Not the nicest place in the football world – I always expect to bump into Michael Palin wearing a huge flat cap, standing outside a tiny back-to –back terrace house, with seventeen children screaming on the step. It’s like going back in time to the depression of the 1930’s. The attitude of the locals is also typically of he well-balanced Yorkshire variety (large chip on each shoulder), so we avoid the town centre if at all possible. Hence, we always drink outside of the town, and decided on this occasion to try a pub called the Old Post Office that I had found in the Good Beer Guide. It was supposed to be next the motorway junction, ten minutes up the road before Barnsley. We duly scoured the neighbouring villages without success, and turned back to the M1 amidst threats from Skinner about where he would put my Good Beer Guide once he’d finished rolling it up. On arriving back at the junction, we found the Olds Post Office, one hundred yards from the motorway. Boy, was I popular, but when we got in we found it was fine, with a good choice of bevvy, and some nice scran. They didn’t appreciate our colourful language, and our continued presence was only guaranteed after some protracted negotiations and the promise that we would whistle rather than sing for the rest of our stay.

The excellent bevvy had set us up nicely for a good match, but we didn’t get it, largely thanks to a bald gentleman who ran the midfield for the Tykes, and scored the only goal. I said there and then we should buy him, so we did. Trouble was, it was not until five years later that Mr Agnew eventually signed, by which time we’d missed his best years. Typical. The highpoint of the game was the Sunderland fans humming the Hovis theme at the home fans. It sums the place up perfectly. I went to our next game at Barnsley, and headed for the Old Post Office again. You couldn’t get parked within half a mile of the place, as it was the midweek disco. When we eventually got in, we found it was the place where everyone in South Yorkshire took other people’s wives (presumably while their husbands were at the football), and, as four lads on our own, were viewed as potential opposition by the local male population. We assured them that we were only there for the beer and the football.

Approaching the ground from the daft little car park up the hill was like being in the middle of a cattle stampede – thousands of feet raised a thick cloud of red dust from the dirt road to the away end, and the usual pre-match songs were interspersed with cries of cries of “Rawhide” and “Giddyup”. On this occasion, the football matched the beer, and, on a brilliantly sunny early season evening, we tore them to shreds and won 3-0. In all honesty, it could have been ten, but we were happy enough, and even stopped at the Old Post Office to see what the wives of the Barnsley supporters were up to. It looked like they were about to get what their husbands’ team had just got, so we supped off, and left with a smile on our faces.