And finally, as even we’re too young to remember Yeovil, Y could only be for York…

It’s strange when your Derby for the season happens to be at York. A bit like Carlisle – gleefully acceptable in the First (Premier) division, but hopelessly cac when it’s in the third. However, this is where we found ourselves in 1988, thanks to the inspired work of Mr McBastardly. Still, it’s an ideal train trip, being just 25 minutes from Darlo, joyously boasting 364 pubs, no ticket required, and three points the merest formality. Just turn up, warm up, and be entertained in a late season show of Red and White might. We duly arrived in York in perfect time, just before 11 o’clock heralded the opening of the first of the 364 on our list.

Security started early, with Yorkshire poliss videoing every Sunderland fan as they disembarked. Very pessimistic start, but we soon chalked up a gallon as we reduced the “must visit” list to 359. It looked like we would struggle to get round them all, as we entertained Mackems, locals, and bemused tourists alike. Gibba gave us “Alouette” (unexpurgated version, for performance in the presence of over 18s only), Tink “scrunched” (a very visual display of testosterone, involving a madman running around the pub), and Skinner, Aycliff’se Prince of Pop, providing the coup de grace with two verses of “Lucky Lips” before we were asked to leave. Yet another pub that we henceforth excluded.

On to Bootham Crescent, a real prefab of a ground, where there was chaos at the turnstiles as the law made a particularly feeble, and potentially dangerous, hand of crowd control. When we did get inside, the famous York Shambles took on a new and frightening meaning. Their idea of safety fencing was that rusty stuff that is used to reinforce concrete. It was rough, it was held up with string, it swayed about at the slightest touch, it seemed about 12 feet high, and had nasty, sharp, pointy bits sticking out all over the place. People scrambled everywhere to get a view of the pitch, including the TV gantry (sorry, shed) and the clubhouse roof, where the police video camera got much better close-ups of the visitors than they had ever expected. I was behind the goal, packed in tighter than I remember being in the Fulwell. This was the only occasion I can recall my ability to move and draw breath being dictated by others for more than a couple of seconds. Just as panic began to set in, the local plods saw a bit of sense, and allowed the no-man’s-land of the main stand to be filled with a flood of Sunderland fans. Relief. That had been worse than the ’75 game when it hoyed down and 4,000 of us tried to get under one umbrella. 8,878 was the official crowd – I believe that there were that many in our end alone.

The football was poor, mainly because York hadn’t read the script. The cheek of it! We were the big club, running away with the league, and a massive following. Despite a debut goal from Pascoe, a substitute for the famous Dougie McGuire (yes, we had crappy triallists way back then as well), and a disallowed effort form Gorgeous Gordon, they beat us 2-1. Perhaps they felt that they owed Denis Smith one.

We decided on a post-mortem back in town, and managed to evade the visiting “tourists” in Leeds colours lurking in the streets outside our end on our way to pub 358. We decided that we would still walk off with the league, Denis Smith was all right, and Sobs was daft for running the York Half Marathon the next morning on a belly-full of beer (you can’t fly the Atlantic without petrol was his reasoning), but we simply couldn’t decide on who was the biggest arsehole – Lawrie shit-for brains, or Jimmy Hill. In the end we decided on the latter, because he knew exactly what he was doing. Our increasingly animated discussions had attracted the attention of a couple of females, who (stupidly) accepted our invitation to join in. They turned out to be Psychology students on a course in England. One looked like Brooke Shields (OK we’d been drinking a bit, but you get the pictures), while the other redressed the balance by looking like Bette Midler. They were obviously top students, as they ponced gin & tonics from our lot all night. Deciding that it was perfectly normal for two twenty year-old Americans to want to spend the evening in the company of a bunch of (a bit) drunk old(ish) men, we decided to delay our departure. However, free drink was no compensation to Brooke and Bette for putting up with our inane drivel, yet they did concede that Mackemenemy (whoever he was) was not a nice man, as they moved on to their next victims.

When we got back to the station we discovered that the last of the regular trains had long since departed, leaving us with a 2 hour wait for the mail service, the trusty friend of the itinerant football fan. This train contained a fair smattering of pissed-up stragglers like ourselves, including the one and only Sammy. There he was, one-time self-styled Fulwell legend, scarf round his wrist, and a domino card for every occasion. He informed us that he hadn’t seen the game, due to being a victim of police injustice, and muttered something about Harry Roberts, communication chords and Chester le Street as he boarded. The last leg for us was a costly post midnight tariff taxi to Aycliffe, ensuring a good old (and expensive) nag the next morning. Suddenly the York half marathon seemed quite a nice alternative.