a few hours after signing for them from Leeds 8 months earlier. I thought he'd got a "mixed" reception that day from the travelling support at Bramall Lane. Tonight he got a warm welcome back littered with few barbs of "United reject" and "You're to shit to play for Leeds" greeted with smiles all round. Carl Shutt scored the winner after a howler from Bob Booker, just minutes after Brian Marwood equalised for them. With hindsight, it should have been a case of "hold that thought" eg a Sheffield United defender making a hash of things at the back on the penultimate game of the season!

The lads did a deserved lap of honour at the end and the customary scarves were thrown on the pitch and "We're proud of you" rang round the stadium. Finishing fourth was not too shabby. The tantalising dream of Europe hadn't quite come-off, much of that was down to UEFA faffing about and deliberating whether or not to further ease the post-Heysel restrictions on English clubs competing in UEFA competitions, in end Liverpool were our sole entrants in the 1991/92 UEFA cup for finishing runners-up to Arsenal, who went into the European Cup. So missing out on third place to Crystal Palace didn't matter that much

The season was not quite over for me yet as I'd got a ticket for the final game of the season, away at Nottingham Forest on Saturday May 11th. I travelled with the West Midlands branch thinking it would be a bit cheeky to demand the ticket and not go on the coach, Nottingham was just a 25 minute drive from home. Barry Meakin, who worked in a brewery in Burton and as I can testify was fond of a drink despite being surrounded by the stuff all day, had made a new friend, Steve, who was the landlord of the now demolished Derby Turn Pub in Burton. It wasn't a bad boozer and beat having to park in a little village called Stretton, just off the A38 and incurring the wrath of NIMBY'S who didn't want a load of Leeds fans leaving their cars outside their properties - it wasn't a rough street, far from it but it also had the disadvantage of having to wait in all weathers in a layby on the A38 for the coaches to turn up. The pub was much better, we could leave our cars in the car park and maybe have a "quick half" whilst waiting for the coaches with the rest of the West Midlands branch on board. For Forest, the coach had arrived early and there was a party-like atmosphere in the pub as the West Midlands lads and lasses drank their fill in Steve"s establishment rather than head into Nottingham and try and find a pub which would accept away fans, as Barry would tell you no mean feat! This was still some years before Baddiel, Skinner and all those nice Middle-class chaps made going to "footy" socially acceptable.

So it seemed like a good idea, last game of a great season and all that, but as the clock crept towards 2pm and beyond I got a bit anxious. Eventually we set off for Nottingham and much to my dismay, a combination of thirsty-fans with hollow-legs and the finicky police of Nottinghamshire, we were going to miss kick-off. I realised this when on the A52, rather than take us left at the "Nottingham Knight Island" onto the A60 which leads right into West Bridgford, the police diverted us farther east. At least we missed that crap "Robin Hood" song they run out to....and their first two-goals!

We were stood in the corner of an open Spion Kop named the Bridgford End, not a great view further obscured by a floodlight pylon. Lee Chapman headed one back against his old club to halve the deficit. We remained in good voice against a side who were off to Wembley again to play Spurs in the FA Cup Final the following Saturday plus there were quite a few anti-Man U songs sung as they had reached the final of the European Cup Winners Cup in Rotterdam where they'd play Barcelona midweek. Forest looked like they'd finally killed us off when Garry Parker added a third, but it spurred us on for one final blast in an amazing season, Chapman grabbed his 31st of the season to finish England's top scorer then Carl Shutt levelled and we were going mental in the corner but alas, the Forest managers son Nigel Clough latched on to Steve Hodge's pass for the winner. It would be Hodge's last appearance in the "Garibaldi" at the City Ground, he would only make the subs-bench for Forest in their FA Cup final defeat and then sign for us in a £900,000 deal.