OK, so we hadn’t won at Loftus Road since about 1899, as the media so kindly reminded us at every opportunity, but we were a month or so into a good run, so we were confident of three points when we headed for Shepherd’s Bush in December ’97. The East Coast main line was by then as familiar to us as the last bus home from Durham, but Sobs was ending a month’s work in the USA with a carefully engineered return to coincide with the game (yes, you’re right – mad). A 6 AM arrival at Heathrow allowed him to be at King’s Cross in time for our arrival – not that we would have recognised him, every inch the intercontinental executive, had it not been for the A4 sign held aloft, bearing the letters “FTM”. We could only admire the sentiment. As we headed up the Euston road, he ‘morphed into something more familiar, removing layers of clothes like a snake sheds its skin, and replacing them in garments that only come in red and white. Back to normal.

We had our standard Café Shiraz brekky/blotting paper, and early aperitifs in the Euston Flyer, which would have been even earlier, had the antipodean barman been able to understand English. He thought the tube was something that beer came in. The pub proclaimed “no football fans”, but cleverly showed the 11 o’clock game between Liverpool & Man U. Being London, the place was full of Man U boys who’d supported them since well before Bryan Giggs, Ray Keane, and Barry Pallister had graced Old Triffid.

We stuck 45 minutes of this, then headed for our first rendezvous – the Jeremy Bentham, run by and old pal from Bishop, where the rest of South West Durham gathered. This place is known as a “destination pub” –explained to us as somewhere that people actually travelled to from all over the capital for a night out (probably because the staff spoke real English, and it served decent beer). After a pew pints supped while renewing old acquaintances, we were on the tube, and into a converted card shop on Shepherd’s Bush Green, now Flanagan’s traditional (?) Irish Bar. Here we met up with the remainder of our extended red and white family, which somehow had grown to include a young New Zealander (bound to happen). She survived a good twenty minutes before a pint of Guinness went down her leg. The guilty party (who shall remain nameless) offered to pay for having them cleaned, at which she took him by the hand and led him to the adjoining laundrette, where he waited as she removed her keks and had them cleaned and dried (gentleman or pervert – you decide). Needless to say, the happy couple returned to loud cheers.

A few pints of the black stuff later, and it was past time to leave for the match. A lone fiddler entertained the crowds as they squeezed into the School lane end, where they found themselves behind various pillars and posts. Apparently, some tickets are actually marked “crap view”, and the pitch seems square rather than rectangular, a bit like a tennis court surrounded by football fans, but the proximity of the crowd to the pitch makes for a terrific atmosphere. The visiting fans took particular delight in mocking short-arse John Spencer, who must hate the trend for long shorts, which allowed him barely a kneecapful of flesh on display. He made Kev look like a giant, and he trudged miserably to take each corner in front of us to a crescendo of “hi ho, hi ho, it’s off to work we go!”

The home side’s central defenders decided that the only way to handle Quinny was to kick lumps out him, but he still spent a large portion of the game making them look silly. In a lop-sided first half he hit the woodwork twice and had one disallowed for being too skilful. As the game entered the final minutes, a left-wing cross floated over Steve Morrow’s head and dropped onto Niall’s right boot. 4000 Sunderland voices screamed, “hit it!” but the big man had other ideas. He waited until Morrow turned to face him, dummied the ball past him, and blasted a left foot rocket into the top corner, right in front of us. Ecstasy on the terraces, of the emotional variety, and I scared the fat bloke in front of me by planting a kiss right on top of his baldy heed. “You’ll not see nothing like the mighty Quinn” boomed across west London well beyond the final whistle.

The game had provided enough good memories to keep us happy on the homeward journey, but we weren’t finished yet. Our landlord pal had managed to blag a bunch of passes into the players lounge (sadly, an option no longer available, due to his contact becoming a little too attached to some of the fixtures and fittings thereof). By the time the players began to arrive, some greedy buggers had eaten most of the buffet and were standing sheepishly at the bar. First in was Lionel, who swept past us like a gladiator twice the size of Russell Crowe – I’d never seen a goalie that big without being fat. As one, our merry band shouted “hey Lionel, comment ca va?”. Realising immediately that we had reached the limit of our linguistic flexibility, he shrugged his massive shoulders as only a Frenchman could, and beat a hasty path to the bar. We chatted with all of our players apart from Lee Idiot, who was on the treatment table, and Quinny, who was so busy talking to the press that a tannoy announcement had to be made to get him onto the team bus before it left. We did our amateur interview with Buzza (Q“why did you leave City?” A"it was time for a change”), and were surprised to find that Gareth Hall had escaped from his loan to Brentford to appear as a thankfully unused sub, and was threatening to take Nicky on a tour of the west end nightspots that he wasn’t yet barred out of.

As Steve Morrow and his partner in thuggery Karl Ready finally entered, we shouted “watch yer ankles, lads”, and hopped around clutching our shins as they passed. They didn’t know which way to look, and were further embarrassed when we pushed past them to get an autograph from Cedric off TFI Friday.

As time drew on, it became obvious that we’d need a taxi to get to King’s Cross on time, so I headed for the ‘phone, pushing past some bloke blocking the corridor. If you listened to 5Live that night, you may well have heard Ray Harford’s interview interrupted by a thump and my cry of “watch yer back, scholar!”. As we sat outside awaiting our cab, a vaguely familiar figure, in the regulation ex-pro’s demob suit of beige mac with upturned collar, brushed past, and a voice called out “Stan Bowles; one of the finest footballers to grace the green fields of the English game in the seventies”. He was politeness itself, saying that we’d go up and that we’d spend big (which we didn’t and didn’t), before disappearing into the night. No sign of the taxi at the promised time, so several more ‘phone calls were made before we discovered the local answer to Vikram sitting half asleep in an unmarked Volvo about ten yards away.

He did get us to the train in time to collect swag, scran, and Sobs’s luggage. We enjoyed a couple of cans and a SAFC picture quiz before disembarking at Darlo and hitting the Number twenty2 pub, where our 3 bags and a huge suitcase were really popular on a busy Saturday night. Sobs, who had countered jet lag all day by using the time-honoured remedy of alcohol, finally succumbed on the last leg of the journey, resulting in a bag being left on the bus. We were a perfect sight as we arrived, giggling, at chez Sobs, either side of the largest surviving item of luggage. A series of frantic phonecalls to GNER, the Number twenty2, station taxis, and GoAhead Northern finally resulted in the missing bag being recovered on Monday evening, complete with duty free, presents, and passport.

Normal relation with the family resumed soon after.