36 - Bruised bananas and beating Liverpool
Arsenal were next up on Tuesday September 3rd, the reigning champions who definitely held the whip over us in recent times with two sins and four draws in our last six meetings, all of which took place during 1990/91! I remember walking down from the coach park where the Park N Ride is these days and spotting an Arsenal fans coach which was obviously lost. Sitting in the seat beat the driver at the front was a Gooner, who sported Ray Parlour type hair and wore a shirt that appeared to be their home and away tops cut in half but stitched together. He must have known a good seamstress but it looked ridiculous, no more so than Arsenal's new away kit which would become known as "the bruised banana". They wore that on this particular evening and it had the makings of a lucky omen as by 49 minutes they were 2-0 up and looking likely to shake off the post-title slumber that often afflicts teams having lost their previous two away matches but Leeds fought back and Gordon Strachan chipped home a penalty past David Seaman, after Gary McAllister had already put the ball in the net but saw the goal chalked-off after a Lee Dixon handball and Lee Chapman strode home the equaliser to take us to third on 8 points, with the Manchester clubs joint top on 13 points.
It was the slightly less loathesome and obnoxious half of Manchester who rolled up on Saturday September 7th at Elland Road. City, managed by future Leeds manager Peter Reid, who also played. Leeds stormed to a 2-0 lead at the break, Tony Dorigo smashing home a first and then David Batty's first goal for Leeds at Elland Road, ironically his last being against City at Maine Road in 1987. Pretty much ever since the local lad had cemented himself in the team, his lack of goals had been something of a good natured joke but there he was, bearing down on the City goal in front of me at the Kop End, shoots on the edge of the 6-yard box and slips on his arse...2-0 talk about bringing the house down. The Kop went mental. Indeed I remember reading an article in the Square Ball shortly after where they interviewed Alan Roberts, the General Manager of the club who claimed that six fans sustained broken ankles in the melee that followed Batty's goal. A Gordon Strachan penalty wrapped up an impressive win.
I was in Spain visiting my mum when we played consecutive away matches at Chelsea (won 1-0, 14.09.91) and Coventry (0-0, 18.09.91), I'd timed my visit to get back late on the Friday night, September 20th so I'd be back in time for what I considered our biggest game of the season, at home to Liverpool the very next day. However my plans were in ruins as the dreaded "French air traffic controllers strike" grounded everything at Luton airport. I'd normally fly from East Midlands which was on my doorstep, I assume there were no flights so I'd gone to Luton which was a good 90 minutes drive from my home. The airline, Britannia eventually told us to take our boarding passes to the bar to obtain a free drink and sandwich, I tried it on by going to one bar, munching down the stale bread and cheap salami, then going to another bar and trying to get another free drink and feed. The bar tender was having none of it. I was in a foul mood worried about missing the Liverpool game and much to my shame probably tried to insult him by calling him Manuel, after John Sachs hapless character in "Fawlty Towers". Not far from my Mum's Bar was a brilliant restaurant called "Cafe Berlin" run by a Spanish family, the son Kiko was the chef and once when I was in there he was watching "Fawlty Towers" in Spanish and was chuckling away, he explained to me in their version Manual was a Mexican! I did calm down and buy a beer, I offered one to Manual and even called him "Mi amigo" but he declined.
I'm no aviation expert but back then, you basically went back on the flight you came out on the previous week. So I think I'd left Luton about 7pm, landed in Girona at 10pm local time, so it was destined to fly back around 11pm and land around midnight our time. It hadn't even left bloody Luton by half 11. Eventually after a few more torturous hours, I was on my way and landed at Luton at dawn.
The next task was to find my crappy Fiesta in whatever car park id dumped it in and scuttle up the M1, a quick wash and change then meet the "Go Whittle"' coach at half 11 in Burton. I didn't bank on a "Customs Officer" pulling me over. Obviously a young guy, I was 19 at the time, travelling alone was a perfect fit for a would-be smuggler and this bastard took me to town going through every inch of my two bags and bombarding me with questions about drugs. I never did drugs, never have done, at least you know where you are with the Ale! I honestly thought he was going to take me to whatever was behind the screen, don a pair of latex-gloves, tell me to drop my britches and spread my balls!
Luckily that didn't happen, but it was gone 8am when I located the car and bombed up the M1 towards the Midlands, trying to stay awake. A quick "hi" to my Dad, I dumped my bags, changed and made the coach at Burton, struggling to stay awake as we made the trip to Leeds. I was still dozy during the game and barely remember it but Steve Hodge pounced to give us a massive win against the team everyone knew back them you had to beat!
Comments
Post a Comment