Alright Yorkie mate. Haven't seen you in here for ages.
And Kesey, I always hated going to QPR. No, so called firm, but they were snidey bastards. Me and two of me mates got legged for fucking miles by at least twenty odd of them. We finally caught up with our own lads, and got the piss taken out of some something rotten for getting legged by divvies like them.
Me and my mate went to QPR for the first game of the season in 1975 in a bread van from Halewood , we lost 2-0. The lads in the van had a fight with Boro fans off a coach and grabbed one of their fans and took him in our van to the next motorway service station. It is the best part of fifty years ago now and I still remember watching one of the lads going behind the bar and snatching most of the till when we stopped off for a pint.
I can hardly walk now and the other day while struggling to the dentist to get my fitting of my partial dentures ( Jesus Christ, look after your teeth comrades ) I thought back to all the times we legged or got legged in those wonderful match going away games.
Leeds was always moody along with Birmingham, Boro and Notts Forest. Most of the London aways and of course Utd and City. The day a hundred of us went to Utd on Boxing day and took over a pub was one of the most memorable and even gets mentioned in a few books, Tottenham away in the cup, Forest at Old Trafford and the United games at Maine Road and Goodison were also very eventful days.
Getting bricked in The Kippax at City, bunking in at Bristol City and sitting in the gangway and Bob Paisley telling us to get to the back of the stands. Getting to Aberdeen with no money or tickets and sleeping in a parked car and then finding money in the glove compartment, again not having a bean between us after winning in Paris and pinching a cooked chicken and bottles of beer and sitting in a park celebrating after winning The European Cup and then sleeping on a train in Paris North.
Going to Ipswich and Norwich and having nothing to eat or drink all the way home and one of my mates saying after never missing a game for about five years, " I fucking hate football" and of course all those European games, the sadness of Heysel and glories of Rome. I had stopped going just after Heysel and listened on the world service when I could from my work places all over The Sahara.
I starting going to a few Constantine Algeria games with the lads off the site and even an Algerian game were I got quite a large section singing a Liverpool song because through me off the site they all knew some of the songs.
I used to sit at night starring at the star covered Algerian night when Liverpool were playing and wondering how we were getting on with no phones in those days or papers and it sometimes took me days to find out the result until I travelled two hours across the desert to speak to my wife for only five minutes with the locals banging on the phone booth shouting "Fuck OFF FRANCAIS" until our interpreter convinced them I was "ANGLAIS LIVERPOOL" and then there anger turned to smiles and shaking of hands with them laughing and repeating LIVERRPOOL, LIVEERPOOL.
After a few visits we got to know them and it was where there gangs of lads hanged out and they would even save me papers with the Liverpool results and we would go to the front of the queue with about thirty Algerians scallies singing LIVEEERPOOL LIVEEEPOOL and everyone laughing and clapping and dancing.
It was quite an unbelievable experience and all because of the Power of Liverpool Football Club..
I made a come back to Strasbourg and Michael Owens Rome game but never go the match now and watch all the games on one of those streams on the internet and then onto the tele. The best I have seen us play was the Arsenal Charity Shield in about 1979 and Leeds away around the same time with Ray Kennedy probably my favourite player.
