37- Scunny, Selhurst & Killer

 I'd never been to Scunthorpe before but just three-days after beating Liverpool, we were off to "Sunny Scunny" on a beautiful late September evening to face "The Iron" in the 2nd round 1st leg of the League Cup. Someone was blasting out dance music on the coach, I'm surprised Barry didn't tell them to turn it down. The locals were cranking up the noise as Leeds were in town again, they nearly has a memorable evening as I felt we were lucky to come out with a goalless draw against the Fourth Division side.

We moved into October and I threw a sickie at work on Tuesday October 1st praying my  boss didn't tune into Midweek Sports special or something like that and spot me, despite proclaiming to be sick, bouncing up and down on the Selhurst Park terraces - this was our opening day fixture rearranged because Palace couldn't get their ground redevelopment finished in time, not that you could tell as it was a dump. We left about 2pm and only just made it for the 7:45pm kick off due to the horrendous traffic on the M25. Although it was in Croydon, the stadium reminded me of a cold, northern ground with its old fashioned sloping roofs and we were stood on an old Spion Kop structure, I kept well back just in case the cameras panned around the ground. Anyway we suffered our first defeat of the season, 1-0, a very late goal and some skinny lad called Stan Collymore came on for Palace as a late sub.

We did bounce back the following Saturday, a 4-3, it was a funny game as we rip-roared to a 4-0 lead thanks to a brace each from Steve Hodge and Mel Sterland, however some sloppiness at the back let in Jamie Hoyland, Tony Agana and Carl Bradshaw to make it a nervy ending. Agana was coming to the end of his time at Bramall Lane, the following month he would move to our next league opponents, Neil Warnock's  Notts County but he would end up on-loan at Leeds before the season was out.

I came up on October 8th for our second-leg, League Cup second round tie against Scunny which barely attracted 14,000 despite it being poised on a knife edge after the goalless draw at Glanford Park a fortnight earlier, but we eased through with a 3-0 win to draw Tranmere in round 3.

Saturday 12th was a blank Saturday due to England's Euro 92 qualifier against Turkey, which they won 1-0 at Wembley. A week later Warnock's  newly promoted Notts lay in wait at Meadow Lane.

Yet again, the beer monsters in the branch's need for refreshments and Nottinghamshire Police's policy of sending away coaches the long way round meant like at Forest, five months earlier, meant we missed kick-off. In those days Meadow Lane had not been developed into the 19,000 all seater arena it is today and Nottingham's so-called poorer relations had already gone a goal up by the time we crammed onto this open Spion Kop, which was packed, we only knew that we'd equalised, a Lee Chapman header from a Strachan corner, because those down the front went wild. I could just make out the "D" on the edge of the area, I didn't see Steve Hodge's finish either, another header which he seemed to enjoy being back in the city of his birth. We were kicking towards the end that used to back on to a Leisure Centre in the second half and got a good view of Chris Whyte nodding home a third before a Gary McAllister thunderbolt put us 4-1 up, Warnock's men did get a consolation. The sports pages title talk was growing momentum and I noticed two of our branch members, a guy and a girl, start canoodling on the steps in front of me as we waited to leave so love was in the air too! If like me, you were single, I suppose you could have stayed on in Nottingham and tested the myth that there were three women to every man! 

October 26th and we top the league at last, Oldham were our opponents, finally promoted from the Second Division and they had the decency to score the only goal of a scrappy, tense game on our behalf, a misguided header from an ex Notts County player Brian Kilcline to be precise. "Killer" as he was known was an old-school, hard as nails centre-half of limited footballing ability who was, of course, part of the Coventry City side that narrowly beat us on the 1987 FA Cup semi-final, so he earned a huge slice of redemption by sending us to the summit. I looked on from the Kop and at the final whistle there were joyous celebrations that exceeded the quality of the game but it was a case of "Are you watching Manchester?" as we leapfrogged the hated Red Devils.