It will be no surprise that not much ever happens in Stoke itself, because it doesn’t have a town centre to speak of – as I found when I left my sister to look at the shops while I went to the match. She had a great time sitting in the car all afternoon. My wife’s lasting impression of the place is from April ’81, at the nearest motorway junction, where the Pink Panther and Andy Pandy, complete with red and white scarves, were hitching a lift after the match.

Back in February ’76, I set out for the 5th round FA cup-tie at Stoke, taking up my usual position at the south end of the Tyne bridge, with my thumb out and my scarf safely hidden from view (self preservation comes naturally when living in bandit country). It didn’t take long for a car to stop, but my heart sank when I saw the occupants – four lads in mag colours. I opened my coat so that the driver could see my scarf, expecting a two-fingered salute followed by the screeching of tyres as they left. On the contrary, they shrugged their shoulders and invited me aboard. They looked reasonable lads (for mags), so I accepted their kind offer.

Their views on my choice of team were predictable, and somewhat familiar. “A Sunderland supporter at university? Don’t believe you”. They even had a friend who would not acknowledge that Sunderland existed as a place.

They were on their way to Bolton for the FA cup match (you know, the one where Supawhiskymac scored over his shoulder), so they agreed to drop me at the Hartshead services on the M62 to try for a connecting lift to the Potteries. I was allowed to share their bait, and even got two cans of Brown given. Surely these were not true mags? Was the pease pudding poisoned? Was the Brown laced with arsenic? I ate and drank nervously, as we chatted about our footballing experiences until we reached Hartshead, where reality kicked in. I got a few funny looks as I climbed (red and white) out of their car (black and white), and, as we said our farewells and I checked my coat pockets for booby-traps, we saw the reason why. The place was like the Bigg Market on a Friday night, as a mixture of Sunderland and Skunk fans expressed their mutual dislike in the most physical of manners.

I dodged the more expressive discussions, and got into the safe (truck drivers’) part of the café, where I secured a lift to Stoke on a minibus from Red House. An hour of drinking on the move, then the driver got lost as soon as we left the M5. We spent what seemed like an hour driving aimlessly through the houses near the ground, complaining about the local accent being hard to understand when we asked for directions.

Over 41,000 were at the Victoria ground to see the lads achieve exactly what they set out to do – frustrate the home side to bits with a dour 0-0 and take them back to 47,500 at Roker. There, Pop and Mel repeated their third round performance with a goal each to earn us a quarter- final at home to Palace. A pox on Alan Whittle and bloody stupid felt hats.

Then came the tricky bit. It may be cheap to travel by thumb, but it can be unreliable, especially when the roads are very busy just after a match. Luckily, I chanced on some mates travelling on the Aclet bus, and was offered the use of an empty seat for about 60 pence. An evening in Sheffield had been planned, so we sang our way across the Pennines to steel city. Our first port of call was the lounge of a pub near Bramall Lane, where the pairs of pensioners were treated to our singing current favourite of the club singers, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, along with the jukebox. We tried as many of the town centre pubs as we could, and I impressed the lads by signing them into the Students’ Union bar, where they were impressed with the price, but not the taste, of their first pint of Ward’s, though. 11:30 departure, and back in Bishop by about 5 hours too late for the last bus back to Tyneside. So it was a quiet scramble in through my Mam’s lavvy window, and a note on the kitchen table telling her there would be one more for breakfast that Sunday.