Ridsdale and I

  The Manchester music scene was all the rage back in the early 1990's, or Madchester as it was known. Some of it I did like such as The Happy Mondays, who would come to Elland Road to do a massive gig in the summer, I don't think they were big footie fans though. The Stone Roses were, but their allegiance sadly was with the red half of the city, which was a shame as I liked their music and alas the same applied with New Order. Predating them all The Smiths were a band split 50/50 Morrissey and Rourke favouring Man U and Marr and Joyce favouring City.  Still at least one of Old Trafford' s most famous sons was Mick Hucknall of Simply Red, despite all their success I'm not quite sure how they've lived with that burden for all these years. As I mentioned in chapter 20, our first home opponents of the 1990/91 season were Manchester United - the occasion passed without a whimper, it was a 0-0 bore draw, Elland Road wasn't even full to capacity and I never saw a cros...

  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 ...

  I didn't make the cut for tickets for Anfield on New Years Day 1991, I didn't miss much as Leeds were beaten 3-0 with goals from John Barnes, Ronny Rosenthal, who at the time was frequently linked with Leeds and Ian Rush, who did come to Leeds and need not have bothered. But Leeds were still going strong on the cup front, having reached the quarter-finals of both the Rumblelows and Zenith Data Systems Cup, as well as the FA Cup 3rd round which saw us drawn away at Barnsley on Sunday 6th January 1991. Barnsley were of course the only side to have done the double over us during the 1989/90 promotion season. I'd never been to Barnsley before and dressed appropriately for the occasion by wearing my full new Leeds tracksuit, combined with the classic yellow away shirt of the era. It was windy and absolutely pissing it down when we arrived at Oakwell. Back then, the three sides that were developed when the Tykes had a short-lived stay in the top-flight were still in their origi...

  Nowadays the TV cameras are pretty much  permanent fixture around Elland Road, especially during the pandemic but when ITV'S "The Match" rolled into LS11 on Sunday December 16th 1990 it was the first time we had been broadcast on that particular channel from our home ground- whatever happened to Elton Welsby? not to mention the first live match in nearly six years to be screened live from Elland Road, the previous being the FA Cup 3rd round defeat to that days opponents Everton during the 84/85 season.  Howard Kendall was back with "his wife". Just five-weeks earlier we'd mercilessly taunted the Manchester City fans about Kendall leaving them to return to Everton, he described his time with City as like having an affair but going home to Goodison was like returning to his wife.  However we Leeds fans weren't in any mood for any romantic sentiment, "Who the fucking hell are you?" boomed around the ground as the Toffeemen took to the field lite...

  December 1st used to be a day I always looked forward to as a kid, for me the unofficial start of the Christmas festivities. This year thanks to Dimples, I was in bah humbug mood and probably have been every year since (believe it or not I am over her so it's not her fault I still feel this way!).  However the arrival of Advent brings many a fine tradition, including getting smashed out of your face on alcohol. So after the coach arrived in Leeds ahead of the game versus Southampton, I didn't join the herd that piled out into the Woodman or Drysalters but instead wandered into Holbeck, where there were some fine, traditional back-street pubs most now sadly lost forever. There was the Waggon and Horses, Imperial which I didn't bother with but I started at the Kings Arms not far from the library, then into the Bulls Head, Spotted Cow and then the Britannia. I think I then went into the Kwik Save supermarket and bought some cans, sitting by the wall and swigging away. I'...

Derby were our next visitors to Elland Road and you'd thought I'd be buzzing after being at Maine Road the previous weekend and watching the Rams being put to the sword, but I was still going through post-Dimples depression and making everyone's life a misery with my abject moaning. I'd befriended a guy from Swadlincote called Derek,  who was married to a much younger woman, life seemed so easy for him! She'd drop him off at the coach and no doubt have dinner and "afters" waiting at home for him. Anyway we swept aside a poor Derby side, who were second from bottom, with relative ease. They had Peter Shilton in goal, who got some stick from the Kop. Shilton was the keeper Brian Clough wanted to sign for Leeds from Stoke City 16-years earlier and in one interview he claimed this was the catalyst behind his infamous sacking after 44-days, the fate of David Harvey unsettling the rock-solid dressing room-but some fans were shouting "Tina! Tina!" at Sh...

  Being young, free and single (yet again) I could spend my weekends watching Leeds United. I was still hacked-off about Dimples, she had started coming in the pub with a tall, blonde guy with a flat top haircut who looked like the rapper Vanilla Ice. The antithesis to me being a few inches under 6-foot, dark and cuddly. But I had a visit to Maine Road, Manchester to look forward to on Sunday November 11th 1990, Armistice Day. With that in mind and not wanting to spark any debates or disrespect, there was no commemoration of this whatsoever at the grounds back then. No poppies on shirts, no pre-match regimental parades, no wreath laying, no minutes silence, no last post, nothing. Other than wear a poppy or go to a local parade, there was nothing much more than you could do to remember the fallen. Because the game was in the north-west, the Burton contingent, myself included had to head out Cannock way to meet the coach. Barry had arranged pre-match refreshments but they were in som...